Thanks, Rachel, for not only signing up here at OEG Connect but jumping into the conversation, which frankly I am more eager for than like button clicks 
Exactly! We have more than enough pundits spouting in all the media spaces. This was the premise of what I set out on back in May
Among many challenges is that our intuition or conceptual understanding of what these things are doing or how the work, is parked outside of a magic black box offering only a prompt entry form.
Even with my tinkering, can I really assess the capability and range of challenges from my own limited experiences? If I get good/interesting results does it apply across the board? If I get junk, can I judge the same?
Hardly, so we need a lot more group tinkering and sharing as you have done.
And yes, we would hope that the knowledge and understanding students are getting via an educational experience are much more than a professor’s grade check of a written essay. We know this is fraught with problems and there has been much good work in alternative assessment, open pedagogy assignments, etc.
I would hope students would want more to show for going out in the world than a pile of grades. This has long been the work, promise of doing public work (in the open), that demonstrates more and as you say, through multiple forms of representation.
Writing is still of key importance. You do not create a compelling video or an impactful audio show without the planning and writing, storyboarding first. All good media production starts with writing.
When I taught media courses, I did not grade on the aesthetics of the media produced, but more on the ways students (publicly in blogs) show the arc of their project development, sharing how they built and created, and the reflections afterward. Writing, writing.
But these AI tools were just starting then. I would be rethinking the approaches now.
And maybe more than just trying to get around the “how do i know this writing is but a bot or a human”, what if the AI has a place in the work? Some of the research tools have good promise (like Elicit and Explain Paper).
But what if the learning involves questioning, critiquing, re-writing the bot writing?
It cannot be ignored…
I have no answers, always questions, and curiosity.
You seem like you do to (and your writing seems like from a human )