Return of the Prompt

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about the future of AI through the lens of a middle-aged creative bingeing the latest Star Trek series on Paramount Plus. Star Trek seemed a decent parallel, what with its tradition of parables, warnings about technology, quaint-but-wonky visual effects, and hive-mind decision that Patrick Stewart is a sex symbol. You can read it here if you’re a completist.

Now here it is, 2026, and we’re no longer in the world of science fiction. AI has bumped up against the science fact that we can now make whatever we want a reality. Which naturally leads us to Star Wars. I may love the science fiction of Star Trek, but my soul belongs to the fantasy of Star Wars.

Star Wars, at its heart, is not about space. It’s about power. Who has it. Who masters it, and the choices they make. And what happens when something ancient, powerful and mysterious suddenly becomes widely accessible to people who, five minutes ago, were simple moisture farmers bullseyeing womprats in their T-16’s.

Only two years ago, seeing what AI could do felt like discovering the Force existed. Promising. Slightly theoretical. You could sense its potential, but it mostly just lifted small rocks. First-drafted emails. Comped rudimentary storyboards. Versioned search copy.

In the past six months, something shifted. Not gradually. Suddenly. Like the moment in Episode V, when Luke realizes the cave isn’t just a cave. An epiphany.

Remember when Will Smith eating spaghetti was a collective nightmare we all shared? Now we have Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise trading punches in a video so uncanny valley-real it’s much scarier. 

But like all things that matter in this business, this is not just a creative revolution. It’s an economic one.

For the better part of two decades, software was the safest bet in the galaxy. Software as a Service companies were valued like planetary infrastructure. Their logic was simple and sound: sell software that makes humans more productive. Charge per human. Scale infinitely. Investors loved it. Employees loved it. Everyone loved it.

But what happens when the humans become optional?

February 3rd, Anthropic released plug-ins for its AI agent “Claude” that effectively do the same work that many SaaS companies sell as core products. February 4th, investors in Salesforce, Adobe, LegalZoom and other software giants got skittish. It’s no coincidence investors in Omnicom and WPP did also. 

The value of software has always been tied to its ability to empower human labor. CRM systems help salespeople sell. Design software helps designers design. Marketing platforms help marketers market. But if the marketer is now software too, then software is no longer the tool. It’s the worker.

Last week, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI, stated that AI could replace most white-collar jobs within 18 months. Not assist. Replace. And not some. All. When he specifically mentioned marketing workers as a prime example of who would be obsolete, my sarlacc puckered. 

Two years ago, we were telling ourselves that AI could write copy, but it couldn’t have ideas. It could generate images, but it couldn’t have taste. It could remix, but it couldn’t originate. That was comforting. It was also wrong.

AI doesn’t need taste. It only needs proximity to taste. And it has ingested the collective output of the known universe at a scale and speed no creative director could successfully pilot. Every headline. Every campaign. Every film. Every book. Every critique and every accolade. It has seen more creative than any human who has ever lived. It is not creative the way we are. But it doesn’t have to be. It just has to be good enough, often enough, cheaply enough.

And more and more often, it is.

If AI can generate 1,000 campaign concepts in the time it takes me to drink my coffee, can I still be the Jedi, or am I destined to be the moisture farmer? It’s tempting to frame this as a battle. Humans versus machines. Rebels versus Empire. But that metaphor breaks down quickly. Because we built the Empire. We trained it. Fed it. Optimized it. We handed it our portfolios and asked it to learn. So it did.

The truth is, AI is less like the Death Star looming overhead, and more like the Force itself. Neutral. Amplifying. It will make mediocre creatives faster. It will make good creatives dangerous. And it will make great creatives almost unfair. I will aspire to be “dangerous.”

The virtual junior creative I referenced two years ago has grown up. It no longer just versions search copy. It concepts. It shoots. It edits. It produces. It never sleeps. It never burns out. It doesn’t hesitate and it never stares at the blinking cursor.

But it also doesn’t care.

It doesn’t know why something matters. It doesn’t feel the risk of putting something into the world that might fail. It doesn’t understand the nagging, irrational certainty that an idea is right even when the data disagrees.

It has no fear. Which means it has no courage either. That part is still ours. For now.

The creatives who thrive in this new era won’t be the ones who resist AI. And they won’t be the ones who surrender to it either. They’ll be the ones who learn to wield it. Who understand that the value is no longer in simply producing the work, but in knowing the work worth producing.

The Force was never about lifting rocks or X-Wings. It was about judgment. Timing. Intent. Control.

Anyone can swing a lightsaber. Not everyone knows when to ignite it. We are not being replaced. We are being redefined.The question is not whether AI will take your job. It’s whether you’ll evolve your role before it does.

Because the Force is here now. And it is strong.

But it doesn’t have to be the Terminator.

I’ll be back.