Taste is the expensive bit

The most important button in any generative system is not Generate. It is Delete.

Machines are exceptionally good at options. Ten headlines. Six structures. Four tones of voice. A warmer ending. A more dynamic opening. Another version in which the customer is at the heart of everything, where they will presumably be discovered alongside the innovation and a number of key stakeholders.

The abundance feels productive because something keeps happening. But writing is not the accumulation of alternatives. It is the removal of the wrong ones.

Taste is the ability to recognise that the accurate sentence is still false in spirit. That the clever line belongs to the writer rather than the piece. That a customer quotation proves less than the unglamorous number next to it. That the expert’s hesitant phrase contains more truth than the approved paragraph. That the ending arrived 150 words ago.

This is awkward for organisations because taste is difficult to procure. It does not fit neatly into a workflow and cannot always explain itself before it acts. It is built from having read widely, written badly, been edited properly, watched audiences misunderstand things and developed a memory for language that almost works.

AI will raise the floor. Fewer people will need to suffer the genuinely terrible first draft. Good. It will also make the middle extremely crowded. Every organisation will have access to lucid structure, acceptable grammar and endless plausible copy.

The value will sit at the edges: original knowledge at the beginning and judgement at the end.

The words in between are becoming the cheap bit.