Turns out the real threat to creativity is mailing it in.
By Adan Romero
There’s a lot of noise right now about AI replacing creatives. Most of it is coming from people who never understood what makes this job hard, or what makes it worth doing. The truth is, creativity was already under pressure long before the machines showed up.
AI didn’t kill creativity. Complacency did.
We’ve known this was coming. Not the tech. The shift. The one where surface-level work no longer passes. Where execution without craft gets exposed.
The problem isn’t AI. It’s how many creatives stopped respecting the process. Reused decks. Recycled ideas. Round after round of “safe” work.
Now AI makes that harder to hide.
When anyone can generate something polished, craft is the only thing that separates the real from the artificial. You still need to know how to think. How to shape. How to connect.
But something else is happening too. Now everyone thinks they’re a creative.
They prompt a few lines of copy or feed an image generator and feel like they’re doing the work. But they’ve never rewritten a line twenty times. They’ve never had a room fall silent after a missed idea. They’ve never fought for a breakthrough or learned how to kill their favorite concept when it wasn’t working.
Prompts aren’t vision. They’re instructions. And without craft, they fall flat.
I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when Photoshop felt like a threat. Designers called it a shortcut. Said it would kill the craft. Same with After Effects. Same with Final Draft.
Those tools didn’t destroy anything. They raised the bar. They forced us to evolve. And the best creatives didn’t panic. They got sharper.
AI is no different.
It moves fast. It delivers polish. But it can’t direct emotion. It can’t take a flat idea and make it land. That still takes craft.
A few months ago, I was working on a campaign in year three. It had gone stale. Too familiar. Too expected. We needed a reset. I talked about my relationship with the bodega owner in my neighborhood. We don’t know each other’s names, but over years of nods and late-night runs, something unspoken had formed.
That sparked something in the room. Everyone started reflecting on those unexpected relationships that live in our day-to-day. That shifted the tone entirely. It brought something honest back to the work.
AI will never do that.
Because craft isn’t automation. It’s instinct. Taste. Judgment. It’s knowing when something is off, and how to fix it.
That still matters. Maybe more than ever.
AI didn’t replace the creative industry. It challenged it.
If you’ve been showing up with intention, you’ll be fine. But if you’ve been leaning on polish instead of perspective, this moment will call you out.
Respect the tools. But respect the craft more.
Yeah, AI helped with the draft. But I’m the one who stayed up too late obsessing over commas.