What I'm reading about AI

I sit in a strange place. On the one hand, I'm a photographer and magazine editor – a lover of creativity, collaboration, slow craft, and the beautiful, quirky, idiosyncratic corners of the internet not designed for virality.

On the other, I am a self-professed tech nerd, deeply curious about innovation and technology. I have worked as a project manager at tech startups and on the marketing teams of big SAAS companies.

So you can imagine how much of a mixed bag my feeds currently are – on the one hand, former colleagues across the tech spectrum are enthusiastically sharing how AI tools are completely transforming their work; I'm seeing AI use mandated in tech teams, I'm seeing entire companies transformed in a matter of months.

On the other, visual creatives and writers are uneasy and saddened by how much of this data was gleaned, what generative AI means for their livelihoods, and how rampant AI use is making the web a less creative, less fun place in general.

I don't have any easy answers, but I thought I would share some recent reads and quotes that have resonated, that might help you explore this topic as well.

The dissonance is expanding

In the latest edition of Dense Discovery, a brilliant weekly newsletter written by Kai Brach, the former editor of an indie print magazine about technology, he writes about the uneasiness of trying to keep up with this new technology:

When I use AI tools, I’m aware that I’m participating in something I haven’t fully consented to – underwriting a set of values, a concentration of power, a particular vision of the future that I didn’t choose and wouldn’t vote for. It’s a reality constructed for us by platforms and capital. Engagement with it feels like complicity, but complete disengagement seems ever more futile. Stepping back and saying ‘I’ll watch from the sidelines’ or even downing the tools entirely (i.e. changing careers) is a privileged option only available to some.

This sums up how I'm feeling; I can see plainly that certain corners of my work are going to require some level of AI tool adoption – much like I imagine film photographers felt when digital photography rushed in. And yet more and more, I crave the human, the analog, the tactile.

What's left is taste

While it is clear that so much is going to dramatically change, and is changing already, what I'm reading at times offers a glimmer of hope for the future of print and photography, because the conversation consistently keeps coming back the importance of taste. Taste is the one thing that cannot be generated on demand.

I found this piece from Anne-Liese Prem at digital agency Loop on why the smartest brands are saying less now, very interesting and something I've definitely been noticing. In it, she writes:

"AI produces unlimited output at near-zero cost. Every brand can publish constantly, look considered, sound thoughtful, generate beautiful imagery on demand. Many brands respond in kind: explaining more, captioning more, narrate meaning instead of letting it land. But when everyone can produce everything, volume stops being a differentiator entirely. And with AI agents beginning to filter, compare, and purchase on behalf of consumers, the substitutable middle is under real pressure. An agent optimizes for price, speed, and ratings. It cannot optimize for how a brand makes you feel.

What's left is taste. The specific sensibility that can't be prompted into existence because it was built through years of actual choices."

What AI means for print media

I've been exploring how places like Reuters, AP, Hearst and Conde Nast are using it in their production workflows, but beyond that, how is it going to impact print magazines?

If taste is the one thing AI is lacking – and something the tech bros are worried about – this becomes even more of a differentiator for print magazines – taste is at the heart of every single magazine, and absolutely dictates whether or not you decide to pick it up.

In Vogue Business' The Anti-AI Slop Playbook, they wrote about the dangers of relying on AI, especially in the craft and luxury space:

This growing reliance on AI is beginning to challenge one of luxury’s most powerful narratives: the arbitration of taste. “AI makes content creation lazy, and, as the name suggests, artificial,” brand consultant Karmen Tsang says. “Luxury brands rely on craftsmanship, storytelling, and cultural leadership; they need to shape taste and define trends to create emotional aspiration.” Over-reliance on AI, she warns, risks producing work that is derivative rather than distinctive. “The content can become instantly forgettable, and adds little real value.”

Because of this, you've not doubt spotted that more and more social content that showcases just how human, crafted or handmade something is flooding into your feeds – an "explicit visual signaling of human authorship".

Understanding what doesn't exist yet

Back in the tech world, Intercom's VP Research & Data Science Karen Church, a woman in tech who I have long admired, has been writing a lot about how her world – running a research and data science organisation – is rapidly shifting and changing as AI gets more and more deeply integrated into her work. In this Linked In post, she writes about the key difference between execution – which AI has in spades – and judgement:

AI is excellent at synthesising what already exists: transcripts, survey data, usage patterns, call recordings. It's terrible at understanding what doesn't exist yet. What customers haven't articulated. What they'll need in six months. What they say they want versus what they actually do when you watch them work.

Trend forecaster Tiffany Hill put it well when she talked about creative research, which feels to me so similar to how a print magazine is brought to life:

Because research is never neutral. It reflects curiosity, taste, cultural awareness and the ability to connect distant ideas into new aesthetic propositions. Creative work therefore rarely begins with a blank page. It begins with a body of accumulated observations. In that sense, your research practice is not just a tool. It is the architecture of your creative voice.

In many ways, this is what I have always loved about print magazines, and, if anything, what seems even more important than ever to develop – my own taste, eye, understanding. My own ability to synthesise and connect dots.

The future of work

In that vein, this excellent Subtstack explores how many work lives will change once "the gap between imagination and execution" disappears, and how your "what" will become much more important than your "how":

Taste and touch—knowing what’s good, knowing what’s right, knowing what you want—evolve into essential, tactical skills that remain solely the privilege of the embodied once AI abstracts away everything else.

So yes, no easy answers, still lots of questions. What have you been reading? I'd love to know.