Thanks again for tuning in. This is Week 3, Episode 3. Everything I do is for my fans.

Blurred lines. Not the creepy kind, but I still know you want it. Read on for more.

At work, we’re finding that AI is making it easier than ever for previously unincorporated roles & functions to upskill - and upskill quickly.

For example, for our website design/development projects, we have had an assembly line type of process for years. Every stop in the assembly line requires a person to fill it. When rework happens, these assembly line folks have tasks assigned to them, and often, have to work together to make the magic happen, according to the previous boundaries:

Design → Frontend → Backend → Content & SEO → Launch (Proj. Mgr)

It requires excellent teammates who work well together, a great culture that encourages that teamwork, a project manager who understands a lot about the project and websites in general, and a lot of handover and handoff.

With AI, we’re now able to do this:

Design → Programming → Content & SEO (mainly quality checks, 40-50% of original workload) → Launch

The assembly line is still in shape, but AI has made it simpler than ever to blend frontend, backend, and content population into one clean step, all in custom code. One person handles what used to be 3 different people. This simplifies everything in the process, and speeds up a lot of the natural friction points & bottlenecks.

While the AI tools needed to be guided by an experienced developer, the speed is excellent. The kicker is that the experienced developer here was previously someone who was potentially a frontend expert, but didn’t know a ton about backend. AI has changed this, as it can handle 80% of the backend “grunt work”, and the frontend expert can simply consult with a backend expert on the outstanding tasks in order to prompt the tool to build it correctly.

Business implications aside (obviously it’s an exciting time at Colophon), it’s absolutely fascinating that these previously distinct lines (for over 20 years of the company) have been blurred in a matter of months. To the point we’ve had to alter our decades-old process and are cross-skilling and upskilling in unique ways. It got me thinking: What else is being blurred out there?

A couple of ideas:

Of course, this began a long time ago - and has never truly been a 1:1 relationship, but this is almost completely out the door for the younger generation. What began with millennials in Snapchat filters of puppy dog ears has evolved into the Instagramification (IMNLDWI*) of life - showing off your best moments throughout your digital presence (no need to worry about the bad moments).

Now, we’re a step further. You can use AI to generate completely fictional images and videos, come up with captions, write a pretty thoughtful tweet, comment something relatively clever on a LinkedIn post, and write a 1,000 word newsletter to your followers.

You did absolutely none of that but prompt a bot, and copy/paste the response. At best, you tweaked what something (an inanimate something, by the way) created for you. People are effectively able to outsource their entire identity to a robot.

Dovetailing off the above implication, people can now take credit for the ideas and art of robots. There’s a real implication that people may no longer understand what they’ve come up with versus what a robot provided for them.

Let’s play this out. If you and your buddy were spitballing business ideas, and came up with a great one together - Silicon Valley calls that “a cofounder meetcute” (this is actually Peter Thiel’s technical term). Perhaps one person came up with it first, perhaps it was a group effort. Perhaps it was just one person helping another with their idea, and there’s no implied equity. Any way you slice it, most people with a shred of empathy would give some sort of credit to each other on the mental gymnastics needed to arrive at the brain blast.

Now… Are you and ChatGPT “cofounders” if it helped you position your new business ideas? Of course not! *scoffs* I simply accelerated my own thinking by using a new tool, just like a consultant used PowerPoint to whiteboard a synergistic opportunity for a client in 2001 (wait, consultants are still doing that? It’s 2026, guys.).

Let’s pressure test that a bit in a more nuanced scenario: Art. Is Nano Banana simply a tool you used or a “design partner” if it designed a sweet concert decal sticker that you did nothing but prompt it repetitively to create (guilty)? Is it my sticker since it was my idea? Or does Nano Banana deserve the credit for bringing that to life? I’m certainly not a good enough artist with traditional tools to create something like that... But is AI just a new tool in my tool belt that helps me level the playing field against those pesky designers? How is this different than employing a human designer to help me create this?

The new difference is that I was the only human involved. Which makes me like to think that I designed the sticker! It was my idea and I was the only person involved start-to-finish! I’m a designer now! But… is it really my creation if I wasn’t capable of coming up with it on my own?

My initial hypothesis is that there is indeed a difference and still a line.
My initial observation is that collectively, we currently seem to draw that line at taste of the output (whether that line is right or wrong).

There are people that describe themselves as AI musicians, AI film makers, and more… And I don’t know if I outright hate that or think it’s an affront. Lowering the barrier to entry to create art is pretty cool in theory. But that requires taste, and there is still an element of skill and effort required to using these tools well. Not everybody is creating their own full-length AI movie that’s getting serious media buzz. Whether you like it or not, there’s some element that separates art from slop, even if AI has touched it at some point.

Aside: It does, however, also mean we’re lowering the barrier to entry to create and mass distribute garbage by The Tasteless (What a burn, by the way. Would cry if someone hit me with a ‘tasteless!’).

I’m not sure where you land on this - I’m not even sure where I land on it yet - but it’s fascinating nonetheless that we have literal intelligence feeding us ideas that blur the lines of what’s ours and what’s not. I expect this line will continued to get blurred and moved as the tech develops.

This thought is far from over. I’ll bring this back on a rainy day as I think about this further.

Not exactly the soundtrack to my week - I just want you to share in the misery of these catchy tunes getting locked into your brain for the foreseeable future.

Sincerely,

Zander Barth

P.S. - IMNLSDWI* - It’s My Newsletter, Deal With It - I make the f*cking word rules around here.