Good for nothing
If AI can make it good, how will you make it great?
I’ve been making movies this week. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I’ve been playing around with Veo3. If you haven’t taken the time to play with AI video production, you really should. Not because we’re all destined to become filmmakers, but because there’s a clear line between how AI is disrupting the movie business and how it’s set to revolutionize the product design business.
A few years ago, we were all laughing at the nightmarish memes of Will Smith eating spaghetti. A few weeks ago, Veo3 absolutely crushed this informal benchmark. Technology is no longer the limiting factor. AI can create beautiful video content to the same standard as talented artists and production people.
But what’s more exciting to me than the technical prowess of these new models is the narrative arc for the industry. Back when you couldn’t tell where Will Smith ended and spaghetti began, it was easy to either be a skeptic and assume the technology would never be good enough, or a pessimist and assume this was the beginning of the end. SAG-AFTRA went on strike. Industry leaders talked about mass layoffs. It was pretty bleak.
This week, I watched a showreel from 3.11 Labs (an AI Research Lab and Production Studio) and the reel is fantastic—but what’s even better is how the founder, Benjamin Benichou framed the work. He said:
“We’ve spent the past year working behind the scenes with some of the world’s most iconic brands, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. Not to make memes, not to fake ads, but to bring real vision to life. Because it’s not about shortcuts, it’s about removing the creative compromises that kill ideas before they’re born.”
I did my own (admittedly low-effort) research by messaging a friend who makes movies for a living. I asked if he used and/or liked any of the AI video tools. “I’m all in on AI,” he replied. “I collaborate with all the tools all of the time. They’re shit at iterating, but they’re amazing if you know how to use them.”
Through a weird twist of fate, I found myself at the Edinburgh TV festival in 2012. I’ll never forget sitting in an auditorium, listening to Netflix explain their approach to House of Cards. The series hadn’t been released yet, but the executives played the title sequence—which was made by David Fincher—and explained how they planned to release the whole season in one go. There was this weird energy in the room—somewhere between awe and fear. It strikes me that those Netflix executives could have said the same thing about their technology-fuelled 2012 approach as Benjamin did above: “it’s about removing the creative compromises that kill ideas before they’re born.”
This makes me question what’s possible with AI in product design. In a matter of months, the movie business has gone from fearing layoffs to being energized and empowered. It makes me wonder where we are in the cycle as product designers, and whether we’re building the right tools. Are we focused on empowering designers to land more of their vision? Or are we simply taking a step in the process and seeing if a robot can perform that part of the job?
The movie business didn’t just adopt the technology—they shaped it to pursue creative vision without compromise. Brilliant, creative people like Eliza McNitt are making films with these tools. It would be so easy for that industry to stay in the realm of efficiency. To ask what AI can do to speed things up and make things simpler. But instead, creative people are channeling the momentum from the technology to serve their creative vision.
We all spend so long honing our product design craft. We fight for what we know is good design—clear, scalable, easy to use, accessible. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. But when I see filmmakers embrace these new AI tools—not to cut corners or chase efficiency, but to remove creative compromises—I can’t help but swoon.
It’s this spirit we need to capture in product design: the idea that value can be created by the unique vision of a creative person (or team of creative people). In a week where Jonathan Anderson brought an unmistakably personal vision to Dior, we’re reminded of the commercial value of vision, clarity, and human intention.
Put another way, when AI means everyone can make something good, we should all be thinking deeply about how we make something great.
There’s no playbook for this. There shouldn’t be—just like there’s no playbook for being an artist, or a musician. It’s a combination of skill, empathy, craft, vision, but most of all taste. The brilliant Stephanie Tyler expressed something in Taste is the New Intelligence that I can’t stop thinking about:
You build taste the same way you build strength: by choosing the heavier lift. The richer input. The slower hit. The thing that doesn’t give you a dopamine spike, but gives you a deeper signal.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to put my phone down for the rest of the day to see what might light up my creative mind.
🔗 A few great links 🔗
This is our first week sharing links (a request from many readers), they’re intended to be interesting but tangential.
AI Research feels smart…until it isn’t
Ezra Klein gives a characteristically thoughtful take on how he uses AI and where he’s found the edges: the killer point for me is “[AI research instead of reading yourself] doesn’t change you…what knowledge is supposed to do is change you, and it changes you because you make connections to it.”
The Gap by Ira Glass
A film originally shared by the film-making friend I referenced in this week’s edition. A great reminder for everyone that disappointments shouldn’t lead to quitting—it takes a while and you have to fight your way through it.
Rick Owens in Concordia
Speaking of taste and design intention—I love Rick Owens and this story of how he goes into “monk mode” when making his collections in Concordia, Italy. I find this to be a fascinating contrast to the way we (Product Designers) tend to swarm around problems with cross-functional teams of people.