MBD123: You're compromising with AI. You just don't know it.

16 March 2025 | Issue #123

In this issue:

You Accept From AI What You'd Never Accept From a Person
Google Can Recreate Your Landing Pages and Bypass Your Site
Three Types of Designers Your Team Needs
Marketing Jobs Most at Risk
Design Quote of the Week

You're Compromising With AI. You Just Don't Know It.

Most people push harder on the humans they work with than on the AI they use every day.

Think about that for a second. You'll send a design back three times. You'll redline a document, request another revision, escalate if you're not happy. But an AI gives you something mediocre and you post it, ship it, move on.

Why?

You Feel Like You Made It

There's a psychological effect that happens when you use AI. You wrote the prompt. You directed the output. The whole interaction feels like you're in control, which means whatever comes out feels like yours.

That sense of ownership is powerful. And it might be exactly what's lowering your standards.

When a human gives you something you don't like, the gap is obvious. There's friction. You can feel the distance between what you wanted and what you got. But with AI, that ownership smooths everything over. You touched it, you shaped it, so it feels finished. Even when it isn't.

This is the compromise you're not seeing.

The Finish Line Moves Without You Noticing

Here's what actually happens when most people use AI. They have a vague idea of what they want. They prompt, get a result, and evaluate it against what they're looking at, not what they originally imagined.

The output becomes the reference point. And once that happens, of course it looks pretty good.

Experienced creatives do something different. They hold the original vision in their head and measure the output against that. They know what they asked for. They can see the gap. And they make a conscious decision about whether to close it or accept it.

That's not a natural skill. It's a developed one. And most people using AI right now haven't developed it yet.

No Friction, No Signal

Part of what makes human collaboration work is the friction. Someone pushes back and you have to defend your thinking. Someone misunderstands and you have to get clearer about what you actually want. The resistance is annoying in the moment, but it sharpens the work.

AI has none of that. It responds without resistance. It produces without complaint. And we've spent our whole lives learning how hard we can push someone before it costs us something socially. That instinct doesn't switch off just because there are no feelings to manage.

So we pull our punches. We accept the first result, or the second. We call it good enough and move on, feeling productive because the tool is fast and the output looks polished.

The confidence of the formatting is doing a lot of work here. Complete sentences. Clean structure. It signals "done" in a way that a rough human draft never would. But signals aren't the same as quality.

The Question Worth Asking

I know when I'm compromising with AI. I've built up enough experience to hold my original vision steady and measure what I'm getting against it. Sometimes I decide the gap is acceptable. Sometimes I push harder. Sometimes I start over.

But I had to develop that. It didn't come automatically.

So next time you feel satisfied with an AI output, stop for a second. Ask yourself: did I get what I wanted, or did I just stop wanting more?

THE VISUAL MARKETER

One-Year Anniversary

Also, to celebrate the upcoming one-year anniversary of The Visual Marketer, I've temporarily lowered the price of the paperback and digital edition!

NEWS

Google can Recreate Your Landing Page and Bypass you

Three Types of Designers Your Team Needs

Marketing Jobs Most at Risk

AI Prompts for SEO

DESIGN QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risk, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook

My AI disclaimer: I wrote this week's article and Claude helped me with edits.

Midjourney image prompt: a human man, mid 40s, is giving a high five to a robot. The human is on the right. The robot is on the left. A vibrant, high-contrast illustration using flat vector-style shading with neon and duotone color blocking. The characters are stylized with exaggerated lighting in magenta and cyan tones, set against a yellow background. There’s a strong use of shadow and highlight to create depth without using gradients. It uses clean lines and a minimal background to keep focus on the figures and objects. --ar 16:9