AI Fatigue Is Getting Worse

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]The topic won't end.

[00:00:01]>> AI.

[00:00:02]>> AI. AI.

[00:00:03]>> The honeymoon phase has long been over, and the discourse from both sides, for or against, has only grown louder. It's like one ethical problem gets solved and three more grow in its place. Quite frankly, I'm sick of AI and how it's going to change the world and how it's going to maximize shareholder value and how I can't upgrade my PC because I've been priced out by multi-billion dollar deals. But I use it more than I ever have before. Since I'm an artist, maybe you've already decided what that makes me. But I don't think I'm alone. The research shows that usage has nearly doubled in the last 3 years. So clearly, one side is winning and we're all finally agreeing this is what's good for us. Except this is just usage statistics. This says nothing about me or you or anyone's moral conviction. Yet data like this seems to be the front of the narrative in shaping actual policy.

[00:00:48]It just feels off. There's a piece missing. Well, if one graph won't do, maybe a second will help. Advertising executives were asked how they think consumers feel about AI generated ads.

[00:00:59]Then consumers were asked how they actually feel. This was in 2024. There's a 32% delusion gap here. But it's gotten worse. In the most recent version of this poll, that gap has increased to 37%.

[00:01:12]There's that missing piece again. How is there such a big disconnect? I mean, this is from the heart of the digital ad industry. So, a stat like this feels like there's a ghost in the machine. If the people building the market aren't listening to the consumers, who are they listening to? And what happens when the gap gets too big to ignore?

[00:01:32]>> The AI, as they call it, a new industrial revolution.

[00:01:36]>> The rise of artificial intelligence.

[00:01:38]>> Artificial.

[00:01:38]>> Artificial intelligence.

[00:01:39]>> Intelligence.

[00:01:40]>> Artificial intelligence. That's AI.

[00:01:43]>> AI. We've all been asked for more sloth.

[00:01:47]We just don't have enough.

[00:01:48]>> I kind of think of ads as like a last resort for us.

[00:01:50]>> Open AI. People will start testing ads in chat GPT.

[00:01:53]>> I don't know if anyone here has used a bra, but it's pretty cool.

[00:01:56]>> And it turns out that humanity is not enough and that's AI.

[00:02:04]>> In order to figure this out, we need to take a step back and view this from a wider perspective. The history of the computer dates all the way back to the mid 1900s. I'm just kidding. We don't need an entire lesson on how the tech got here. I want to just cut right to the crux of the bet every major tech company is making summarized in this one clip. No one knows when super intelligence is going to be possible.

[00:02:22]Let's say that you weren't sure if it was going to be three or five years. If you build it out assuming it's going to be three years and it takes five, then you've lost, you know, maybe a couple hundred billion dollars or something.

[00:02:30]What I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side. If you build too slowly and then super intelligence is possible in 3 years, but you build it out assuming it would be there in 5 years, then you're just out of position. That's it right there. The premise of catching super intelligence or AGI or whatever you want to call it is too valuable to miss being in control of. With this premise, you have to be first. The California Gold Rush analogy gets thrown around all the time, but it's kind of true. Safety and sustainability took a backseat because if you didn't have ground, you didn't have a business. So, if you're in the 1800s in this situation, your only real concern is making sure that your neighbor doesn't get there before you do. So, every major tech company is really only listening to the sound of their competitors because it's the only threat that matters. I want to read a quote from tech analyst Ed Zitron who came up with the idea of the rot economy. Growth in this case is not necessarily about being bigger or better. It is simply more. Businesses are expected to be and rewarded for being eternal burning engines of capital that create more and more shareholder value while hopefully providing a service to a customer in the process.

[00:03:31]This was written in 2023. It's only proven to have gotten worse. The consumer is an afterthought. If AI were to be charging at cost what it actually costs, I think regular people would not pay for it at current levels, it's not worth it at that price for most people, but businesses would. And so I think that's why Open AI has been pivoting all the business clients. So let's look at the 37% gap again. If consumer sentiment is not as valuable of a metric as impressing shareholders is, then it's in every ad executive's interest to make it seem exciting to those investing in. We don't know if they believe it themselves or not. if there really is 82% that think consumers are positive about AI generated ads. But it doesn't matter because what they say does have material impact on what everyone else sees and uses on a day-to-day basis. Cory Doctoro wrote something relevant to this topic.

[00:04:17]He holds the belief that AI can't take most jobs, but that the only thing that really matters is the big AI salesmen are capable of convincing your boss that AI can actually replace you and that the reason your boss is such an easy target is because AI can probably do their job.

[00:04:31]I think this is a funny sentiment and although I think it too casually dismisses AI in the workplace altogether, there is still merit to that disconnect. It could very well explain the gap and why consumer sentiment is much lower. It's the same fundamentals of Ed's rot economy. The short-term gains from lower staff cost looks great for shareholders, but it's only kicking the can down the road. Cory is also more famously the writer that coined the term inshitification. If you're unfamiliar, it's the idea that first a platform is good to you, then they make you feel dependent on them, and once you're locked in and can't leave, they slowly squeeze you for profit. Uber is my personal favorite example of this because I remember the novelty of calling one early on, and what a deal it was over taxis. It felt like the future had arrived. And although that example is textbook in shitification, AI doesn't quite fit this for one specific reason, its speed and aggression. This is where Ed and Cory's ideas merge and the problem becomes more clear. Ed wrote this. When Uber jacked up prices, it did so gradually and also didn't ask users to dramatically shift how they think about using the app. Enthropic and Open AI have no clean way to jack up prices or cut costs. They can increase subscription fees, but doing so would lead to users paying two to five times what they're paying today, which would undoubtedly lead to massive churn. Is there a viable business at the current market dynamic right now? People are judging it based on the price, which is not real. Classic and shouldification requires trust to be built first because there has to be something to betray for it to work. AI is skipping the trust phase because the race against their competitors means they can't afford to spend years earning your loyalty. So, it ends up in everything you use. And this muddies the water because it's not like AI isn't inherently incredible tech a lot of the time. As a personal example, I really like some of the utility that AI and Photoshop has to offer, but I have to use Photoshop and I have to use Windows for my job. So when the tech doesn't land well or I fundamentally don't agree with how a company's developing their product, I'm trapped as a consumer. I don't feel like I have a choice anymore.

[00:06:23]>> I think the risk is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive.

[00:06:30]>> All of this then results in massive distrust on the individual level. But from the top down perspective, because consumers are an afterthought, it's just a necessary cost of doing business.

[00:06:43]Part of the reason I decided to make this video is because of the position that I'm in as an artist, both personally and professionally. Where I draw the line on what I think is and is not okay in regards to AI comes from a deeply personal place derived from that experience. The fulfillment that I get from doing what I do is not from maximizing the amount of things that I release into the world. But at the same time, I'm not deeply in love with every single step of the process. As with any job, even if you love what you do, there are trade-offs you deal with because of the grand scale of the work is worth it.

[00:07:11]However you define worth it. So, for me, those trade-offs might be manually masking a subject or filling in a part of an image. The modern utility of having a machine do that for me is something that I'm glad exists. But there are people staunchly against these use cases for a variety of reasons like the environmental impact or how it threatens their job security. On the flip side though, there are people who have found a lot of success using AI to build businesses or achieve otherwise unheard of feats. And to them, it's changed their lives for the better. How both camps came to their opinion is, just like me, deeply personal. Whether or not I agree with any of them doesn't change their lived experience. Okay, so how does this relate to AI fatigue?

[00:07:48]Well, this is the same problem from before looking at it from the bottom up.

[00:07:52]This view highlights a flaw in what's happening down here. Let me give an example. I recently posted a real on Instagram sharing the amount of AI I used in a recent creative piece. It was mostly utility, but there was one controversial use of generative AI, generating this video to use as a stock asset so I could stylize it myself in After Effects. And I concluded that if I'm in the driver's seat using it to make an asset, not the final shot, then it's a valid tool to reach for like any other. If I can avoid it and solve the problem in the same amount of time, then I do. That's the default. But something in the comments was a wake-up call for me. Amongst the conversation going on in there, a very talented friend of mine, an artist I've worked with before and respect greatly, shared his disagreement. He shared how Genai like this one has had a material impact on him as a DP with agencies dropping projects to go full AI generated instead of hiring a service. This stuck with me, something I decided to use indirectly harms someone that I know and respect.

[00:08:42]And there were replies to his comments saying that he just needs to get with the times and and this is it's here to stay, so this is just how it is. But how is that supposed to be productive when it strikes at the core of his own creative philosophy and how he enjoys making a living? What sense would it make to try and convince someone that their lived experience isn't true? And I know this isn't isolated to him or to the creative field. This is happening across industries. The resume is dead.

[00:09:06]It's a nightmare applying for jobs. It's just automated AI applications on LinkedIn getting rejected by automated AI HR departments. Ghost job listings are everywhere as yet another way to impress the same shareholders we spoke of before. So if it's your livelihood or your artistic conviction, nothing I say matters. No argument would override that. Nor would I want to. So with my friend, even though we fundamentally draw the line differently, I can't just pretend that his reality isn't there.

[00:09:32]And I can't shake that. And so this pushed me closer to what I think the core of the problem is. The for or against debate is a trap. There can be no winner. The tech is not going away, but a universal agreement is fundamentally impossible because there's nothing objective about lived experience. And down here from the bottomup perspective, the data shows it's actually causing damage. Take a look at this graph. This is not how much people trust AI, but how much they've changed their stance since a year ago.

[00:09:59]Notice the middle. Half the country is completely numb to the hype. Where they stood a year ago is where they stand now. But look at the extremes. For the people who are shifting, 16% trust AI much less while only 5% trust it much more. Trust is bleeding out. The AI is the future stance that keeps being promised doesn't feel relevant anymore.

[00:10:20]AI is here now and it's already in everything and has been for years at this point. So the excuse that all these problems will eventually get better soon is This same graph can change, but at the rate we're going, the fatigue this is all causing down here is building up and clashing more and more with that top down pressure. And I don't want to risk sidetracking too much with this point, but it all comes as a package. I touched on the jobs a bit already, but the political climate, affordability, the ongoing wars, they all share the same exhaustion factor. So although I'm focusing on AI in this video, it's important to mention that because this isn't happening in a vacuum. I think I've made my point here.

[00:10:55]From this perspective on the individual level, this is wholly unsustainable with how we're interacting on the micro scale to how trends are moving on the macro scale. So this begs the question then if both the top down pressure and the bottom-up reality are permanently building tension, then who cracks first?

[00:11:12]All right, let's bring this home.

[00:11:13]There's one more stat that I want to look at which I think pieces this all together. Gallup did a poll asking Americans if AI does more good or more harm. 57% answered that it does equal amounts of harm and good. This is the middle, but it's not a fence sitting opinion. And this is what I've been grasping at this whole time, that it can exist in both camps at the same time with valid reasons for both. I think it pairs with the Yugov poll that we just looked at before, too. That people aren't buying the BS and a literal majority feels that AI can be double-edged. So, hearing ad executives tell us that they think we all love AI generated ads, of course, this would cause fatigue. They're not speaking to the majority. And as I showed before with Corey and Ed's articles, they're not even talking to us at all. So, the question, who cracks first, the industry or the consumer? I think we actually already have our answer. The industry does. The big one that kicked this off for me was Enthropic versus the Pentagon. They had a $200 million contract, and the government wanted Enthropic to allow them to use all of their AI for autonomous weapons with no human pulling the trigger. There was two specific clauses that they wanted Enthropic to give ground on. Enthropic chose not to budge, so they lost the contract and got blacklisted and are currently being threatened by the US government. And at the same time while that happened, OpenAI swooped in and took their place. And so what was the windfall? Well, there was a mass exodus from Chat GBT and leading tons of people to switch to Claude. And I was one of them, which I actually now think it's a much better app. But anyway, that's besides the point. But you have to remember these are businesses. They go where they believe the money is. With OpenAI's current desperate position and where Anthropic stands, it's different for both. You could argue who shakes out with a better deal between a government contract and public sentiment, but I think it's pretty clear on an optic standpoint, things massively shifted.

[00:12:52]That's just one example, but think about what I just said. Companies go where the money is, and they are far from the only one testing this. The EU's AI act has been so strict that major tech companies have pulled AI products out of Europe entirely. Microsoft actually pulled back on Copilot since their massive AI investments are not converting to big consumers in the way they had promised.

[00:13:10]Open AAI abandoned their money bleeding Sora app which also killed their billion-dollar Disney deal in the process. The Supreme Court just effectively killed copyright for purely AI generated work. Forester ran a study that showed 55% of employers regret laying off workers because of AI. And from my industry perspective, I've started to see a wave of marketing specifically calling out no AI use in their work or work explicitly done by humans. To be clear, I'm not saying that the end result is everyone bailing on AI. I'm saying that this modern day California gold rush actually has a timer and it's becoming more and more apparent that it's approaching zero. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. None of this happens without what's building on the ground. There is a valid genuine debate happening that does have a function. That's where the culture figures out how we feel about it through iteration and iteration. It takes time. But where change happens is in the battle of attrition between the consumer and the industry when things don't feel aligned. I really do believe in voting with your wallet and that I believe that calling out this frustration does actually have a ripple effect even if it's small. Just starting this conversation in this way. So the missing piece, the cause of the 37% gap in the beginning and everything else downstream, it's the lack of nuance.

[00:14:21]It's been stripped out entirely. I'll speak for myself. I want to be heard. I want companies to listen again. And I want products at the highest level to be developed for the sake of the consumer, not racing to be competitors. Even if that means that making it for the sake of the consumer is just the more profitable play, great. That's fine. But it needs to be the case. Now, I get it.

[00:14:40]This might sound kind of idealistic right now. And maybe we never reach that fully 100% perfect world. But just remember that companies follow the money. It's not going to happen immediately. It will take some time. We are going through growing pains on a societal level. But if you really believe that nothing ever happens, nothing ever will.

[00:15:00]So, what am I doing about AI fatigue?

[00:15:02]Well, I create. It's my remedy for anything, AI or otherwise. Going down this rabbit hole for this research actually changed my mind quite a bit, which is why I think it's so valuable to pull on a thread like this. Last summer, a friend asked for some advice on how to navigate the future of AI. He came to me with a lot of concern about his own job security as a creative and if we might be headed over the edge of a cliff soon.

[00:15:23]I'm just having a bit of a nightmare over the last couple of days. I've been sitting on this for a couple years at this point. And although the ground keeps shifting, my core belief hasn't.

[00:15:32]Here's how I see it. Human connection is biological. We're social creatures and we care about the story behind how something was made. Think about your favorite athlete, if you have one. They may be incredibly talented, but what we get invested in is the storyline of their career and what they're pulling off. If they play a game while they're sick, if they win the World Cup near the end of their incredible career, it means something to us more than just the amount of points that they put up on a scoreboard. And the same applies to your favorite director, painter, actor, musician, and everything in between. A story needs a storyteller in the front seat. I'm going to link in the description to a video my brother posted on his second channel, uh, reading a couple essays that he wrote about AI. I highly recommend it if you want to hear a more emotional angle for this topic.

[00:16:13]He's a fantastic writer and I very much resonate with his takes. If you want kind of an extension of how I feel about this, if you want to see how I actually made this video, I just posted a director's commentary breaking down the whole thing available now on my Patreon.

[00:16:25]That's where I actually teach how to edit, animate, and create the way that I do. There's an entire library of tutorials that keeps growing, as well as a chat to ask me questions directly, and it's a great way to support the channel at the same time. Okay, thanks for watching. See you soon.