AI and the future of creativity
A 2026 reflection on what artificial intelligence changes, what it can't, and why human taste, story and intent only become more valuable.
I've worked with AI in the studio for years now, and I can tell you this: it has changed my days, but not my work. That sounds contradictory, but it isn't. It takes away the friction — the twentieth variation of a button, the boilerplate, the rough first draft. What it doesn't take away is the decision about which of those things is worth building.
What actually changes
The tools have gotten faster, and that's good. I can try an idea in minutes that used to take me a day. I can sketch ten directions before the coffee goes cold. AI is a tireless sparring partner that never gets tired and never sulks.
But it always produces the average of everything it has seen. And the average is exactly what a stand-out website must never be. When everyone uses the same tool, the template becomes the new mediocrity.
AI makes the good easier to reach — and the singular rarer and more valuable because of it.
Why taste gets more expensive
This is where the good news lives for anyone who designs. When the mediocre is free and instant, the value rises for what a machine doesn't have: a point of view, a story, intent. The decision to break a rule because it feels wrong. Knowing why this blue and no other. The instinct for the moment when less is more.
Taste isn't a quantity of data. It's the sum of everything you've seen, felt, and rejected. An AI can make me a suggestion, but it cannot want. It has no thing it's trying to say. And a website with nothing to say is just decoration.
That's why I don't believe AI replaces creatives. It replaces the interchangeable. It forces us to be clearer — more personal, braver, more ourselves. To me that isn't a threat, it's an invitation. The machine can make the first draft. The last stroke, the nerve to be peculiar, the quiet "this way and no other" — that I keep.