Your Biggest Advantage Over AI Is Being You

With the rise of AI and increasingly powerful technology shaping the workforce, it's no secret that people are losing jobs because of it. AI has quickly rendered some work obsolete, as it can supposedly do the same work as a human more efficiently, precisely, and consistently. Not to mention the money saved by not having to hire an actual employee. But when we look closer, the truth is that AI lacks the creative originality we humans have, no matter how seamless its coding is (sorry, computer science majors, you may be cooked).

That said, we can't deny that companies still act as if their AI alternatives are successfully fulfilling creative and artistic roles in the industry. The key words are "acting as if." In simpler terms, AI acts like it can create advertisements, come up with creative, unique ideas, make artwork, and write TV scripts, but it really can't. What it can do is pull information from every corner of the internet and splice it together to assemble something that resembles creative work. But as consumers, we often catch AI in the act. AI-generated TV shorts use the same story arc every time, art copies other art and falls flat, and advertisements made with AI are quickly labelled "AI slop" by consumers. This is what gives me hope. We, as humans with minds and souls, call BS almost every single time.

Now, the part that stings is that this revelation doesn't change the course that AI is taking or fix the damage being done. Companies still choose to replace valuable creative minds with machines, regardless of whether it's the right decision. As of October 2026, over 180,000 layoffs have occurred across industries related to AI. As a result, workers in media sectors have been among the most impacted, as clients and employers embrace AI. Worst of all, many of the tech companies selling LLMs have trained their AI models on countless illustrations and artworks without artists' permission. What makes this especially tricky is that clients often want passable quality rather than above-and-beyond creative work. This increasingly harms artists, as clients no longer need perfection.

But here's where you can find comfort, my friend. No matter how much AI we continue to see rise in the workplace, it will never become real. It will always be a machine, requiring power to run and seeking external input for its answers and media. As creatives in media and art, we can go above and beyond in our creativity, drawing solely on our own imaginations. We will continue to create original, cutting-edge content in film, fine arts, and many other fields. AI will continue to lag behind our inventions–taking inspiration from us to make itself useful. That is the key distinction. We, as people, are the useful ones with the ideas; AI is the machine taking inspiration from us to create unoriginal works.

To better illustrate the differences we see in the quality of work produced by humans vs. AI, let's play a fun game of spot the difference. Below, I've compiled two images of artworks. Can you tell which is which?

So my fellow artists, rest assured that your talents and unique qualities will not become obsolete. No matter how many combinations of numerical data and pixels AI can muster, it will never have our emotions, cultural experiences, or personal stories. These are things AI can and will never experience. So remember, your best asset against AI truly is being yourself!