Ai brands are empty.
You have the one thing they never will.
As Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, “AI is homogenizing our thoughts.” And our brands, too. The more we outsource taste, tone, and creativity to machines, the more we risk flattening the human fingerprints that make a brand feel worthy of attention — or affection.
In a sea of sameness, what we crave isn’t perfection. It’s proof of personhood.
Luxury has always been a moving target.
Once, it was about price. Then it was about scarcity. Then came the age of convenience: on-demand, delivered fast, frictionless. Now? Luxury is about feeling.
In the aftermath of algorithmic overload and AI auto-fill, the thing we want most is the thing tech can’t replicate: the unmistakable trace of a human hand.
We’ve been optimised to the point of emptiness. What we crave now is imperfection with intention.
As more of our visual world gets AI-generated, the new luxury isn’t speed or scale — it’s slowness, touch, and point-of-view. It’s the sense that someone is behind this.
We’ve mistaken efficiency for elegance. But perfection is no longer the goal.
In fact, it might be the problem.
The world doesn’t need more perfectly templated AI-first brands. It needs more felt ones. The kind you can’t stop thinking about. The kind that speak with a voice so specific, you’d recognise them in a dark room. The kind that feel like a long-lost friend showing up with wine and wisdom.
When taste gets algorithmic
Think about your daily scroll. Your feed might be filled with brands that are algorithmically correct but creatively vacant. They say the right things. Use the right fonts. Have the right founder story. But they leave no residue. Frictionless means forgettable.
AI is brilliant at giving us what we ask for, and catastrophic at giving us what we didn’t know we needed. It can't replicate contradiction. It doesn’t understand cultural tension. It can’t create moments that feel like a wink from the universe.
Perhaps its greatest down side, is that the algorithm can’t cry.
The best creative work often comes from tension: heartbreak, obsession, wild ideas that shouldn’t work. AI doesn’t have heartbreak. It doesn’t have taste. It doesn’t understand what it means to grow up with immigrant parents, or feel the low buzz of social anxiety, or be 17 and hear a song that splits your heart in half.
Which means AI doesn’t really know us. It knows data, not desire.
And that matters. Because branding is not just information. It’s interpretation. It’s intuition. And sometimes imperfection. It’s a gut punch. A goosebump. A grin.
The brands that endure aren’t the ones that look the cleanest. They’re the ones that feel the most human. That’s why we remember the offbeat copy from Liquid Death. The hand-scrawled packaging of Glossier’s early days. And of course, there’s no automation for tending to a rosemary bush or bottling backyard honey: Flamingo Estate sells what machines can’t make: care, time, terroir.
Luxury, increasingly, is anything that reminds us we’re alive.
The automation paradox
AI is not the enemy. Let’s get that straight.
It's a tool. And a brilliant one at that. It saves time, fills gaps, drafts decks, and even writes headlines that convert. But in the wrong hands — or untrained ones — it becomes a creative hall of mirrors. Everything starts to look a little too... coherent. A little too clean.
Welcome to the uncanny valley of branding: where everything is grammatically correct, beautifully spaced, and emotionally vacant.
Scroll any platform today and you’ll see it. The Instagram captions that read like they were scraped from a SaaS blog. The websites so perfectly wireframed they feel like ghost towns. The brands so “on trend” they dissolve on contact.
We’ve optimised for conversion and forgotten how to feel.
Resonance over reach
Here’s the truth: the bar has shifted.
Consumers don’t want more. They want meaning.
They’re not saving screenshots of polished pitch decks or AI-rendered mood boards. They’re saving the scrawl of a handwritten thank-you note. The typo that made them laugh. The lo-fi, low-stakes video that somehow made them feel more seen than an entire campaign rollout.
We’ve spent the last decade chasing scale, and we’ve ended up with sameness.
Now, resonance is the new metric.
Not because it’s novel — but because it’s rare.
What AI can’t do
AI can create content. But it can’t create culture.
It can generate endless iterations — but not instinct. Not intuition. Not the subtle, almost imperceptible genius that makes something feel deeply of the moment.
It can’t know why something moves you. Why you get goosebumps when a line lands. Why a certain image makes your chest tighten. That’s because the things that matter in branding aren’t logical. They’re emotional. Psychological. Relational. And — more than anything — human.
Real taste still requires real people.
Why the new luxury is slower, smaller, and more sincere
In a landscape dominated by high-speed production and mass automation, luxury is tilting in the opposite direction.
Luxury now is what feels rare and real.
It’s the proof of personhood in an interaction. A founder actually responding to a DM. A brand that remembers your name. A scent that reminds you of someone you loved — because the person behind the product was thinking about memory, not market share.
It's the human fingerprint — not the digital watermark — that makes something truly land.
And smart brands know this.
They’re not ditching tech. They’re simply weaving it with texture. With nuance. With depth.
Brands doing it right
Take Ghia, for example. Their copy reads like your slightly moodier best friend. Their visuals are weird, specific, poetic — more jazz record than brand guide. And it works. Because it feels like someone meant it.
Or Loewe, who’ve eschewed AI gloss for slow, surrealist storytelling. Their campaigns feel like a dream you only half-remember. There’s discomfort. Intrigue. Humanity. And yes — it sticks.
Then there’s Paris Georgia, the cult fashion label out of New Zealand. Their launches are infrequent, their tone almost shy, and their visuals raw. But the intimacy? Unmatched. It's not hype. It’s quiet obsession — the kind that builds over time.
These brands understand that in a world of scale, sincerity is a strategy.
How to human-proof your brand
Optimise for soul, not just scale. Use AI, but run it through a filter called taste. Don’t just ask what works — ask what moves.
Write like a person. Not a persona. Real people don’t speak in bullet points. They meander. They surprise. They feel.
Keep texture. Everything shouldn’t look like it came from the same 12-slide template. Add friction. Add grit. Add delight.
Let your brand breathe. Every post doesn’t have to perform. Every sentence doesn’t need a CTA. Give people room to feel something.
Make it unmistakable. Not just pretty. Not just smart. Yours.
The human touch is the moat
Here’s the punchline: tech is only getting better. Which means that taste — real, cultivated, specific taste — is your last unfair advantage.
The AI arms race will continue. Tools will improve. Outputs will get harder to distinguish from the real thing. But they’ll never replace the flicker of recognition someone gets when a brand truly gets them.
That’s what builds loyalty. That’s what creates love. That’s what keeps someone coming back.
Because in the end, the thing we’re all looking for isn’t another product, another post, or another perfectly phrased caption.
It’s the feeling of being felt.
This is brilliant.
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