It's not about quality, it's about recognition

Last week, I was on the jury of yet another podcast pitch event — and I noticed something interesting. Every single student used AI to generate their cover art. That fact alone speaks volumes.

But what really caught my attention was something else. I realized that the covers that looked obviously AI-generated — even without weird artifacts or mistakes — put me off. Meanwhile, those that managed to hide their artificial origin felt more polished and appealing. Why is that?

The better AI gets at generating images, the more I realize: the issue isn’t about quality — it’s about recognition.

You look at an image, and suddenly it clicks: “Ah, this was made by AI.” And just like that, its value drops. It stops feeling alive. It’s as if your brain has a built-in trigger for valuing human effort — or noticing its absence.

But if that recognition doesn’t happen, the AI image retains its value — even if it’s technically bad. That’s why low-effort AI slop still thrives on platforms like Facebook — the audience there simply doesn’t notice it’s artificial.

Which leads me to a bigger question: what if this mental mechanism isn’t limited to AI? What if we tend to devalue any work that feels like it “just happened”? But once we associate it with a specific person — it suddenly feels alive, cared for, meaningful?

If that’s the case, maybe we should train ourselves not to detect AI-generated content (since soon we won’t be able to), but to notice and appreciate the invisible human work all around us.