How should you compete with AI? You shouldn’t.
Become irreplaceable by working in markets where AI can’t compete with you.
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AI is replacing creative professionals.
Losing jobs or business to AI-generated work is a real fear among practicing creatives.
In the classroom, many of my students wonder if they should even be pursuing a creative career.
But it’s more than just a worry for this week’s advice seeker. It’s a reality.
“I’m a graphic designer and I lost my job to AI this summer. I’m thinking about switching to another profession entirely. Should I?”
I’m sorry you lost your job. That’s a scary experience and it’s bound to create self-doubt for even the most confident person.
It’s good to question your overall career path when you find yourself without a job. Not because you were necessarily on the wrong path. It’s just a natural place to do so. When we’re heads down in work, we rarely reflect broadly on where we’ve been and where we want to go. I like that you’re using this moment to reflect.
You have to make a decision that’s best for you. Your experience is the argument for moving on to something else. AI is here and smart people are working hard to improve it so it can replace even more creatives. That isn’t going away.
But I believe now is a great time to be a creative professional.
The rise of generative AI, and the contrast between AI-generated work and human creation, have revealed the real value creatives bring to the world that AI will never replicate.
No matter how hard smart people work to improve it.
In business terms, that means you can build a business or get a job in markets where you don’t have to compete with AI. Because it can’t touch you there.
I want to help you find those places.
Empathy for Creatives Isn’t Enough
I’m an advocate for creative professionals. That’s my job. I teach business at an art and design school and both of my college-aged children are pursuing creative careers. One is an animator and the other is a musician studying industrial design.
I love the pushback we’re seeing against AI on behalf of creatives. It’s rooted in empathy and ethics. And I agree with the idea that it’s ethically questionable to replace humans with technology.
But a plea for empathy isn’t enough. Our history suggests that market forces overwhelm empathy when the two compete. Empathy for newspaper journalists, taxi drivers, and factory workers didn’t protect them from the rise of the internet, ride sharing, and robotics.
As a father, I’ll continue to show you empathy and push others to do the same. As a business professor, my advocacy means equipping you to deal with the reality of market forces that are likely to win.
What Are Market Forces?
In this context, I’m talking about two forces:
Customers who have needs and will pay money to get them fulfilled
Competition among businesses to meet those needs and take that money
Building a successful business means winning that competition by being the best at fulfilling needs for customers in a profitable way. They’ll pay you more to fulfill their needs than it costs you to do it.
The job of business founders isn’t just to create and sell stuff. It’s to design a business that consistently wins over customers given the market forces in which they operate.
Think about market forces as design constraints that founders use to decide how their business takes shape.
Business Design Patterns
There are 3 typical ways that businesses win over customers.
Some businesses have the best products or services for a large, diverse group of customers. Apple’s iPhone is an example.
Some design products or services to fit unique needs of niche customer groups. Think of Bark phones designed for kids.
Some offer products and services at the lowest price. Generic (unbranded) smart phones are the example here.
Variations on these patterns exist and some businesses combine more than one of them. But this is where most businesses start—by choosing a position of product superiority, niche customer focus, or low cost.
AI is winning in the low cost space. It can generate creative work faster and without having to pay a creator to make it. AI-based businesses target customer groups that value cost and speed over the quality of work.
Go Where AI Can’t Compete
If you decide to stick with your creative field, you should build a business or find a job where you don’t even try to compete based on price and speed. Where customers value your superior work because that’s what they need. This could be big markets where product superiority can’t be matched by AI. Or smaller, niche markets, where your work meets a specific need that AI can’t.
The specific needs and markets to target depend entirely on your creative field. But to get some ideas flowing, here are three examples of of work that AI can’t touch.
Work that requires a unique perspective to fulfill a purpose. Aritivism, or artists engaging in activism to change hearts and minds through their work, is one example. For art to spark change, it has to provide unique perspective that the world hasn’t seen before. Although we call AI “generative,” it really isn’t. Its output is, by definition, derivative work.
Work that isn’t easily digitized. AI can’t generate physical objects, can’t perform live performances, can’t create physical texture in work.
Work that fulfills a need for human connection. AI will never touch this space. If the story behind your work is a major reason your customers buy it, you’re irreplaceable.
The last one is my favorite because it applies to all creative fields and can be combined with others to make you essential. Your personal story is the basis of your brand as a creative. In spaces where customers value human connection, it’s also the basis of that connection. If you need help developing your story and turning it into a brand, check out my post on creative brand development from last month.
This Week
Spend some time this week brainstorming spaces where your skills and your work can’t be replaced by AI. Look for customer groups that value unique perspective, physical work, or work that tells your story.
Don’t try to compete with the low cost and speed of AI.
Instead, find a space where AI can’t compete with you.
Got a question you’d like me to answer in a future issue of The Weekly Build? Reach out or leave a comment.
Want more help like this to boost your creative business? Now’s your chance.