The Metaphor and the Magic: My Take on AI in 2026
It's been a good long while since I've had a good long rant.
*Cracks knuckles.*
Let us begin.
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Part 1: The Metaphor
Imagine you have just invented the car.
(Great job, by the way.)
Once the invention is ready to show off, you drive it to a field where a bunch of people are playing.
"Behold!" you declare. "I give you the car!"
"WHOA!" they shout. "You CREATED this?"
"Why yes, yes I did," you say.
"You're so smart!" they declare.
"Why thank you!" you chirp.
"This is incredible!" they shout.
"Aw shucks," you reply.
"This thing has FLASHLIGHTS on the front?!" they squeal.
"Why yes, this—wait, what?" you stammer.
And then all the marketers in the field run around shouting about the flashlights and how you'll never need to manually hold one again and if you don't use these flashlights, you'll be left behind, and they post about 27 Flashlight Prompts to 10x Your Business in 10 Seconds.
If that happened to you as the inventor of the automobile, you'd watch in disbelief at the way the world interpreted your life's work.
"Yes, the car 'has flashlights on the front,'" you'd groan. "But it's also A CAR. Can we PLEASE focus on the very many CAR-LIKE things it can do?!"
This, dear reader, is how I'm viewing generative AI today—or really, the discourse about it. There are SO many use cases for these tools, and the most rinky-dink in my opinion—in other words, the least valuable and the most groan-worthy—is to create content with it. Because sure, it can create content, but it's a content generator in the same way that your car is a flashlight.
This myopic obsession with pumping out generic content isn't new. AI just kicks things into high gear, like tossing a Mentos into a bottle of Coke. There's a reason I'm not a "content marketing" speaker or writer these days. It's stuff like this moment that drives me too insane to handle anymore. Longtime subscribers may recognize that for someone who became "known" (at least a little bit) for the idea of content marketing, I don't say the phrase anymore. Maybe that's because the industry has changed and "content marketing" became simply "marketing." But even if that's true, I also consciously changed my focus. I'm glad for it too.
The way folks approach generative AI didn't cause my shift, mind you. It's just the latest, loudest symptom of an illness that has plagued this field forever. We don't think about the audience experience enough.
Once I left the corporate world of content marketing behind, I spent those first few years as an independent voice beating the same drum, now uninhibited by corporate norms or metrics. I continued speaking about marketing-related themes, but I stood louder and prouder behind my beliefs. My keynotes, my first podcast (Unthinkable), and even my first book centered on the ideas of quality, craft, creativity, and giving many damns about the work you create.
Then a funny thing happened. My tribe came to me. Yes, some are marketers, but most are not. My audience is full of entrepreneurs and coaches, consultants and speakers, public speakers, lawyers, accountants, HR pros, ops and finance specialists, sales leaders, startup CEOs, YouTubers, podcasters, and more. We're bound together not based on a niche or job title but by shared beliefs. They were already aligned. They just needed someone to articulate what they felt. That's when it clicked for me: when you stop trying to convince an entire industry and simply stand tall in your ideals, the right people come to you.
I stopped shouting into the storm and started speaking to those who already saw what I saw. I'm proof that you can disagree with the popular discourse, the trending tactics, the cultural norms of a space, and still build a thriving, growing audience, business, and career. It just might not look like the cookie-cutter path you were sold in school.
What might happen if you stopped trying to convince everyone and only focused on connecting with the right few someones?
Which brings me to the magic.
Part 2: The Magic
To me, debating whether or not generative AI creates good content is kinda missing the point. Because "good" is subjective. It's about the intention behind the work and the perception receiving the work, and AI alone has no "intention" other than to obey its programming (which isn't really intention per se). Its programming isn't focused on making something "good" because, again, what does that mean? Really, its programming is built to match a spec, which humans provide. Sometimes that spec is provided by the creators of the tool. Do this, this way, for every user, says the programming. Other times, you decide the spec. Do this, this way, for me.
Getting something to spec might mean we say it's "good," when really, all we can claim is that it's accurate. When the objective is to meet spec, improvement doesn't mean you make things better, not really. Improvement means you get things "more correct."
That's what AI does. That's what it's built for. Not making good things. Making "correct" things.
But we don't write or speak to "correctly" arrange words. We don't illustrate things or film them to "correctly" construct scenes. We do these things to (A) make sense of this world and our relationship to it, and (B) to connect with the audience. The folks screaming about how great AI is at creating content rarely think about the role of A and seem to forget that the point of this work is B.
Getting something we create to look or sound "more correct" isn't ever the point. Getting others to CARE MORE is.
And listen, correct things can be useful. Getting things to spec does indeed matter. But when something is only as good as the spec it's given, it's still at the mercy of subjective judgment, and it's that very notion of subjective judgment that people who obsessively support AI as a content creation tool never talk about. Because subjective judgment passed on your work is what has to happen when you hit Publish, and it's only then that someone can decide if the work is "good" or not. Said simply:
Creating correct things is not the same as creating effective things.
And our jobs depend on us creating effective things—things others deem "good." We can't decide it. Only the audience can.
The world of content marketing and indeed all types of content creation need to center more fully on serving the audience, not ourselves. Because they decide. They pass the judgment. Yet they are rarely considered in the debate over whether AI is any "good" at creating content.
When toeing the waters of the Great AI Debate of 2026, always remember this simple fact:
Generative AI is about making logical predictions to arrive at something as correct as possible.
Human creativity is about making emotional reflections to arrive at something as resonant as possible.
Notice that in the first sentence, you (i.e. the AI user) decide if AI is doing a good job. Is this correct? In the second sentence, others (i.e. your audience) decide. Does this resonate? And THAT is the missing piece way too often. How are others actually RECEIVING your work? How do they FEEL about it?
Ishiguro said it best. He was talking about storytelling, but it applies to anything self-expressive: "Stories are like one person saying to another, 'This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it also feel this way to you?'"
For as excited as people get to create stuff with AI, they sure do forget that, eventually, others need to experience it. Absorb it. FEEL IT.
Unfortunately, in my world, once content marketing became a big thing, it attracted people who don't much care for the act of creating content at all. They just saw it as a thing that "works." The idea of human expression isn't something they reflect on much, if at all. Content marketing and social media made writing and recording and speaking and storytelling so important to building a business and so ingrained in our everyday work, we find ourselves in a moment where tons of people are doing those things while also being pretty darn uninterested in any of it for its own sake.
They seek to create content as a tactic to transact others, rather than a vehicle to transform (themselves and others). But as with anything creative, the people who are better at it are the ones who make the process the point. They're intrinsically motivated by, even giddy about, the act of creation in and of itself—which in turn makes what they create more effective.
There's a word I uncovered years ago that I always return to: "telic." When something is telic, it's done purely for the end result. Another, more negative name for it is a chore.
Sweeping your floor is telic. The objective is not to enjoy a good sweep, right? As a result, what do we do? We don’t do it, or we do it poorly,, or we wonder if this new floor-cleaning technology will save us like they promise it will. But really, something else would actually save you: if you somehow enjoyed the process of sweeping. If that was you, you’d have cleaner floors. But sweeping your floors is a chore. It’s telic.
Eating ice cream is not. That’s paratelic. It’s done for the process itself. It’s intrinsically motivating. The process is the point. Nobody turns to a friend and says, “Here, eat my ice cream for me. I really just want a dirty bowl.” Nobody heads to their local ice cream shoppe (always spelled that way, obviously), buys a cone, but then wishes they could just … absorb the cone straight into their stomach. No! Because the process of eating it is the point. The experience is the objective. Feeling full is not. Eating ice cream is not telic. It’s paratelic. And as a result, good things happen. We seek it out MORE, and we find ways to do it BETTER. We eat ice cream in extra large cups and extra large cones with extra large amounts of toppings. (Don’t get me started on adults who order kiddie sizes. Kiddie sizes are for quitters.)
This is how I’ve always felt about writing, speaking, recording things, telling stories, and creating content in any form or fashion. The process is the point. As a result, I seek it out more. I find ways to do it better. I want it served to me in extra large cups and extra large cones with extra large amounts of toppings. Because this shit is the good stuff. It is not the stuff to skip or delay or outsource. To me, the experiencing of the creative process itself is my objective. I’m not purely focused on seeing outcomes. But as a result? I get great outcomes. I get outcomes most people creating content tell me they’d LOVE to get.
That’s how this works.
My hack is joy.
My secret is fun.
My advantage is loving this shit.
The business world struggles to make content into a tactic because by definition, it’s not. It's a process, and if they dislike the process, what do they do? They don’t do it, or they do it poorly, or they wonder if this new content creation technology will save us like they promise it will. How in the WORLD do you expect others to enjoy consuming your work ... if you aren't interested in or excited by the process of creating it? If you dislike that part, they can tell.
So we return now to AI. The lazy uses of AI more specifically: punching a button and create mediocre content at scale.
This is just the latest attempt of a certain kind of person to attain outcomes without enduring the process. Because that's how it feels to them: as something to endure, not enjoy.
I see how they talk about AI. The argument is always the same when I question their approach. They point to how close the writing is getting to "correct" writing. Look! You can't tell it was AI! This writing sounds like writing. It didn't hallucinate. It met spec.
Because for those people, the process was NEVER the point for them. Just the outcome. Get things to spec. Don't challenge the convention, don't seek to make better things or make the world better. Just transact, with greater velocity. The process isn't the point, just the outcomes, and as a result, they get worse outcomes.
Those people were ALWAYS uninterested in the great and terrible power creativity and storytelling. They always wanted to reach more people but never stopped to consider whether their work actually resonated. When finding fault, when struggling to see results, they never point to their own ideas and how others experience their work as the reason the work isn’t working. They always find fault with the channel, the distribution plan, the budget. Never the creativity. Never the story. Never the experience.
Because they don’t think about that part. They treat this work like a tactic, rather than what it is to me: a calling.
If someone told them that jumping out from behind your customers' bushes was the next great approach to marketing, then they'd stop creating content, stop telling stories, and start doing that instead.
But not me.
Not you.
For us, it’s about the experience. WE want to experience the process, and we want OTHERS to experience something great, something different, something valuable, something original.
Something that connects.
Something magic.
BONUS BIT, because I can't help myself right now:
I spoke with a fairly senior person at Meta this week. Did you know they have an AI mandate? They require everyone to use AI in some form or fashion, no matter how useful it actually is, and they track it. You are goaled against it. That's right. Goaled against using a tool, not getting outcomes or upholding values. Nope. Tracked for how often you use specific tech. Like you're in preschool and have to pick up the blocks enough times to be on-pace for your age. This is wild to me. I have a visceral reaction to this. I feel it in my stomach. As an entrepreneur, I know I'm overly sensitive to corporate norms, but this feels too far even for corporate employees who have found happy careers working for larger orgs.
Predictably, all the employees hate this, and so they game it. They find the simplest, least-intrusive way to use the tools so they can get on with their real work as usual—the AI equivalent of opening Slack and wiggling your mouse cursor so people think you're actively working when you're home.
But now Meta gets to brag about their widespread internal AI adoption of course. They're an AI-powered company, clearly, and they can quietly sprinkle about 80,000 additional "daily active users" on top of their public-facing metrics.
If you, like me, want to scream into a pillow most days because of how uniquely and supremely dumb the AI hype feels, I'm here for you. Read this blunt, short post from me and this delicious piece from my friend Ann Handley, written as a rebuttal to a ridiculous viral article this week, which was as self-serving as it was incorrect.
Anyway, I'm pumped to "get left behind."