And while the mainstream discourse around AI continues to revolve around speed and productivity, it’s not surprising that the most interesting stuff seems to occur when creatives reject this framing entirely.

Vibing a project – in which you simply speak the thing you want into existence by prompting – is now a popular approach.

A number of recent studies, while small in scale, have suggested that we grieve the loss of friction that comes from skipping over time-intensive or frustrating tasks, particularly in creative scenarios.

Has the use of AI tools allowed her to speed through the tedious parts of her work, freeing up time to focus on the more stimulating aspects? “Speed isn’t really the point,” she replies. “That discourse usually comes from people who don’t really use the tools in interesting or meaningful ways. There’s so much clickbait content, like: ‘How I set up... See more

This point of view – which troubles the official narrative being rolled out by AI companies – is not rare. In his newsletter “How to Survive the Internet” the author and journalist Jamie Bartlett paraphrased a recent conversation he’d had with someone he described as an “AI power user”: “‘So are you producing more stuff per day?’ I ask.... See more

There have been studies that suggest this AI-productivity hypothesis may check out. In 2024, researchers analysed the output of over 53,000 artists and 5,800 AI adopters on a major art-sharing platform and found that generative tools do, in fact, boost the number of works users post per month. Similar studies across other sectors have made... See more

AI offers creative professionals “a pathway to growing their careers by freeing up time to do more of the things only they can do.”

AI tools were meant to automate the boring bits and free up time for meaningful work. Instead, creatives speak of endless iterations, escalating client demands and entirely new categories of digital drudgery. Are we thinking about AI’s place in the creative process all wrong?