Will “Human made” become the new luxury?

The world of AI is moving fast, this is basically a given at this point. As said already, X has released their Grok-3 model and it is beating other leading models (and crushing DeepSeek) at numerous benchmarks. ChatGPT 4.5 is getting closer to launch and also Anthropic is hinting at their new model release.

Not only the LLM’s (large language models) are improving rapidly, also image and video is progressing at enormous speeds. Here is a great example by Heather Cooper on X, of the leading video models and their output:

Before Gen AI the internet was already full of content, information and entertainment. You could argue that it was already hard then to figure out what is worth watching or reading and it will probably get only worse. What generative AI is doing is lowing the barrier for anyone to create anything, that is pretty clear. I remember the day we wanted an aerial shot of LA when we were shooting a music video there, I had to book an actual helicopter ride for it and get our camera man in there to get it. This was before stock libraries where you can just buy it.. But now? Just generate it yourself in minutes. It is still mind blowing if you think about it. This means more people can utilize their creativity, without having to master certain (pretty technical) tools and apps, which means more content.

Add to that, automation. It is becoming so easy to spit out thousands and thousands of words, post them wherever you want, automatically generate images with it and you can go on and on and on. Then there are AI Agents who are 24/7 content machines, doing exactly that, responding to anyone instantly. More, and more, and moooooore content.

So in a world where everything will be automated, you can generate whatever you like at any moment, content becomes a commodity. Maybe the act of “creating” content is not special anymore perse.. More is not always better and so it doesn’t really sound like an interesting future at first.

But in a future like this, it feels like curation will become even more important. This is also linked to my thesis on what AI Agents will mean for marketing, how do you still get introduced to new brands, new interesting content, if your AI Agent will get you anything you want at the perfect moment? Other people.

Anything that is curated, created or handcrafted by HUMANS will become worth more than all else. This does not mean that I don’t believe that AI generated art, content, entertainment is worthless, on the contrary. I do think that anything handcrafted will become even more valuable, that things that are naturally scarce will become more valuable.

Take my newsletter as an example. My LinkedIn content is more general, AI driven and generated. My newsletter is more curated and personal. Which one will be more valuable in two years?

Also, you know what isn’t possible for AI to generate? True stories, real stories of real people, real heroes. The future documentary of LeBron James or Cristiano Ronaldo will be 100 times more valuable then an AI generated version of a fictional character that AI came up with on the spot (setting aside when this fictional character is an actual superstar in its own right, because I also think that will happen 😅). There is only one life story of Ronaldo, LeBron, Messi or the courages act of someone else. It is real and you can’t copy it.

When we discussed Sam Altman’s article last week (click here to read), I did not mention the following quote which is also slightly linked to my thinking above. In a world full of abundance, what will happen?

I agree. You can sense a split in approach that could possible happen. The more general brands, companies, will probably go for a strategy in which everything they do will be AI generated. Purely from a cost and time perspective, it is probably the smart and right thing to do. On the other hand I can also imagine that luxury fashion houses, for example, will choose the exact opposite. And “brag” about the fact that they used “human models” for their commercial, or “shot by humans”, or “designed by humans”. Society might start putting a premium on something that now feels like very normal and even is the other way around. I can proudly say that Monks developed a commercial for BMW that included the virtual influencer Lil Miquela (see video below), something that has won us a lot of awards. I don’t think something similar, fully AI generated and delivering the same quality, will win awards in a few years becomes it will be the norm.

In this example, the opposite may become more special. Using actual humans, in an actual physically impressive environment, with the physical car. I know, it sounds super weird, it feels weird typing it out trust me 🤣.

I do think that all of this will be a breathing ground for new ideas, new art, creativity, entertainment and more. If more people get the ability to create whatever they want, because costs and tech knowledge aren’t a limiting factor anymore, I believe we will see new geniuses rise and we can all enjoy their crafts.

Before I close this one out, let me add one more thing. The only way to create scarcity on the internet, for anything digital, is via blockchain technology. This is one of the many goals of Ethereum, to bring a property rights system to the world wide web. That, plus it will give creators the possibility to mark something they created as theirs and theirs only. Yes, this is what NFT technology actually is meant for, although it sounds like such a bad word these days 😉.

So to summarize: anything digital will become a commodity, if there is no scarcity element to it (thanks to blockchain as just mentioned). Anything “human” will become more valuable.

What do you think about all of this?

Here are some of the latest announcements and other things that I found interesting this week (underscore means clickable!):

• Someone burned (aka destroyed on purpose) 1.35 Mil USD in ETH to get a message out of China, the message: "The CEOs of Kuande Investment: Feng Xin and Xu Yuzhi used brain-computer weapons to persecute all company employees and former employees, and even they themselves were controlled." This person also donated millions to Wikileaks, attaching the same message. In total, 2,047 Ether were transferred, amounting to nearly $5.6 million in order to spread this message. I don’t know what to think of this, is this a high level smear campaign? Or is there more? One thing I know for sure, both are bananas! Full story here (click).

• Sam Altman keeps hinting to AGI, exciting or scary?

• AI can now write genomes from scratch. The Arc Institute and NVIDIA just published Evo-2, – a 40-billion parameter AI model trained on an expansive dataset of 9.3 trillion DNA base pairs from over 128,000 species—covering every domain of life. Scientists have already begun to explore Evo 2’s potential. In early tests, the model demonstrated state-of-the-art accuracy in classifying variants of the BRCA1 gene—a key player in breast cancer—predicting with 90% accuracy the impact of previously uncharacterized mutations. People often criticize when AI can help with “actual important” matters but I don’t think most people understand the progress that is being made. I strongly believe that in the next 5-10 years we could finally say goodbye to cancer..

• Remember the sell off that happened on the US Stock market, especially Nvidia dropping hard? I questioned it and thought it was overblown, as written in my edition 9 newsletter. Well see below, the stock is almost back up to the exact point it was right before the massive drop..

  

• I don’t think I have seen a robot dance this good yet 🤣. For the people wondering on why they hit it with a stick, the author added in the comments: “The sticks and balls shown in the video are technical methods to test the robustness of locomotion, which are widely used in Humanoid robot locomotion evaluation. It ensures that the robot would not suddenly break down and hurt people/surroundings in real applications.”

• Good tip on how to prompt “reasoning models” such as OpenAI’s o3-Mini. The image was created by @byhenlak and approved by OpenAI President Greg Brockman:

  

• Let me end with another great Apple TV show recommendation: Severance. Season 2 is happening at the moment and man it his a joy to watch. It tells the story of a company whom’s employees undergo a surgical procedure that splits their memories between work and personal life, unraveling dark corporate secrets in the process. Great acting, lovely “Apple like” aesthetics and a great story. Go check it out!

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^{Who am I and why you should be here:}

^{Over the years, I’ve navigated industries like advertising, music, sports, and gaming, always chasing what’s next and figuring out how to make it work for brands, businesses, and myself. From strategizing for global companies to experimenting with the latest tech, I’ve been on a constant journey of learning and sharing.}

^{This newsletter is where I’ll bring all of that together—my raw thoughts, ideas, and emotions about AI, blockchain, gaming, Gen Z & Alpha, and life in general. No perfection, just me being as real as it gets.}

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