The experiment is simple. Researchers at the University of California showed people the same works of art with two different senders – some were told that a human had created the work, others that it came from a machine. The works were identical. The assessments were not. The human-made works were experienced as more beautiful, deeper and more meaningful. A related study from Columbia Business School put a number on it: when a work was labelled as AI-created, its perceived value fell by 62 per cent.

The quality was the same. What disappeared was the idea of a sender – a human being who wanted something with the work. We do not only judge what we see. We judge the intention we imagine behind it.

You do not have to be an artist to feel what this means. A campaign text is enough. After more than 20 years in communication, I have to admit that a large part of what we called creative work was routine: versioning, adaptations, tasks that had to be done. That is exactly where the machine is at its best. It is not the technology that hurts. It is the exposure.

Intention carries the value

Humans are not always original or visionary. But we always have something at stake. Creativity springs from experience, perception and values – an I reaching out towards a you. The machine can imitate the expression. It cannot stand behind it. It can imitate choices. It cannot make them.

That is why the machine's results can be impressive, but they are never exposed. Nobody has risked anything by saying them out loud. And exposure may well be the core of creative work: the risk of meaning something specific, to specific people, at a specific moment.

Professional skill was never the output

The studies force us to take a hard look at our profession. Perhaps communication and creative work are less about producing and more about creating direction, meaning and connection. The best communicators I have met were rarely the ones who produced the most. They were the ones who could read the room, understand the culture and shape a narrative that moved something.

Seen this way, AI becomes a mirror. It shows where professional skill was never anchored – in volume, in the mechanical, in the versions. And it shows where professional skill is irreplaceable: in the judgement about what should be said, why and to whom. The machine can write the advert. It cannot decide whether it means anything.

Intention as practice

The consequence is a simple test that any text and any work can be held up against: who wants what with this – and can you feel it? If the question cannot be answered, the intention has become ritual, and then it is more honest to let the machine produce and spend the time on what actually needs to carry a human I.

Three questions are worth taking home: where in your production is intention genuinely present – and where has it become ritual? Which tasks should continue to carry a human I? And what will you use the freedom for when the machine takes over the mechanical?

The machine can produce. Only we can mean something.

Sources

  • Experiment from the University of California on the assessment of art created by humans versus AI – identical works are rated higher with a human sender.
  • Study from Columbia Business School – works labelled “AI-created” are rated approx. 62 per cent lower in value.