Is there life after AI?

Fast Company

12-05-2025

In the two years since the release of ChatGPT, we have seen generative AI become ubiquitous. What was a curiosity has gone mainstream, and it keeps getting better. Any remaining doubt about the ability of AI to generate astonishingly good text and images—not to mention code, strategy, and research, among other things—is being put to rest by the latest generations of AI models.
My question is: What's next? What comes after AI?
I ask this only partly in jest. I recognize that generative AI is still in its infancy. I believe that AI will continue to develop and mature until it can create all kinds of communications in a way that is indistinguishable from the output of human beings in quality and—gulp—creativity. Anyone with access to AI will be able to create text, images, video, and sound that is nearly perfect.
We're not far away now. For example, I am not an artist or a designer, nor am I an AI expert, but I can type a few ideas into an AI model and receive back an outstanding, complete, attractive, proofread, and insightful product—what we used to call 'camera-ready.' I can do this in a few seconds. So can you, and so can everybody else.
But here's the thing.
Humans don't always want faster and better. We don't tend to like perfection. Speed and quality are important, but also…boring. When technology raises the bar, we rapidly become accustomed to the new standard and forget how things used to be.
Take automobiles. Today's cars are outstanding; they are more reliable, energy efficient, and sleekly designed than ever. Every three years, I lease a new vehicle, each one a masterpiece of engineering. But what I remember is the (literal) bomb of a car I drove while I was in college.
Said another way, when everything is excellent, nothing is extraordinary. AI will soon surround us with amazing quantities of absolutely perfect text, images, video, and sound. When that happens, it is inevitable that we will stop valuing perfection in the communications products that make use of them.
That is not to say that AI won't be useful. It will be very useful. It will make people's lives better. It just won't be different.
As soon as AI-generated products rise to a level of uniform excellence, none of them will stand out. This lack of difference will represent a particular difficulty for businesses looking to set themselves apart from their competition and the advertising agencies and media that help them do it. Imagine a world deluged with fast, cheap, and perfect communication. Everywhere we look, there are ads that couldn't be any better. From morning until night, we're at the receiving end of truly outstanding messages. Excellence and effectiveness would diverge. The better and more omnipresent the advertising, the less powerful it becomes.
This scenario logically gives rise to my question: What's next after AI? I see three possibilities.
One is that creative communication, including all advertising and marketing, becomes obsolete. As supply rises toward infinity, value sinks to zero. Humans lose interest and find other sources of novelty and stimulation. Perhaps only direct experience counts.
A second possibility is that excellence and perfection become something to avoid. Perhaps people begin to flock to communication and marketing that is artfully bad or delightfully wrong. Think of it as a punk ethic for all of humanity, in much the same way as punk bands were made up of people who never learned to play their instruments.
A more hopeful future is one in which humans become much more skillful at using AI for creative purposes. The Hemingways and Monets of the future are the masters of some über form of prompting, and AI is asked to perform quirky, illogical, or just plain strange things. Differentiation comes from how distinctive or downright weird human-generated instructions become.
All bets are off, of course, if AGI arrives and kills or enslaves us all. Perhaps humanity will wind up in a state of somnolent satisfaction with AI-generated perfect communication. But I don't think so.
What all these musings mean for forward-looking businesses is less than clear. The implications are profound, but the signposts are not yet in place. Whatever path the future takes, I believe business owners and entrepreneurs would be wise to:
Learn all you can about AI, and how it changes the way you market and communicate. There will never be a post-AI world—just one that continues to change with AI in the mix.
Put new emphasis upon the unusual and visceral in your marketing. It's more important than ever to be courageous—even outrageous—to stand out.
Take care of your humans. Whatever comes after AI will probably not be based on technology. It will be based on humanity and the glorious weirdness and unpredictability that humans bring to whatever they do.
Meanwhile, I'll be thinking about the really interesting question, which is, 'What comes after what comes after AI?'