Imperfect brands: Why the human touch matters most when everything is automated
Anyone can make anything look perfect now.
AI has collapsed what used to be the exclusive domain of well-funded studios into something accessible to a solo creator with a laptop. Visual polish, once a reliable signal of investment, seriousness, and craft, has become baseline. Available to everyone. Meaningful to no one.
We are living through what Artlist describes as aesthetic inflation. When everyone can achieve high production values, production value stops working as a differentiator. The barrier to making polished work has dropped close to zero. The barrier to making work anyone remembers has never been higher.
That leaves a difficult question for anyone trying to build something durable: if execution is now a commodity, what makes your work yours?
When craft becomes commodity
The numbers tell part of the story:
Generative AI apps are projected to earn over $10 billion in 2026;
84% of US advertisers and marketers already use AI in their workflows;
Creative workflows have shifted from linear pipelines to circular iteration loops, increasing output 5-10x.
The result is abundance—of images, words, videos, brands. And with that abundance comes a new problem: the internet filling up with content that looks competent but feels empty. The term “AI slop” exists for a reason. Synthetic influencers. Articles written for no one in particular. Visuals that impress briefly and then evaporate.
The backlash has been swift and emotional. When Guess ran an ad campaign in Vogue using AI-generated models, the response wasn't measured criticism. It was visceral rejection. People could tell, and they hated it.
Execution used to signal effort, care, and investment. Now it mostly signals access. The competitive terrain has shifted away from technique and toward something far less automatable: vision, judgment, taste.
If your competitor can replicate your aesthetic in an afternoon, your only defensible territory is point of view.
The trust crisis
The web now contains so much fabricated-but-believable content that distinguishing what is real has become cognitive work.
The question consumers used to ask was emotional: Is this brand being genuine with me? Increasingly, the question is ontological: Is this even real?
The data reflects this unease:
89% of consumers want to know when they're interacting with AIè
95% of executives believe consumer trust in their AI will define product success.
Out of this tension emerges what Horizon describes as the real premium. Human provenance itself becomes a value proposition. Polaroid markets "The Camera for an Analog Life." Aerie built an entire campaign around "100% Real" humans. Design studios are deliberately foregrounding stop-motion animation, hand-drawn illustrations, long-form copywriting—techniques that announce their human origins by virtue of their inefficiency.
Authenticity is no longer something you claim. It is something you demonstrate.
The qualities machines can't touch
As AI improves at language, logic, and pattern recognition, humans retreat into territories algorithms struggle to occupy: ambiguity, contradiction, intuition. The ability to sit with complexity without rushing to resolution.
The very messiness engineers try to eliminate is becoming a marker of human value.
You can see this tension playing out in consumer behavior:
75% of consumers track their health with devices or apps;
Gen Z increasingly turns to generative AI for emotional support and companionship. But…
63% of UK adults agree that the rise of AI makes them value things created by humans more;
72% of US adults actively seek out analog activities and experiences that allow them to be more present in the moment.
People happily outsource optimization to machines—tracking health metrics, automating decisions, streamlining routines—while simultaneously seeking experiences defined by texture, slowness, and emotional resonance. Cute objects. Tactile media. Creative practices that resist measurement.
The strategic challenge is no longer whether to adopt AI, but where to draw the boundary. Which systems should run at machine speed, and which must operate at human speed.
Because not everything that can be optimized should be. Sometimes the inefficiency is the product.
When friction becomes the feature
Algorithms are designed to eliminate friction. Every hesitation, every extra step, every moment of uncertainty gets treated as a problem to solve. The goal is seamlessness: one-click purchasing, predictive recommendations, experiences so smooth they're nearly invisible.
And yet, brands that deliberately put friction back in are winning.
Appointment-only shopping. Limited drops that require effort to acquire. Mystery releases. Pre-purchase group buys that require community coordination. These are strategic moves designed to create anticipation, exclusivity, shared experience, which frictionless commerce struggles to replicate.
The data supports this shift:
69% of US adults enjoy products with an element of surprise or mystery;
Controlled-risk products (blind box toys, mystery cookware) are driving new economic models;
Gen Z and Millennials popularize "#AnalogBag" posts showcasing film cameras, physical books, paper notebooks.
Surprise, effort, and waiting are being reintroduced as forms of value. This aligns with a broader cultural undercurrent sometimes described as a rejection of operating at algorithmic speed—a desire for tools and experiences that require presence rather than passive consumption.
The strategic work is not eliminating friction wholesale. It is deciding where friction creates meaning.
The return of imperfection
High polish used to signal excellence. Today it mostly signals competence with tools.
This has opened space for a different signal: deliberate imperfection. Not sloppiness, but visible humanity. Choosing where to let the hand show. Where to allow rough edges, digressions, emotional specificity.
You see it in campaigns that tackle uncomfortable subjects without aesthetic smoothing (Burger King ran a campaign about postpartum cravings that used unfiltered realism about subjects most brands won't touch). In digital work that incorporates hand-drawn or analog elements. In writing that wanders, reflects, and sounds like it came from a person rather than a system optimized for average readability.
The creative professionals succeeding now are not those who resist AI, nor those who automate everything. They are often described as AI auteurs: people who let machines handle scale and execution while retaining strict control over vision, taste, and direction.
AI can execute taste. It cannot originate it.
Navigating the ambivalence: A framework for leaders
So where does this leave organizations trying to navigate these tensions?
The landscape of 2026 is genuinely ambivalent. Consumers want AI efficiency and human authenticity. They want frictionless convenience and meaningful effort. They want optimization and the permission to slow down.
These aren't contradictions to resolve, they're tensions to manage.
Three questions to guide navigation:
What are you defending as irreducibly human? Not everything can or should be automated. Define the parts of your operation, brand, or creative process where human judgment, intuition, or craft is the point, not a cost to minimize.
Where does your provenance matter? In a world of synthetic abundance, where do you need to provide evidence of human investment rather than simply claiming it?
What friction creates value? Map experiences not for smoothness, but for meaning. Where does effort deepen engagement rather than degrade it?
The year ahead
The challenge in 2026 is not choosing between efficiency and authenticity. It is developing the clarity to know when each matters.
AI will continue to automate tasks, compress timelines, and optimize outputs. That trajectory is fixed. What remains open is how organizations protect space for what cannot be replicated: discernment, taste, intuition, and the willingness to be inefficient when inefficiency carries meaning.
The leaders who navigate this successfully won't be those who reject AI or those who automate everything. They'll be those who can articulate—to their teams, their customers, their stakeholders—exactly what they're optimizing for and why some things shouldn't be optimized at all.
Because in a world where anyone can make anything look perfect, what matters isn't what you can make.
It's what you believe is worth making, and why it has to be you.
Sources
This brief is based on trend reports combined by CI En Lee, Iolanda Carvalho, Amy Daroukakis and Gonzalo Gregori.
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