Authenticity Beats Automation

Want to keep your creative job in the age of AI? Focus on connection, not automation. 

In 2025, writing for a living is a tough gig. On one hand we have diminishing returns for our efforts, and on the other hand, clients with greater expectations than ever. We exist in a world that is thirsty for “content” yet also punishing when that content doesn’t meet expectations. 

And now, thanks to Big Tech’s drive to monetise its AI investments, we’re witnessing the birth of thousands of AI-powered creative services that have sprung up, offering to replace us. In short, our very raison d’être is under threat. 

Fortunately, AI still can’t quite nail that “thing” that makes us quintessentially human, and so, for the most part, the content it produces still sets off some basic, instinctive reaction in most readers that goes “I don’t know how I know, but this wasn’t created by a human.” In computer-generated art, it’s called ‘the uncanny valley.’ And, while it’s probably just a matter of time before AI learns how to solve that particular problem, it’s not quite there yet. 

We, the creatives, are handling this particular challenge with a combination of heavy (heavier?) drinking, (increased) recreational drug use, or (perhaps safer) a philosophical retreat into nervous optimism borne of memories of 80s and 90s sci-fi movies where the good guys always won out over the robots, despite the odds. 

But all is not lost.  

That aforementioned “thing” that makes us human remains our one secret weapon in this war against the machines – our ability to write in such a way that we connect with our readers on more than just a surface level. Somehow, the machines just don’t get that, despite them rummaging through exabytes of our art and absorbing it into their neural networks for years. 

And therein lies our salvation – our ability to connect. Our ability to see the humanity inside each other, to understand our fundamental, shared human-ness in a way that a machine never can. Content that comes from this place of shared understanding will always resonate with a human audience over content that’s fixed, stilted, and restricted by corporate language and structure that’s all too easy for a machine to mimic.  

This is why we are seeing (and will continue to see) a move in the creative industry to content that’s less, shall we say, “polished”, and thus more human. The trick to doing it properly is to balance professionalism with personality, and I am happy to report that many of us in the industry have the experience and wisdom needed to do that, both in a professional and a personal sense. Here at Flowmesh, that’s certainly what we attempt to do.  

We’re also seeing that AI is moving into the back rooms to some extent, and instead of being tapped to write words or make pictures (which many humans seem to instinctually despise), it’s being moved into a function that suits it best (certainly from a creative’s perspective): number crunching.  

AI tools exist today that can help agencies do the math-ing that us creatives aren’t all that good at – finding the best times to post, figuring out the ideal audience, automating personalisation (ironically enough), finding the most influential influencers to peddle our clients’ goods, and more – all based on real-world data that reliably produces the results that our clients are willing to pay for.  

Instead of AI taking our jobs, we’re starting to see the relationship between creatives and AI slowly evolving into one that’s more suited to each party’s strengths. And so long as our clients remain happy with the results we produce, this is hopefully the direction this whole “machines vs people” situation will continue to head in.  

Ultimately, the message here is that the sky(net) isn’t falling quite yet. It may still, and a day may come where the worst our creative brains can imagine actually comes to pass, but that day isn’t here yet.