Where are we going with this AI stuff?

We’re being inundated, overrun, really, with AI. From image and video generators to text tools, it's everywhere. And as this continues, one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me.

Those who build their work and careers on authenticity will have the advantage in the years to come.

Let’s Get on the Same Page

To be clear, I don’t hate AI. I don’t think it’s going to destroy our industry. Some jobs will disappear, just like with every wave of automation, but that in unavoidable.

It’s happened before, across every industry, and just as consistently, new jobs are created, sometimes from appears to be thin air.

Take “prompt engineering”, a job category that didn’t exist a year ago and is now rising in demand. The idea of it would have seemed absurd a year ago and yet, here we are.

But the real question is: once we have ethically trained AI (and yes, people are actively working on that), how do we integrate it into our creative toolkits in a way that amplifies our humanity, and by extension, the humanity of our clients?

AI Has No Soul

This is the piece many people miss. Can AI mimic human work convincingly? Absolutely. Can we still tell when something, be it writing, design, or imagery, is soulless?

Also yes.

Will that kind of AI-generated content be “good enough” for a lot of people? Absolutely.

Especially for small businesses who’ve never had access to professional design or copywriting. Now they can use AI to gain a competitive edge, on Facebook, in ads, on their websites.

And you know what? That doesn’t bother me. They weren’t my target market anyway. I'm too expensive. Traditionally, they would’ve relied on a friend, a cousin, or their own limited experience with marketing and design. More often than not, it wasn’t enough, and that lack of access held them back.

That’s what bothers me.

Because that means one less community pillar. One less dream being chased. A less interesting, less diverse world. That’s the real loss.

Would It Be Better If They Worked with Professionals?

Yes, of course. But the better question is: how can we make that happen?

How can those folks at the top of their game, experts, agency owners, senior freelancers, create pathways for small, community-rooted businesses to access real talent, experience, and wisdom in ways they can actually afford?

I think you know where this is going.

The Answer Is… AI

There’s no scenario where an award-winning designer with a five-figure project minimum works with a family-run bodega in Brooklyn. But I do believe in a future where local freelancers and respected boutique agencies can work with them, make the revenue they need and impact these small business, by using AI.

From market research and UX variations to color palettes and logo treatments, AI can drastically streamline a creative workflow, not by doing the work for us, but by supporting what we do best.

I’m imagining services that queue up tasks, trained specifically on your work. Ethically trained. Your AI doesn’t scrape the internet, it learns from you, inside a private sandbox.

You’d assign tasks like:

• “Here are three color palettes I’m considering. Check them for accessibility and usability against the client’s brand guidelines.”
• “Based on the usability feedback, generate five variations of each palette.”
• “Review the proposed tagline in background.md, analyze the local market and competition, and generate a market-fit report with three alternate taglines at the end.”

While that’s happening, you, the human, are doing what only you can do. Bringing soul. Intuition. Depth.

You’re crafting the thing that can’t be synthesized.

You might use a palette the AI suggests, or maybe one of those options sparks the right idea. You might rewrite a tagline completely, but build it on the research AI pulled faster and more thoroughly than you ever could.

Either way, you’re not replacing your work. You’re improving it.

And yes, to put my money where my mouth is, I wrote this with the help of AI. It didn't write it for me, but it sure as hell helped me make it better.

And that's the entire point.