The Coming Shortage of Originality in an Age of AI Unlimited Production
Just in time for Halloween, something frightening is happening to creativity. And the monster isn’t who you think it is.
I’ve been noticing something peculiar about advertising lately.
Everything is starting to look alike.
The same dramatic lighting. The same impossibly perfect people. The same elaborate backgrounds. The same polished, saturated, overproduced compositions.
Every square inch is screaming for attention.
And somehow, nothing is getting mine.
It’s as though an entire industry has discovered the same visual recipe and decided to serve it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Welcome to the creative buffet. Everything looks delicious. Nothing has any flavor.
The Invasion of the Beautifully Generic
Once upon a time, creating something visually impressive required considerable skill, time, and effort.
Now you can type a few sentences, press a button, and produce something that looks like it cost thousands of dollars.
That’s extraordinary.
It’s also where things get a little creepy.
Because when everyone has access to the same shortcuts, everyone starts arriving at remarkably similar destinations.
The images are polished.
The compositions are elaborate.
The production values are impressive.
But where’s the idea?
Where’s the surprise?
Where’s that wonderful moment when you see an advertisement and think, I wish I’d thought of that.
Instead, we’re seeing an endless parade of visual perfection marching toward creative mediocrity.
The walking dead have apparently discovered graphic design.
And they have excellent rendering capabilities.
The Five-Minute Masterpiece
There’s nothing wrong with working faster.
I’ve spent decades in an industry where deadlines have a remarkable ability to arrive before the work is finished. Any tool that saves time is welcome.
But there’s a difference between saving time on execution and eliminating time spent thinking.
And that’s where the trouble begins.
When a machine can produce an attractive image in seconds, it’s tempting to accept it simply because it looks finished.
Finished, however, is not the same as good.
Good isn’t necessarily original.
And original isn’t necessarily effective.
Those distinctions require judgment.
They require curiosity, experience, restraint, and occasionally the courage to throw away something beautiful because it doesn’t solve the problem.
AI can produce fifty variations before you’ve finished your coffee.
But someone still has to recognize whether any of them deserves to exist.
The Monster We Created
Here’s the interesting part.
I don’t think AI is the villain in this story.
We are.
Or, more precisely, our growing willingness to confuse convenience with creativity.
AI doesn’t force anyone to accept the first image it generates. It doesn’t demand that every composition be overloaded with visual effects. It doesn’t insist that every advertisement resemble a movie poster for a film nobody wants to see.
Those are human decisions.
We choose the shortcuts.
We approve the work.
We decide when something is good enough.
And when good enough becomes the industry standard, originality starts disappearing.
Not with a scream.
Not with a dramatic crash.
Just quietly, one perfectly rendered, completely forgettable image at a time.
Somewhere, a creative director is turning over in their grave.
Possibly because someone just added another lens flare.
The Return of the Thinking Human
Now here’s where the story takes an unexpected turn.
What happens when everyone can produce professional-looking work?
The ability to produce it becomes less remarkable.
And the ability to distinguish exceptional work from ordinary work becomes more important.
Think about that.
For years, creative professionals were valued partly for their technical ability to bring ideas to life.
Today, those technical barriers are rapidly disappearing.
But the ability to recognize a powerful idea?
To understand an audience?
To create visual hierarchy?
To know when a single sentence and a tiny photograph will accomplish more than an elaborate composition?
Those abilities don’t come automatically with a software subscription.
They come from experience.
From making mistakes.
From studying what works and, perhaps more importantly, understanding why something doesn’t.
From knowing that sometimes the most powerful thing you can put on a page is absolutely nothing.
The cheaper it becomes to make something, the more valuable it may become to make something worth looking at.
A Frighteningly Good Opportunity
There’s an economic irony hiding inside this creative horror story.
As the supply of polished imagery becomes virtually unlimited, truly distinctive thinking may become increasingly scarce.
And scarcity has value.
That doesn’t mean every experienced designer will suddenly command higher fees. Clients still have budgets, and plenty will happily settle for inexpensive, acceptable work.
But businesses that discover their advertising has become indistinguishable from everyone else’s may begin asking a different question.
Not, How cheaply can we make this?
But, How do we make anyone notice?
That’s a very different conversation.
And it’s one that experienced creative thinkers should be prepared to have.
Because the real value of a designer was never simply the ability to operate the tools.
It was knowing what to do with them.
The Final Fright
Halloween is a wonderful time to contemplate monsters.
But perhaps the most frightening creature in advertising isn’t an artificial intelligence capable of producing a thousand images in an afternoon.
It’s the human who looks at the first one and says:
“Perfect. We’re done.”
No questions.
No exploration.
No second thoughts.
Just another beautiful image joining an ever-growing army of beautiful images that nobody remembers.
The machines aren’t stealing our originality.
We’re surrendering it in exchange for convenience.
And that brings me to one final thought.
When everyone can make something in five minutes, the person who knows why it shouldn’t be made that way becomes the most valuable person in the room.
So perhaps the future of creativity isn’t quite as frightening as it looks.
Unless, of course, we’ve forgotten how to think.
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