When Everyone Becomes Brilliant, Nobody Stands Out.

A few years ago, I painted these two rabbits. Last week, I shared a photograph with some friends. It showed the two actual rabbits sitting right in front of the painting, in almost exactly the same pose.

It was a rather fortuitous coincidence. Something an artist would probably hope for but could never plan.

Interestingly, the immediate response from some friends was: “This is AI generated!”

I found that amusing, but it also got me thinking.

Have we reached a point where reality itself looks artificial? Where something genuinely unusual is more likely to be dismissed as AI-generated than appreciated for the coincidence it is?

Perhaps this is one of the more interesting consequences of our AI moment. We are becoming so accustomed to seeing things that can be generated that we might slowly lose our ability to appreciate things that are genuinely unexpected.

And this extends beyond images. AI can produce remarkably convincing designs, videos, writing and ideas. But when the same tools, patterns and prompts begin shaping everyone’s output, are we also creating a world where everything looks a little too familiar?

The unusual gets replaced by the acceptable. The imperfect gets polished. The individual voice gets lost in the pursuit of a universally appealing output.

My personal peeve is the growing tendency to confuse generating something with creating something. A technically brilliant design or video isn’t necessarily a creative one. There is a difference between producing an impressive output and bringing an original thought, intent and point of view to it.

AI is an extraordinary tool. It should expand our imagination, not become a substitute for it. It should help us see possibilities we hadn’t considered, not make us settle for the first convincing answer.

I am certainly not arguing against AI. I am just wondering whether, in making everything easier to generate, we risk making originality harder to recognize.

When everyone becomes brilliant, nobody stands out.

And wouldn’t it be a shame if, in a world increasingly capable of generating anything, we lost the ability to recognize something genuinely original?