Italian fashion designer Valentino passed away recently. Whilst reading about his legacy, I discovered that he never claimed to be the most innovative or most technically radical. He was explicit about that. What he defended, consistently, was judgment. Taste.

His creative authority did not come from producing more, faster, or louder. It came from choosing well. From restraint. From refusal. His authority did not come from execution itself, execution simply revealed the quality of his judgment. The craft mattered, yes, but it functioned in service of discernment.This distinction stayed with me while thinking about the current discourse around AI-generated content.

Scrolling LinkedIn, I’ve noticed the criticism surrounding AI generated content follows a familiar register: everything looks the same, optimising content for quick engagement rather than value, emotional depth has thinned out. All of this may well be true. But the emphasis consistently lands downstream—on outputs, surfaces, volume—rather than on the upstream conditions that produce them. What goes largely unexamined is how platforms train judgment itself. When engagement becomes the primary feedback mechanism, creators adapt not just their content but their internal standards. Over time, judgment is shaped to meet the system’s incentives.

Previously, creative identity was tightly anchored in execution, not just the act of making, but the friction it required. Time, resistance, and effort imposed commitment. When production was slow, deciding and doing were inseparable. You could not proceed casually. That condition no longer holds. You can now let production run.

Seen this way, much anxiety about AI feels misdirected. The fear is framed as a loss of craft or even a loss of creativity itself. But Valentino’s career illustrates something more uncomfortable: execution was never the scarce resource. It insulated judgment. What AI removes is not creativity, but that insulation. Judgment is exposed without the cover of effort, and that exposure unsettles many commentators on here.

This is not an argument that creativity is disappearing. It is an argument about where creative authority now resides. When making ‘stuff’ is no longer scarce, authority shifts toward selection, refusal, framing, and coherence over time. That does not diminish creativity; it clarifies it. And that clarification is far more interesting, and more demanding than counting the volume of mediocre output now visible