Generative AI tools have made it cheap to produce the goods that were once gated by creative experts. From text and image content to entire websites and apps, the speed at which digital products can be stochastically churned out has prompted industries all over to ask the important existential question:

If AI can do it faster and cheaper, why take time to craft, research, or curate?

Of course, it’s easy to overlook the nuances, like: How much incoherence are we willing to tolerate? When does the inevitable, necessary human intervention end up costing us more? Do we understand the situation well enough to make better use of the time we save? And, isn’t this the same problem we had with cheap outsourcing in the 2010s?

In this new landscape of content abundance (some might even call it excess), we no longer have to wonder about what we can do. Instead, we must ask ourselves whether we should do, and how to go about doing in a way that upholds what we value.

The case for craftsmanship

Craftsmanship is made up of four key elements:

• Executional fluency

• Deliberate judgement

• Empathy for context

• Meaningful awareness of impact

Although generative tools fail to offer deliberate judgement (they work purely on statistical probability), empathy for context (information about the real world is ultimately deconstructed into numerical datasets), and meaningful awareness of impact (even if it ingests data describing that impact), it can deliver excellent executional fluency.

It’s the computerised equivalent of a designer making headline text bigger; a writer penning a grammatically correct sentence; or a potter squeezing a lump of clay. But these executional skills may still be performed unthinkingly, insensitively and ignorantly, resulting in output that’s just not fit for purpose.

Crafting digital goods (or any goods) for impact requires intention, thought and care – human elements that serve as the glue for a satisfying experience. Today’s AI models have clocked well over Malcolm Gladwell’s magical 10,000 hours, but they’re far from achieving the creative expertise we value and need, and finding that sweet spot of genuine human connection as a result.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” - Maya Angelou

How AI could support human creativity

Now that the genie’s out of the bottle, excluding AI from the creative process may be a bit naïve, especially since it’s near impossible to intentionally close yourself off from it. When searching the web for facts, browsing your feeds for inspo, or even talking to other humans about current events, it can be hard to tell how much of what you’re taking in has been influenced in some way by AI-generated content (unless it’s obviously slop, of course).

One thing AI is particularly good at is quickly summarising large swathes of information, whether that’s condensing a book into key points or plagiarising recognisable art styles. It may not always generate accurate summaries, but used in conjunction with human thoughtfulness and ingenuity, it can prove useful in early-stage work such as research, ideation, pattern spotting, and error checking.

That’s not to say AI should do the work for you – more that the output it generates can prompt you to imagine and seek understanding beyond your current limitations, using new vocabulary, concepts, and even interesting “hallucinations” that inspire second-order thinking.

Outsourcing creative care – is it worth it?

AI is effective for getting ideas underway quickly, iterating rough concepts, collating research notes, and generating thought-starters. But it’s often still quite painful for closing out work in a thoughtful way.

Anything that would previously have required human scrutiny should continue to require human scrutiny. There are some things, many things, AI simply cannot do to a passable standard. So the question we must ask upfront is whether it’s worth involving AI at all.

Are there areas where automation supports your creative outcomes? Overall, will it cost you less in time, money and headaches to invest effort in prompting and output review? AI may be worth using for work that doesn’t require high-level creative thinking.

For everything else, stick to valuing human creativity, as well as the humans who bring it.

There’s no accounting for taste

The dust is yet to settle on what long-term value AI actually delivers, but the rush of early adoption has forced creative industries to ask serious existential questions. What happens to creativity when everyone has the tools to generate content on demand? When the primary creative limitation shifts from discipline and talent to effective prompting, what then do we consider a work of craftsmanship?

Whatever you believe about the nature of human consciousness, meaningful works cannot be created by AI alone – at least not while generative models fail at genuine creativity and empathy.

In a sea of low-effort content, AI slop, and stuff that only works if you don’t look too hard, genuine value still very much relies on the work of humans who care.