The most impressive portfolio in the room may now belong to the least capable creative. Someone with little design training, no filmmaking background and limited commercial experience can produce imagery that looks as accomplished as the work of a seasoned professional. AI has made it easy to look talented, and that presents a problem for an industry that has traditionally relied on portfolios to identify creative ability.

My business partner, Marie-Céline Merret, handles much of the talent vetting at our business and recently encountered a revealing example.

A junior designer looked exceptional on paper and interviewed convincingly — as an AI native business we look for AI fluency which she proved well in her design explorations. Yet when asked to develop an actual layout, she struggled with typography, hierarchy, brand communication and the fundamentals of visual design.

Her portfolio suggested a rather advanced junior designer, but the practical exercise revealed someone who still had much to learn about the fundamentals in the design discipline.

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Marie-Céline (MC) Merret Wirström and Vinne Schifferstein Vidal

This isn’t necessarily an age problem. A 45-year-old without a creative background can just as easily discover generative AI and become an “accomplished image-maker” without understanding commercial storytelling. Equally, a 23-year-old might possess extraordinary creative instincts.

Having spent much of my career working with talent across agencies and production companies, I know experience doesn’t automatically guarantee excellence. But AI has made it considerably harder to distinguish true creative expertise from the appearance of it.

The market for lemons

Economist George Akerlof described the “market for lemons”, explaining how markets malfunction when buyers cannot reliably distinguish quality from mediocrity. We see a version........

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