AI Was Supposed to Replace Us. Could Originality Be the One Thing It Can’t Compete With?

A polished advert used to need a creative team, a decent budget and a few weeks of people arguing over fonts. Now, AI can help produce one in a fraction of the time. That’s impressive, until you notice how easily everything starts looking the same.

Imagine scrolling through adverts that are all technically good, professionally presented and completely interchangeable. Nothing obviously wrong with any of them, but nothing that makes you stop scrolling either.

Hope Horner, founder and CEO of Lemonlight, argues that “AI is making mediocrity worthless, not creativity obsolete.” Creative execution used to command a premium because it required specialised talent, resources and time. AI is making that execution cheaper, but producing something well and having something worth saying are two very different things.

Fifty Beautiful Videos For A Problem Nobody Had

The obvious response to cheaper production is to make more – more adverts, more social posts, more videos, more variations to test. Surely something will work eventually.

Except that producing fifty versions of the wrong idea doesn’t make it the right one. Hope warns that AI makes it easier than ever to execute a terrible idea brilliantly. A company can ask for 50 videos to improve engagement and have AI produce them quickly and cheaply. But, as she asks, “what if content was never the problem?”

Marc Fernandez, Chief Strategy Officer at Neurologyca, sees the same trap. If businesses simply raise their output targets, he argues, they could end up with “a hundred versions of an ad and still miss that the customer wanted reassurance.”

A business can look incredibly productive while misunderstanding its audience completely. If AI makes producing another campaign almost effortless, there’s less incentive to stop and ask whether another campaign is needed at all. The technology can make the work faster; it can’t make the original assumption sensible.

A Prototype Is Not a Personality

The problem extends beyond marketing; if every competitor can use AI to build a convincing prototype in an afternoon, having a prototype is no longer much of a distinction. Dmitry Sergeev, CEO of devlab.group, argues that “the prototype alone gives none of them much of an advantage.”

His example is a shopping assistant. As Dmitry explains, “Someone might happily delegate reordering coffee but want to choose a birthday gift themselves.” So, it’s not really how much the technology can do, but more about where people want it to stop.

Originality isn’t necessarily about coming up with the coolest idea in the room; sometimes it means noticing a need that everyone else has overlooked or realising that a seemingly obvious improvement would make the experience worse. Liam Lafferty founder of Zentive describes the advantage as knowing “which problem matters, what feels true to a specific customer and what not to make.”

When generating ideas becomes easier, knowing which ones deserve attention becomes more way more valuable.

The Idea Still Needs Someone to Have It

AI can also make original thinking more practical by removing some of the barriers between having an idea and building it.

Gabe Anderson, owner and head of product at All Healthcare Careers, has used AI to build a sales chatbot, a jobs site for students who pass their exams and working demos of a quiz platform for potential workforce partners. He has developed these without waiting on developers or designers, a process he says could have taken months or years of planning and coordination in his previous big tech roles.

Someone with a clear idea can now do more to bring it to life without needing the same resources or permission from a large team.

But Gabe draws a line between building a product and deciding what that product should be: “AI can’t tell you what to build or what the human experience should be.” The tools can help turn a vision into something functional. They don’t remove the need for someone to have a vision in the first place.

Letting AI Do The Thinking Gets You Everyone Else’s Answer

AI can just as easily tempt people to skip the thinking altogether. Ask for a campaign, accept the output and move on, and there is little reason to expect the result to be distinctive. As Gabe puts it, “They’ll get the same generic output as everyone else, which is easy to spot.”

Liam uses AI at Zentive for research, synthesis and repetitive production, while keeping human responsibility for positioning, taste and the final decision. He also recommends giving teams direct exposure to customers, testing competing hypotheses and asking people to explain why an idea is distinctive, not merely fast.

Originality isn’t something a company can summon by asking an AI tool to be more original. It depends on what the people using it know, notice, question and choose to do with the answer.

Cheap Execution Makes Good Judgement Expensive

Marc Fernandez argues that businesses need to protect the time AI saves for experimentation and listening to customers, rather than simply demanding more output. Otherwise, the pressure to produce more can crowd out the thinking that makes work distinctive.

The prospect of endless content, campaigns and products is less exciting when so much of it looks interchangeable. Businesses have spent years trying to stand out, and access to the same AI tools will not suddenly make that easier. If anything, it raises the stakes.

Producing something competent may become routine, but understanding people well enough to create something they actually care about is a different challenge. The companies that hold people’s attention will need more than the ability to make things quickly; they’ll need a reason for people to care about what they make.

Our Experts:

• Liam Lafferty: Founder, Zentive
• Marc Fernandez: Chief Strategy Officer, Neurologyca
• Gabe Anderson: Owner & Head of Product, All Healthcare Careers
• Hope Horner: Founder and CEO, Lemonlight
• Dmitry Sergeev: CEO, devlab.group
• Ashley Miles: Care Management Support Assistant, Marketing & Communications Strategist

Liam Lafferty, Founder, Zentive Home Service Software

“AI is making competent execution cheaper, which raises the value of judgment. When everyone can generate ten plausible ideas in seconds, the advantage shifts to knowing which problem matters, what feels true to a specific customer, and what not to make.”

“I use AI agents in Zentive’s marketing, and I see the best results when AI handles research, synthesis, and repetitive production while a human owns positioning, taste, and the final call. Businesses should not treat creativity as a magic brainstorming session. They can build it into the work: give teams direct customer exposure, ask for competing hypotheses before choosing a direction, and make people explain why an idea is distinctive – not merely fast.”

“In my view, AI will commoditise average output, not human creativity. Original thinking becomes more valuable because it supplies the context, contrarian judgment, and emotional relevance the model cannot decide for a business.”

Marc Fernandez, Chief Strategy Officer at Neurologyca

“Short answer, yes, but only if companies protect it. When everyone’s running the same models, it’s easy for everything to start looking the same. What sets you apart is what you bring to them: how well you know your customers, which questions you ask, and the weird ideas your own people come up with.”

“What worries me is what happens to the time AI saves. If companies just raise the output target, you end up with a hundred versions of an ad and still miss that the customer wanted reassurance.”

“My advice to business leaders is to take some of that saved time and spend it on experiments and on really listening to customers. Otherwise creativity becomes whatever’s left over, and there’s never much left over.”

Gabe Anderson, Owner & Head of Product of All Healthcare Careers

“AI can’t tell you what to build or what the human experience should be. That’s the core of product management, and it’s turned out to be the most useful skill I brought into running my own business.”

“Since buying my company in 2025, I’ve built most of what I envision for the business and customer experience with AI, without waiting on a team of developers or designers. This year I’ve built an AI sales chatbot for my website, a jobs site for students who pass their exams, and fully functional demos of a next-generation quiz platform for potential workforce partners.”

“The risk is for people who let AI do the thinking. They’ll get the same generic output as everyone else, which is easy to spot. The people who have the idea and put AI to work bringing it to life will pull ahead in their careers.”

“When I worked for big tech companies, new ideas often required months or years of roadmap planning, alignment across teams, and 100% dependency on one or more global engineering and design teams.”

“As a founder I wear all the hats, including marketing, sales, customer support, product management and data analysis, and I use AI heavily in all of them. But I’m always directing it, making the key decisions, and building in human checkpoints where experience and judgment matter. In our content workflows, my nurse educator with 30 years of experience reviews everything for clinical accuracy before we publish.”

Hope Horner, Founder and CEO of Lemonlight

“AI is making mediocrity worthless, not creativity obsolete. For decades, creative execution commanded a premium because it required specialised talent, resources, and time. AI is rapidly dismantling those barriers, but cheaper production doesn’t mean better ideas; it just means more average work, produced faster. The real value is shifting from polished execution to genuinely distinctive thinking. AI isn’t eliminating the value of creativity, but it is eliminating the premium we’ve historically placed on simply being able to execute it.”

“AI will make it easier than ever to execute a terrible idea brilliantly. For decades, we’ve rewarded creative teams for how well they deliver on the brief, not whether the brief was worth executing in the first place.”

“AI takes that problem to an entirely new level. A company can ask for 50 videos to improve engagement and AI can now execute 50 beautiful videos faster and cheaper than ever. But what if content was never the problem? AI can make organisations extraordinarily efficient at doing the wrong thing. As answers become abundant, the real competitive advantage won’t be producing better answers. It will be having the judgment, curiosity, and courage to challenge the question itself.”

Dmitry Sergeev, CEO of devlab.group

“I think human creativity becomes more valuable when it changes what a business decides to build. If five competitors can generate a convincing prototype in an afternoon, the prototype alone gives none of them much of an advantage.”

“In agent commerce, for example, it is tempting to give a shopping assistant more freedom to buy. A more interesting design question is where the customer wants it to stop. Someone might happily delegate reordering coffee but want to choose a birthday gift themselves. Recognising that difference can lead to a better product than adding another layer of automation.”

“AI can help explore both options. The founder still has to choose which assumption to test with customers and take responsibility if it is wrong. I would put more value on people who notice an overlooked need and are willing to test an unusual solution. Producing more ideas is useful, but it does not tell you which ones deserve a business.”

Ashley Miles, Care Management Support Assistant, Marketing & Communications Strategist

“As AI becomes increasingly accessible, the competitive advantage will no longer come from simply having the technology. It will come from how creatively people use it. AI can accelerate execution, automate processes, and generate ideas, but it cannot fully replicate the human ability to draw from lived experiences, understand emotional nuance, challenge assumptions, or identify opportunities that have never existed before.”

“The organisations that thrive in the AI era will be those that view AI as a catalyst for human creativity rather than a replacement for it. While AI can help businesses move faster, creativity determines where they’re going. The most successful leaders will be the ones who combine data-driven insights with human imagination to create compelling brands, innovative solutions, and authentic customer experiences.”

“In many ways, AI is making creativity more valuable. As content, information, and automation become increasingly abundant, originality, strategic thinking, and human perspective become the true differentiators. The future belongs not to the companies that simply adopt AI, but to those that use it to amplify uniquely human capabilities”