AI Made Creating Easier, & Made Being Seen Harder.

What happens to creativity when skill is no longer the barrier to entry?

BY: Damien J. Branch | October 17th, 2026 | Saturday 1:40am EST

I’ve been noticing something lately, and I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much. Then I started looking at flyers. I know. Flyers, but hear me out. We are in the middle of a flyer pandemic. Everybody suddenly has the same flyer. Different birthday, different business, different church, different podcast, different colors, same damn flyer.

You know the look by now. Everything is cinematic, somebody is glowing, there’s smoke somewhere for absolutely no reason. 😂 The text looks like the Avengers are about to announce a fish fry, and most of it looks good. That’s actually the problem.

Everybody Has the Tools Now

There was a time when making something look good required knowing how to make something look good. That sounds obvious. It isn’t anymore, though. I remember having to actually learn Photoshop. Not download it and click around for twenty minutes, but actually learn it. Layers, masks, blending, fonts, and composition. Color, cutting somebody out of a picture without making them look like they were attacked with scissors.

You really had to practice, and it was okay if you messed things up. You learned by watching tutorials. You figured out why something looked amateur even when you couldn’t explain what was wrong with it. Eventually, you developed an eye for the craft, and if somebody didn’t know how to do those things? They found somebody who did. “I need a logo.” “I need a thumbnail.” “Can you make me an avatar?” “How much do you charge?”

That skill had value because not everybody could do it, but now? Upload a picture, type the prompt, wait a few seconds, and it's done. Look, before anybody gets defensive about AI, let me be very clear. I use AI too, maybe even a lot. I’m not standing outside the club complaining about the music. I’m inside the building. That’s probably why this bothers me as much as it does. I understand exactly why people like to use it. It’s fast, it’s convenient, it’s cheap. Sometimes it produces something ridiculously good. So why pay somebody $100 when an app you already pay $20 a month for can make something pretty close? You know, from the consumer’s perspective, I get it. From the creator’s perspective? That changes everything.

We Used to Need Each Other

That might be the part I miss a bit. Not the struggle part, not waiting three days for somebody to send me a JPEG. Definitely not emailing revisions back and forth because somebody spelled my name wrong. Nah, I don’t miss any of that crap. 😂 I miss needing people for help. There was an ecosystem that grew around creativity. Somebody could draw really well. Somebody could edit swiftly and efficiently. Somebody knew Photoshop or could make beats. Somebody designed dope websites. Somebody understood camera angles, knew how to write, or had the information you didn’t have.

If you respected what they knew how to do, you paid them for it. Now we ask the machine first. You know, I wonder what happens when that becomes the default for everything. Not just graphics, writing, music, or video. Research, coaching, fresh ideas. If everybody has access to something that can help them do almost anything, what happens to the people who spent years learning how to do those things?

Before You Say It — Yes, I See the Irony

There’s something else uncomfortable about writing this. I get help organizing my thoughts too sometimes. I know exactly what I want to say, but not how I want to say it.

I’ll have the good idea, the story, and the argument, but I’ll stumble trying to connect it all together. That’s one of the reasons I don’t go live as much as I probably should. I see people who can turn on a camera and immediately sound sharp on the spot. They’re quick and know all the right words in the moment. They can take an idea and package it perfectly while they’re still talking. Meanwhile, my brain has the whole thought, and my mouth is standing at baggage claim waiting for the suitcase. 😂

So yes, I use tools to help me organize what I’m trying to say, and for a while, even that messed with me. I wondered: If I need help organizing my thoughts, are they still mine? Then I realized something. The tool didn’t have the true experience. It didn’t notice what I noticed. It didn’t get irritated looking at another identical flyer. It didn’t spend years learning Photoshop techniques. It didn’t watch the internet change. It didn’t wonder why something that once felt valuable suddenly felt disposable, but I felt those things.

There’s a difference between getting help expressing a thought and outsourcing the thinking, and that part is getting more important by the day.

There Are More Writers Than Readers

Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. It seems like everybody has a blog now. Or a podcast, a newsletter, a course of some sort. Everybody has something in their bio they want you to click, including me. The question is, who is reading all of it? That’s the strange thing. It feels like we have more writers than readers, more creators than consumers. There are more people talking than listening, and AI didn’t create all of that, but it poured gasoline on the flames.

The barrier to creating something has almost disappeared. You don’t have to know how to design to create a design anymore. You don’t have to know how to edit to make a video. You don’t necessarily have to know how to write to publish something that reads well. So now there’s an unbelievable amount of content fighting over the exact same thing: your attention, which is getting harder to earn.

Four Seconds. Good Luck.

That might be the cruelest part of this whole era we're living in. We have more tools than any generation of creators before us. Somehow, it feels harder to get anybody to care. You can spend hours making something meaningful and lose somebody in four seconds. Maybe even two. If the opening isn’t good enough? Swipe... If the thumbnail doesn’t grab them? Swipe... If the first sentence requires patience? Swipe...

If you’re positive but not entertaining enough? If you’re knowledgeable but not dramatic enough? Super swipe... So creators have had to try to adapt. Make louder posts. Have funnier, more controversial conversations. Put colorful captions everywhere. Say something outrageous up front and explain yourself later. Eventually, you start wondering: Am I getting better at communicating, or am I slowly training myself to perform for an algorithm?

Maybe My Lane Didn’t Disappear

I’ve genuinely wondered whether I’m in the wrong lane sometimes. I write and sell books. I write blogs like the one you're reading now. I podcast my heart out. I create good content. I share what I’ve learned for free most of the time, and sometimes you can put something out that you know has value and… nothing happens. Then you start questioning everything you bring to the table. Maybe it's the price that's wrong. Or maybe the marketing is wrong. Maybe nobody likes to read anymore. Maybe people just don’t care like they once did about these things. Maybe they look at the book and think: Who the hell is this guy, and why should I spend $7 listening to what he has to say?

That thought can mess with you for real. Especially when you know how much of yourself went into the thing. You know, maybe the lane didn’t disappear completely. Maybe the lane changed direction. There was a time when knowing how to do something separated you from the crowd. Today? Everybody has access to the same tools. Everybody has access to information models. Everybody can make something look polished. So maybe polish isn’t the advantage anymore. Maybe information isn’t either. Maybe the new advantage is something much harder to manufacture.

I Think the New Currency Is Recognition

This is not about fame as much as recognition. I think there’s a difference. I don’t need millions of people knowing my name. I want the people who encounter my work to recognize something in it. A perspective, a voice, a different way of looking at things. Something that makes people say: “I knew that was him before I even saw the name.” If everybody has the same tools to create with, the tool can’t be what separates us anymore. Taste, experience, and trust can. Perspective can. Your story will. Your weird sense of humor and the things you survived can. The things you learned the hard way will still open doors for you.

The way you see something everybody else walked past will do this. AI can help somebody make a thumbnail, but it can’t give them twenty years of knowing why something feels right. It can probably help somebody write a better paragraph, but it can’t live the life that gave the paragraph something to say. It can imitate style, reproduce patterns, and make something beautiful, but there’s still a difference between creating something that looks official and creating something because you’re official. I think we’re going to have to learn how to value those differences once again.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

I don’t think the answer is running away from AI at all. That would be ridiculous, honestly. The technology is here for us to utilize, and it’s just going to get better. I’m definitely going to keep using it. I don’t want convenience to slowly erase the abilities that made me creative in the first place. I don’t want to forget Photoshop because something else can make the graphic faster than hard work could. I don’t want to stop learning how to communicate because something can write the sentence cleaner for me. I don’t want to stop thinking for myself because something can think alongside me.

I definitely don’t want to get so obsessed with producing content that I forget the whole reason I started creating. Maybe that’s what we need to protect. Not the software or the old way of doing things. Not some imaginary era where everything was better than it is today. We have to protect the human parts of building something real. Being recognized for something that actually belongs to you? That might be harder than ever to hold on to. The question isn’t: How do I compete with AI? Maybe it’s: What do I have that isn’t worth outsourcing to a machine? I’m still figuring out my answer to that...

I think you are too, and that’s a conversation worth having.