Have you recently been asked by your friends or clients if your job has probably gotten much easier now that AI is here? While we acknowledge that the answer is probably yes for a lot of the jobs out there, for the creative ones it isn’t as straightforward.
Let us introduce some stats.
Engagement on LinkedIn has decreased by nearly 50%, and reach has dropped by 30-60%. More than half the content on the platform is now likely completely AI-generated, and LinkedIn can reportedly detect it with around 94% accuracy.
There is also valuable insight coming from inside the big platforms that they are actively building algorithms to not favour the reach and engagement for AI-generated content. While platforms like Spotify are more vocal about it, in our domain, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook (for old people) are less vocal. Guess they are trying to find a balance between organic and plastic content.
We don’t think this is something entirely new. The Internet Boom came before this, followed by smartphones and social media giving everyone their voice and platform to be heard. But nothing as big as AI has ever happened where it has come to a point that the noise is indistinguishable from worthwhile stories.
Let us be honest here, for the average Joe, AI has been a lifesaver. Outside our offices, AI has enabled each one of us to create songs, generate images or even remove a photobomber from our beloved memories. These were skills that required years of training and expert tools which are now enabled by a simple prompt on your phone.
But for us marketing people, this paints a very different picture. This technology hasn’t necessarily made every aspect of our jobs easier, but it has made it more accessible, and those two words don’t dance to the same song.
The reality is that when access becomes universal, it loses its novelty and what made it special in the first place loses its value. The question is not just about whether AI made this easier or accessible; it’s about whether it has increased the importance of creating things that are valuable to a brand. AI has not replaced what’s at the core of this creative process: taste, judgement and the instinct to know when something actually lands. And when everyone is creating everything everywhere all at once, the importance, we bet, has gone up more than ever before.
What it does is that it enables everyone and creates a trend. So, everyone has to lean in. Brands had the pressure to churn out content much faster than ever before, which in most cases meant skipping the investment of time to think and create. But posting more just made the feed saturate really fast.
Independent analysis of thousands of LinkedIn posts found that content flagged as AI-generated received, on average, 45% less engagement than human-written posts.
While the volume went up drastically, the impact it was supposed to create did not follow. The process which used to require a copywriter to spend their entire morning, a strategist to explore multiple approaches, is now handed over to a prompt with no second thought. To be clear, handing the task over to AI isn’t the problem here; it’s the lack of that second thought. Instead of building on top of what the machine gives you, most content ends at the prompt.
AI has become the finish line instead of a tool to trigger the creative process. When all of us start doing this, we start sounding very much alike. So reading one post essentially feels like you’ve read ten. Attention drops and brands have no other way than to resort to what they know: post more.
So the treadmill begins.
When basic supply and demand economics play out in our feeds, this becomes more than just a social media observation. It begs the question “Is what we post worth remembering?” instead of “How often are we posting?”
To cut through this, brands need to shift the strategy from posting more to posting with intent. The intent to actually say something, to put something real out there in the world. Use every tool available, definitely use AI, but only to make things work better, not to merely achieve your social media posting goals. Never let any tool replace the thinking behind it.
AI kind of does the same thing that money does – it amplifies what you already are. In a creative context, it helps amplify the creativity of whoever already has one. The brands and creators who are winning right now are the ones who know what they want to say and are using AI to say it better, faster and on a greater scale than was ever possible before.
Watershed moments like this have always worked in a certain way. Every major shift in tools getting more accessible has always benefited the one with something genuine to express who lacked the access or resources to do it at the level it deserved. AI gives them the runway to launch their creative vision, while for most others it’s just sped up the noise.
Content can now be produced by anyone. That means production is no longer the advantage it once was. Additionally, the quality of AI-generated content is improving day by day, which closes the gap further. The only advantage here right now is knowing what to produce and why.
This requires expertise that’s not yet replaced by technology. Now, whether super intelligence might one day replace that too is a debate for another day, but for the foreseeable future, unless you have the expertise to share a point of view and know the difference between content that fills feeds v/s content that actually moves people, leave it to the experts. Because in a world where anyone can create, the only thing that will resonate with your audience is knowing what’s worth creating in the first place.
“Streak helped us listen to the market and respond with positioning that hit the mark. Buland became a hit from day one.”
Your work must be a lot easier now.” A sarcastic grin or a censored explanation?