Ex-OpenAI brand lead: AI makes tasteful-but-forgettable brands worthless
every · x · 2026-08-29
Emily Vernon, cofounder of Abstract Group and former brand lead at OpenAI, Stripe, and Google, argues AI makes tasteful-but-forgettable brands cheap to generate — a few prompts produce passable, even tasteful work, so no one will pay six figures and six months for mediocrity.
Echoing John Waters's "tyranny of good taste," her answer is unpredictability: neuroscience shows the brain notices and remembers surprises while filing the predictable as forgettable — and predictability is AI's core premise. Practical moves: get off the grid for inspiration, ditch recommendation feeds, mute noise, and reward genuinely hard creative work.
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