The conversation about generative AI is stuck on execution.

Our collective obsession with execution applies to design, VFX, or any field that relies on digital tools. And correctly so, as that is where AI shines.

But there's one thing it can't do: taste. That sense of curation, that developed eye. AI can provide a convincing illusion of it, but it can't actually have it. At least not yet.

The vast majority of all design output in the world—yes, the human stuff—is mediocre at best. It’s uninspired, derivative, visual noise. This isn't just a design problem; it's a human one. Serviceable mediocrity has always been the norm because it’s safe, and most designers and businesses are too afraid to go for the design that actually stands out.

Now, enter AI.

What do you think an AI, trained on an internet composed of 99% uninspired crap, is going to produce? It's not a sentient creative director. It's an industrial-grade photocopier for mediocrity; a high-speed clerk that never sleeps. It has seen everything, but understands nothing. These new tools are democratizing craft, which is a polite way of saying they make it easy for anyone to produce anything without having to learn the actual skill. When you give anyone, especially someone with no developed eye for it, the ability to produce endless content, you don't get a creative renaissance. You get a revolution in the volume of bad design.

The Age of AI Slop has proven that the tool was never the talent.

The value of a good designer is, and has always been, taste. Taste is the great intangible. It’s the curation, the restraint, the cultural context. It’s the "no" to ninety-nine bad ideas and the "yes" to the one that’s brilliant. It's the vision to see what's missing and the courage to fight for it.

And here’s the crucial part: taste isn't a gift you're born with. It’s an active practice of training your eye. You build it by consuming content—good and bad—from film and architecture to art and the mundane. You build it by actively noticing why certain things work and why most things are just forgettable noise. It’s the one uniquely human act AI, in its endless loop of statistical averaging, cannot and will not replicate.

So yes, AI is reconfiguring the field. It's putting immense pressure on the "tool operator" tier and the entire market for serviceable mediocrity. That section of the design field shrinks, as designers who compete on technical skill alone find their work is now competing with a machine that is faster, cheaper, and already mostly competent.

But for the good designers? The ones who have spent their careers honing their taste? The field just became a far more interesting, challenging, yet frustrating place to work, and that’s precisely why they’re more valuable than ever. As the world drowns in a sea of predictable slop, the value of good design, meaning anything authentic, original, and human, will skyrocket. The ability to be the signal in the noise is becoming exponentially more valuable.

For clients, brands, and businesses, the promise of a $100 logo or an entire brand identity “designed” by an algorithm in an afternoon is understandable. It’s cheap, fast — and the output looks competent. The trap, however, is that competent becomes invisible. When your brand's visual identity is scraped from the statistical average, you don't get a brand. You get camouflage. You get a logo that looks like your competitor's logo's cousin; a product that is perfectly usable. And utterly forgettable.

The goal of good branding, product design, and all visual communication has always been to cut through the noise. AI has just turned that background noise from a loud room into a supersonic jet engine, amplifying the sameness exponentially. The only way to win is to be that clear signal that breaks through.

And that signal doesn't come from a prompt. It comes from taste.

Look, I'm a craft person to my core. I'm actually excited about these new tools. My career is built on being competent across all sorts of disciplines, from graphic design to motion and 3D. Learning new software is the fun part. But that's never been the real value. Developing and honing my taste is what makes me valuable, to my clients and to the agencies I've worked in. My craft is just the delivery mechanism.

That's why AI is just another tool in the box, like Figma or a pencil. In the hands of a designer with taste it will simply free you up to focus on what actually matters: the idea.

So, don’t worry about the machine, worry about your taste. It’s the only thing you're really getting paid for.