There are two kinds of people talking about AI right now. One sells you a 4,000-euro workshop and says "ecosystem" fourteen times in twenty minutes. The other just gets on with it. I try to belong to the second kind — even if I have to admit that talking about AI currently pays considerably better than working with it.

At Starks.Design it works like this: I'm a one-man business. On paper. In practice I have a team of specialised AI agents — one researches and checks facts, one writes copy, one thinks in design, one builds websites, one handles marketing. Each has a role, each has limits, and above them all sits one that coordinates and decides. Sounds like science fiction. In day-to-day life it's remarkably mundane.

What the AI is good at

The honest strength is speed on the grunt work. A competitor analysis that used to eat half a day now runs in minutes. Five copy variants instead of one. A first draft you can actually talk about, instead of a blank page you sit in front of. AI doesn't take the work off my hands — it takes the waiting off my hands.

What it can't do

And now the part the workshop sellers leave out: AI has no taste. It produces the statistical average of everything it has ever seen — and the average is, by definition, average. Without someone who knows what good looks like, you reliably get mediocrity. Clean, fast, interchangeable mediocrity.

I've been doing this for over twenty years — design, web, marketing. And that's exactly the point where AI starts to be valuable to me. Not because it replaces me, but because I can tell when it's serving up nonsense.

An example: the AI suggests a layout. Technically correct, all the elements present. And yet the spacing is off, the hierarchy is flat, it feels like a kit of parts. You only see that if you've built the ten thousand layouts that came before. The AI doesn't see it. I do. That's not a charge against the machine — it's simply the division of labour.

The deal for you as a customer

Concretely, that means: you get the speed of a large team and the judgement of someone who knows the craft. The AI does the legwork, I make the decisions. You're not paying for four interns sorting stock photos, you're paying for results.

I'm not telling you this because AI is currently the word you use to buy attention. I'm telling you because it's more honest than what you usually hear: AI is no magic. It's a damned fast, talent-free employee that never sleeps. What comes of it is still decided by the human at the wheel.

(And yes, I know how this sounds. A designer explaining why designers are still needed. Read it anyway as what it is — not a defence, but a way of working that works.)