Source: Maxread
The article inverts the typical quality-first assumption: people don't choose AI outputs despite inferior technical craft, but because they actively prefer the aesthetic and emotional register of lower-friction, less-perfected work. This preference isn't a flaw in consumer taste—it's an advantage for generative tools over traditional art production, where the polish that institutions and gatekeepers have trained us to value becomes a liability in markets that reward novelty, personalization, and the uncanny. The competitive threat to human creators isn't AI matching their skill; it's AI matching what audiences actually want, which is often the opposite of what art schools teach.