You’ve probably already read three hot takes on AI today, maybe fourteen this week. Most of them aren’t flattering. MIT researchers warn that heavy reliance on tools like ChatGPT can dull human problem-solving and creativity. Your angry uncle is on socials shouting his latest AI conspiracy theory, while headlines frame generative AI as either an existential threat or a shortcut to mediocrity.

And yet, despite all the hand-wringing, everyone is piling on like white on rice. AI is the buzzword du jour, promising to fix everything from dating to filmmaking. Who wouldn’t be tempted by an eager assistant or a life-affirming fortune teller? Especially in creative industries, where the hype is loudest, generative AI has rushed in with promises to revolutionize design, storytelling, and branding.

Almost daily, some rando billionaire proves again that excessive wealth can buy vanity rockets and golden toilets, but not taste. AI is similar: it can crank out almost anything, but can’t make a case for whether it should.

In creative industries especially, AI has rushed in with promises to revolutionize design, storytelling, and branding. It’s expanding so quickly that I’m more surprised when I see a post that doesn’t use it.

The question isn’t whether AI will flood culture with content — it already has. The real challenge is ensuring your work cuts through.

AI and Creativity: Just Because We Can Doesn’t Mean We Should

Do you remember Pepperoni Hug Spot or the endless loop of AI-generated clips of Will Smith eating spaghetti from a few years ago? We laughed at all the extra fingers, morphing faces, and intersecting limbs. The clips were so broken that they weren’t even within the same time zone of the uncanny valley. But that was just the awkward adolescence of AI. Soon, the output will be photorealistic, anatomically correct, and technically flawless. And that’s when the real problem shows itself: once the novelty fades, we’re left with the question we should have been asking all along—Why? Why this concept, this execution, this moment?

Without taste, strategy, or cultural awareness, we end up with generative wallpaper—boxes in rooms exploding with random products, smiling couples walking generic city streets, or AI gen voices droning hollow scripts about the side effects of erectile dysfunction medication. It all works in a literal sense, but it lacks ingenuity, cleverness, nuance, and finesse.

The risk isn’t technical imperfection anymore; it’s in producing forgettable garbage. A world where everything looks polished, but nothing feels purposeful. We succumb to a life of squirting algorithmically correct, tasteless beige mush into our face holes from a corporate tube.

What Generative AI Actually Does Well in Creative Work

Let’s give credit where it’s due: AI excels at brute-force execution. It accelerates the parts of creative work that used to drain hours, from production art versions to a plethora of copy variations for A/B testing. AI is the ultimate production assistant. It handles the repetition and mundane work, leaving us with more space to think.

When used well, it can expand creative possibilities. Coca-Cola’s 2023 Create Real Magic campaign let thousands of people create branded art in hours. Several studios, from concept firms to large practices, are prototyping with MidJourney at the concept phase, skipping weeks of sketching. Young filmmakers are finding tools to help them tell stories or create characters. This kind of AI-assisted creativity is already changing workflows and redefining meaningful disruption, positioning AI creative tools as everyday companions in everything from design and branding to filmmaking.

What AI Still Can’t Do in Creativity and Branding

AI can mimic how something looks, but can’t answer why it should exist. In their Innovation Report 2025, Bain & Company asserts that “AI struggles to produce truly disruptive ideas, making humans an essential part of the process.” 

Think of AI as a sugar-loaded, chaos-fueled child trying its hand at home-made jokes. With no cultural literacy, instinct for irony, or feeling for timing, you get a lot of meaningless noise. It won’t connect a brand’s DNA to its execution in a way that feels intentional.

Polish without purpose is just noise.

Unless there is purpose and discernment behind the creation, AI-generated content — even when flawless — risks being indistinguishable from everything else: digestible, inoffensive, and instantly forgotten.

What AI can’t yet do — and may never do — is exercise taste. Taste informs what gets made, connects meaning to execution, and knows when you’re elevating culture or just adding noise. That’s precisely where humans remain indispensable.

Where Human Intuition and Creative Direction Still Reign

Creative direction isn’t simply making choices — it’s about making the right choices, deciding purpose, and inventing a concept. It’s knowing where the line is between too much, too little, and just right. It’s recognizing optics, reading the room — specifically when the room is the size of your target market — and knowing how to move within it.

Taste informs all those skills, and taste is the filter separating the meaningful from the mess.

Fear not! The novelty of using AI will wear off quickly. Brands are already losing points when they rely on the novelty of Gen AI models, images, or scripts. They’ll continue to win when their creative intent is sharp, with the right ideas, context, restraint, and execution. That’s a human job.

Leaders in creative fields aren’t just responsible for output; they’re the guardians of taste. They translate culture into campaigns, align AI in design and branding with authentic values, and ensure AI-assisted creativity enhances rather than dilutes intent.

They should remain aware of cultural shifts in attitudes to understand when something is positively relevant or the opposite. It’s easy to overindex on a new toy, tool, or technology. Levi’s learned this when it announced plans to use AI-generated models to “increase diversity.” The backlash wasn’t due to tech failures — it was about the failure of human judgment behind the decision. Representation isn’t pixels; it’s people, and taste isn’t just aesthetic — it’s strategy.

Authenticity beats overpolished automation every time. An amateur production of a nuanced, heartfelt story will resonate longer than the slickest AI execution with no truth.