I found myself at Barcelona airport recently, stuffing my face with spinach empanadas during my 5-hour layover. My attention drifted between Hell’s Kitchen compilations on YouTube, and people-watching the endless parade of travellers (we all do it – don’t lie). Among the fancily-clad executives in three-piece suits, and the vibrant, sunhat-and-sandal-wearing women, inevitably bracing for a week of liver abuse, something caught my eye. A moving picture inside the window of Ale-Hop. It was grotesque yet mesmerising, disturbing yet hypnotic. I couldn’t look away; it sucked my eyes out of their sockets until my feet compelled me towards it. I stood before it, wide-eyed, a half-eaten empanada in one hand. 

The screen showed people dancing in flower fields, wearing suits and sundresses adorned with daisies, roses, and countless blooms I couldn’t name. It was visually stunning, a blatant display of extravagance, luxury. But something looked… off. Beneath the cheesy smiles and awkward dancing, an unsettling quality lingered like dust in a still room. 

Was it the alien attractiveness of the models? The otherworldly perfection of their outfits? The flawless, idyllic fields? The ad oozed beauty, but it felt hollow; like I could knock on the screen and hear it echo. Then, it hit me like a train: as one dancer twirled, the top of her head morphed from a bunch of flowers into a mop of silver hair. The next scene, a younger woman in a stunning red dress spun, but her dress veered in the opposite direction before unnaturally snapping back to follow her. Physics-defying, frighteningly peculiar. 

This wasn’t real. The striking people, the ethereal field, the elegant clothes; they were all AI-generated. These people didn’t exist, nor did the flower field, nor those dresses and perfectly-tailored suits – they were the concoction of a computer, just pixels on a screen. 

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a slew of artists who relied on one thing and one thing only: their own minds. They generated ideas, they crafted their own briefs, they wrote and produced their own art and content, they proofread it and edited it themselves. They brought their visions to life; designers, artists, writers, photographers, videographers, ad agencies – all had one thing in common: humans.

The world’s most creative, innovative, unique art was born from the minds of people. 

Creativity is the innate desire to explore the unknown, to expand the mind, to go places you’ve never been. Pushing the boundaries of what people have done before you is an inborn characteristic of an artist, it’s an instinct, and it’s part of the oneness of being human. From sculpting beauty with our bare hands to conjuring entire universes like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings from our imagination. Our big, beautiful brains give rise to the incredible, the incomprehensible, the sublime. 

There was a time when I believed humanity could only ascend; that our creative potential was limitless; that our ability to create, invent, forge, and shape the world how we see fit could only expand. And with technology, those possibilities seemed endless. We could build bigger and better things, use computers to check grammar and accelerate writing, automate what would otherwise take us hours. But now I can’t help but wonder: where are we?

AI is the 21st century’s venus flytrap: a fascinating, intriguing, captivating invention that lures in prey like moths to a flame. Yet it’s an unsuspecting snare – a sinkhole that can break down nature’s creations. Everywhere I look, I see AI-generated ads. And they’re not blatantly obvious. You have to scrutinise some ‘art’ to gauge whether it was churned out in ChatGPT in seconds, or whether a human being painstakingly crafted it with their own hands. It’s so convincing that I often catch myself admiring it; but the longer I look, the more unusual and peculiar it seems.

Crowd faces are distorted, like fragments of a bad dream you can’t wake up from. Hands are twisted, contorted, a surreal vision of unreality. The whole picture feels wrong, but you can’t pinpoint why. That’s AI. It’s not real. It’s not human, creative, or unique – it’s a regurgitation of existing art, stripped of its soul. AI takes what’s already been created, and it spews out a generic, cold version of it. Yet people are losing their minds about its possibilities. 

Every day on LinkedIn, I scroll past carousel posts filled with AI-generated ads for various brands. Sure, they’re visually appealing – at first glance. But look closer, and an aura of falseness rears its ugly head – a fuzzy mist that whispers not real. The background words are nonsensical, the headings overly polished, the entire composition beautiful but soulless. Half the content on LinkedIn is so flagrantly AI-made, undoubtedly never touched by a human hand. And it makes me sad. 

It’s all. The same. Shit. 

Generic, boring, overly-professional, robotic, always the same recurring bullet point and cookie-cutter structure: eye-catching hook, sweeping intro, bullet points, CTA. Someone please tell me: what’s the point in content creation if none of it is human? Are we doomed to a future of soulless, computer-generated babble because we’re too lazy to be creators anymore? Have we really become so complacent that innovation and originality no longer matter? 

Because here’s the truth: it’s impossible for AI to be original because everything it creates is based on pre-written, pre-made art. Humans create art: AI merely replicates it, vomiting out a generic, recycled version tailored to your prompts and inputs. It’s not original, it’s not unique – it’s secondhand. 

But the scariest part? People are ignoring the bigger picture. We’re literally letting computers do all our hard work for us. Students are AI-generating essays and homework, personal trainers are using ChatGPT for meal plan creation, people are AI-writing entire books. Does no one see the impact this will have on human intelligence? We’re shifting our creativity, intellect, and critical thinking to an auto-generator, outsourcing it to a machine. We’re no longer sitting with our own thoughts and basking in the glory of what it means to be human. We’ve collectively stopped caring about honing our own skills – and no one seems concerned.  

There’s nothing as irreplaceable as the human touch: storytelling, humour, empathy, language nuances – AI can’t replicate that. Readers connect with authentic voices and lived experiences; AI has never lived, so how can it be relatable? Sure, it’s useful for idea generation, data summaries, SEO research, and proofreading; shit, it even helped me proofread this article. But can it truly be creative? Can it infuse content with emotional depth, humour, brand voice, soul? 

For a long time I feared how AI would impact the job market. Artists, videographers, photographers, graphic designers, marketers, and of course, copywriters are all slowly being replaced by faster, cheaper automated assistants.

But instead of fearing or outright hating AI, I’ve chosen to work with it.

I still don’t believe in any way, shape, or form, that it should replace humans or be used for content creation, but it can work with humans. It can handle the repetitive, mundane tasks that notoriously take hours, it can generate ideas, draft outlines, suggest edits, proofread, or even streamline research when Google is too cluttered with ads to be objective.

AI can be leveraged without being relied upon; it’s a tool, not a crutch. It’s a way to enhance productivity without sacrificing authenticity, unlike the (cough lazy cough) reliance too many companies have embraced. 

Offended? Maybe you won’t like what I’ve said. That’s fine. A blog’s purpose is to speak your mind, after all. I’m not afraid of AI. I’m just sick of it.

What’s your hot take?

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