A speculative bubble can form around a technology that remains genuinely important. The internet did not disappear when dot-com valuations collapsed. What disappeared were many of the fantasies about who would win, how quickly and at what price.

AI may be approaching its own version of that distinction.

And perhaps the same correction is already happening in creative work.

For a while, generation itself was astonishing.

Look. It made an image.

Look. It wrote an article.

Look. It created a song, presentation, website, storyboard, video.

Now?

Of course it did.

So can everybody else's.

That is where things become more interesting.

If making becomes easier, deciding becomes more valuable.

Which of the fifty headlines is actually worth publishing?

Which beautiful image looks impressive until you notice that it says absolutely nothing?

Which strategy understands the audience rather than merely containing the word “audience” seventeen times?

Which idea is culturally alive?

Which one sounds like every other brand that typed the same prompt?

Which piece of work should simply be killed?

AI has made production abundant.

It has not made taste abundant.

If anything, it has exposed how much of creative work was never about producing the first available answer.

The valuable part is often recognising that the first answer is not good enough.

I see this constantly in AI-generated work. Technically competent writing with no point of view. Perfectly lit people who appear to have never inhabited Earth. Brand strategies assembled from words nobody could reasonably disagree with. Content so frictionless that there is nothing for a human being to hold onto.

The machines are improving rapidly.

So is the volume of mediocrity they can produce.

That does not frighten me nearly as much as it interests me.

Because perhaps the valuable human skills in an AI-heavy world are not the mystical ones we sometimes reach for when defending ourselves from machines.

Maybe they are considerably more ordinary.