Correct me if I’m wrong, but everything is flat

A retoucher’s take on generative AI, boredom, and why human creativity is valuable again

But everything is flat.

Yes, I know, it’s the classic boomer line — just follow me for one second.

In the span of a few months we went from a collective scream across the creative community — “we’re all going to die” — to visible boredom watching AI content that’s all the same, all “pretty,” and all, outside of the satirical stuff, perfectly, utterly boring.

Boring to the point that human creativity with a capital H has come back as the real plus to look for.

Whatever field you work in, the complete lack of soul and human connection between artificially generated content and the person consuming it is so obvious it becomes cloying — and the sales data backs up my gut. Look at the last ten fashion campaigns you scrolled past on Instagram: how many do you remember? Zero. And yet they were all “pretty.”

Then something extraordinary happened

My fear was that the younger generations would get used to AI content too quickly, that they’d accept it as part of their daily experience, and that we seasoned professionals wouldn’t be needed anymore to create it.

But then something extraordinary happened. Talking to my kids, a flicker of hope lit up. They don’t like AI. The human brain runs too fast for a machine and picks up inconsistencies — or just “something off” — at a rhythm no machine will ever match.

A human being looks for connection with another human being at an unconscious level. Nobody knows exactly what it is, but it isn’t codable, it isn’t replicable. After all, for a painting to be judged “beautiful” it doesn’t need to be perfectly faithful to reality or technically flawless: it needs something more — something that touches the soul and vibrates with it. I dare a machine to do the same.

“Is this real?” — the question that destroys everything

That feeling that washes over you while you’re looking at a video or a photo — “is this real?” — destroys the very meaning of creating something. This doubt that grips you every time you see anything now translates into one single thing: loss of trust from the consumer, who, if not told otherwise, will assume you’re pulling their leg… and therefore won’t buy your product.

After all, what woman or man would want to raise the bar from “retouched model” to “completely invented person”?

So AI doesn’t work at certain levels. And not because it isn’t perfect enough: because it already is.

The great plain of mediocrity

So, what are we waiting for to go back to making real ART — not democratically smeared across an audience so wide it becomes useless? What are we waiting for to risk content that isn’t flattened to the trend of the day, to stop trying to please everyone?

Pleasing everyone is like pleasing no one. And that’s exactly what AI does: it swallows, chews, and spits out the average of what people like most, trying to please everyone and building a great plain of mediocrity.

It would be like ordering stracciatella gelato and then throwing it in a blender. Still good, but soulless.

PS. This post was written by a human.