Great headline, huh?
On March 22, 2026, this letter, handwritten by Shane Hegde (CEO
& Co-Founder of Air), was published in the New York Times.
It’s his argument that after nearly a decade working with
250,000+ creatives is AI can generate, resize and optimize 1,000 brand
variations in seconds … but it can't decide what's worth making. That part
still requires a person with judgment and taste.
Read the full text of the message below.
_________________________
For more thoughts on AI and the creative process:
Don't Let AI Kill Your Analog Intelligence
Why Every Copywriter & Content Writer Needs an AI Usage Policy
The full 3/22 message:
AI would never smoke a cigarette with you.
In life we long for simple stories, and these days the headlines deliver:
“AI will replace you.”
Each week, there’s a new AI startup that claims its product will make creatives obsolete. Photographers, videographers, graphic designers, illustrators: highly specialized individuals who have spent decades turning crazy ideas into something everyone can visualize.
If anyone should be buying into this narrative, it’s me.
In 2018 my friend Tyler and I started a tech company called Air. We told investors that every company was becoming a media company. And, if true, every company would need an engine to scale their creative work.
Over the last eight years we’ve raised $70M to build this engine.
Today, nearly all of our product resources have shifted to build AI centric features. Our best engineers spend most days evaluating AI written code. But after nearly a decade working with over 250,000 creatives, I’ve built a rather rigid, shockingly unorthodox belief:
AI will never replace creative work.
Creative work starves for originality.
A person decides where the story begins, which frame feels right, or whether the work should even continue to exist. The best pieces of content require doubt and indecision.
The difference between a creative and a machine is this obsessive anxiety.
Artificial intelligence is trained to find patterns and recommend the most common answer. The machine aims for objectivity. It can generate images, resize assets, translate languages, and optimize performance.
It’s always correct, but it’s not always right.
AI would never tell you to slow down.
It would never argue that further introspection might change the work.
You won’t find AI smoking a cigarette at 9AM on Howard and Lafayette. Only a beautifully inefficient mind would believe cancerous reflection could improve its work.
Over the coming months every company you know will be reshaped into an unrecognizable form. Smaller teams. More machines.
But the organizations that survive will require human beings who are willing to take risks. These people understand that letting what they love kill them is a uniquely human trait. Their illogical texture for life is something machines can’t compute.
At Air, the value of our product is shaped by a creative’s direction.
We use AI to help them scale their work, but deciding when, where, and how to deploy this technology remains defiantly human.
The best creative work is always an argument.
I’m around if you want to share yours.
- Shane s@air.inc 419.902.7392
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