Is it worth having a creative, human business in the age of AI?
They’re telling us to optimize. Be faster, no matter what, and who cares if the quality gets cut off. What about NOOO?
I recently saw this pizza recipe reel “if you’re craving pizza but you only have one hour, make this recipe” and then the person proceeded to add a gigantic, enormous amount of yeast to the dough. Yes, that pizza will probably rise in half an hour, but you’ll take three days to digest it.
That sparked a reflection: why does everything need to be optimized for speed? Why are we treating five hours of fermentation as a problem to solve rather than the actual thing that makes the pizza good? What’s with the rush?
Being chronically online, I see the exact same thing happening when it comes to posting, marketing and branding your business: the advice out there sounds like “make 30 pieces of content in 30 minutes”, “let this AI agent post for you”. I honestly don’t get some of the automations I get pitched. Like turning your DMs into an AI chatbot? What the fuck? Why are you starting a business if you don’t want a relationship with your clients? What’s the point? Everybody hates talking to an AI chatbot when they’re the one on the other side, so why would you do the same thing in your own business? I just don’t get it.
The thing is, most of us left the corporate world (or want to leave it) and started our own businesses to avoid exactly that, to get rid of the toxic boss that bullies us into producing more in less time. And yet we’re told to do the same thing in our own businesses, or we’re going to be left behind.
But just a question… do you actually want to lower your quality and your standards for the sake of “being faster”? And if you don’t, how do you AI-Proof your business, when these tools are getting pushed more and more every day
My prediction: human creativity is about to get more requested (and more expensive)
Big companies and brands have invested a huge amount of money in this new tool over the last few years, so they’re going to use it, and they won’t admit it might have been a bad choice.
Every software is pushing AI features on us when we don’t want them, because they spent a lot of money and they don’t want to waste it.
You’ll be flooded with ads and people telling you to join this new AI tool, try this, try that, be faster. But you don’t have to pick that path if you don’t want to. You can ignore the noise, and I’ll tell you why I think that’s the smartest move you can make.
Here’s what I think will happen:
Consumers will get tired of AI, I already see many comments along the lines of “your AI slop bores me” or “if the flyer is AI, I’m not coming” under clearly AI-Generated ads, so brands will try to go back to traditional advertising.
Businesses will understand that AI makes mistakes, and if you don’t master the skill, you cannot fix them.
I’m not just vibing here, there’s proof!
In this article I read a few days ago, they say that one growing area of work is people getting hired to clean up after AI, because it produces output that looks almost right but is full of errors that a real person has to catch.
Think about how backwards that is!! A lot of companies fired humans because AI was going to take those jobs, but AI made a mess, and now they need humans to fix it. So the brands that thought they were saving time and money by handing everything to a robot end up paying twice, first for the AI tool and then for the person who fixes what it broke.
I’ve even seen people on Threads say that if you hire them to fix AI slop, they’ll charge you more than they would have if you’d hired them in the first place, because you kind of deserve to be punished (LOL that’s pettiness at its finest, I like that!)
Give it some time, and the smarter move becomes obvious: skip the mess and hire the human from the start, instead of wasting time hunting for someone to rescue you afterward.
But we’re not there yet. Right now people are still raging about needing to try this new AI tool because they’re being pushed toward it from every direction, and a lot of creatives will get pushed out along the way, or will give up with “AI will take my job, I’ll just go back to corporate.” That means fewer humans with real skills, and more people looking for them.
Which kind of business owner do you want to be? A fast fashion, or a tailor?
The easiest way I can explain the choice is with clothing. I can see a polarization of businesses coming, the same way we saw it in apparel.
On one side you have the “fast fashion” businesses that delegate everything to AI, optimizing and automating every step and cutting the relationship part out completely. Everything is quick and scalable, and nobody on the other end knows your name. They’ll have a lot of services, fast and cheap, but the quality is low.
On the other side you have the “tailor” businesses, who do everything custom, by hand, and talk to their clients to make better work. Their service takes time, because there’s a person behind it working with care, the quality is high and so is the price.
Let’s be honest, you are never going to compete in the fast fashion market – and if you follow me, you probably don’t even want to, because you have values, you have standards, and you put care into what you do, so you don’t want to be in that market anyway.
So is it worth it to have a human brand in the age of AI?
Yes. AI slop is for the masses, and the artisanal thing made with care is only going to be more in demand in the near future.
In an age where everything is AI, everything is optimized and everything is fast, the best way to stand out is to go in the opposite direction, be human, and ignore all of it. Fuck the optimization! I take my time to do my thing because I have a quality standard that is non-negotiable.
So how do you AI-Proof your business?
Stop letting others pressure you into going faster, stop embracing a business structure that doesn’t belong to you, and build a business the way you actually want to: designed around your life and your values. In a world celebrating hustle culture and overconsumption, having fun and following your gut is an act of rebellion, and it’s one you should take.
Start by knowing your craft well enough that you could fix what a machine gets wrong.
Then curate the relationship with your clients, and don’t take the person, out of a personal brand.
Show up as yourself instead of only creating impersonal, educational content: be bold in your opinions, show your face, tell your story, and share your experiences… be the human behind the work.
Curate your client experience, show your clients how much you care about them by adding small, memorable touches that make them smile (that could be an handwritten note, a small gift, flowers (hey, If you build your brand with me, we will work on your experience too, making it so unique that your clients will become referral machines for how much they’ll talk about it!)
Oh, BTW, a good homemade pizza takes five hours at the very least. If you only have one hour, just Doordash it.
Is a fast pizza really worth it if it’s going to be like eating a brick? I don’t think so.
