The Curator of Good: Why Taste Trumps Technology

Let’s be pedantic for a moment: “Artificial Intelligence” doesn’t actually exist yet. Not really.

What we have right now are Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative image processors. These are incredibly clever pattern-matching engines that have read the entire internet and are exceptionally good at guessing which word—or pixel—comes next. They are synthesisers, not thinkers.

There is a lot of hand-wringing at the moment about these machines coming for our creative jobs. But if you zoom out and look at the timeline of human creativity, this panic feels somewhat familiar.

The Timeline of “Cheating”

History is littered with technological leaps that purists insisted would be the death of “real” craft.

• The Printing Press: It took writing out of the hands of the monks and gave it to the masses.
• Photography: Painters panicked because a machine could capture reality instantly.
• Desktop Publishing: Suddenly, you didn’t need a typesetter; you just needed a Mac and a copy of QuarkXPress. (This is where I came in)

The Internet: Information became free, and the gatekeepers lost their keys.

Now, we have LLMs. It is simply the latest version of technology pushing things forward. The common thread through all of this isn’t the destruction of creativity; it’s the democratisation of production.

The Canva Conundrum

I have no problem with tools that lower the barrier to entry.

If you use Canva to get a social media post out quickly, good for you. If you use ChatGPT to brainstorm headline ideas because your brain is stuck in a fog, that’s just smart working. These tools are the modern equivalent of the spellchecker or the calculator. They remove the friction from the “doing.”

However, access to the tools does not equal mastery of the craft.

In the 90s, when WordArt and Comic Sans arrived, we saw what happened when everyone suddenly had design tools but no design training. We got a lot of noise. We are seeing the same thing now: a flood of mediocre content that looks okay at a glance but feels hollow upon inspection.

The Rise of the Curator

This is where the creative professional—and specifically the brand strategist—becomes more valuable, not less.

In a world where generating content is free and instant, the value shifts entirely to curation.

The machine can give you fifty variations of a logo or write ten blog posts in a minute. But the machine doesn’t know which one is “Good.” It doesn’t understand cultural context, emotional nuance, or the specific, messy reality of being human. It works on averages, and brands are built on standing out, not blending in.

The creative mind knows what “Good”—if not “Great”—looks like.

• It’s the designer who sees that the spacing is technically correct but feels wrong.
• It’s the writer who knows that a grammatically perfect sentence lacks rhythm and punch.
• It’s the strategist who recognises that an idea is clever, but off-brand.

Signal in the Noise

We are moving into an era of infinite noise. The volume of content is about to explode because the cost of creating it has hit zero.

In that environment, humanity is the premium.

Authenticity becomes the only metric that matters. The role of the creative is no longer just to be the “maker” (though that joy remains); it is to be the filter. We are the ones who cut through the distraction with a powerful, clear signal.

So, don’t worry about the machines. Use them if they help. Ignore them if they don’t. But remember that your value isn’t in your ability to use the software; it’s in your ability to know what is worth putting out into the world.

You are the curator of Good.