The Hottest Trend in Marketing Right Now? Hating on AI.

You’ve probably noticed it: the coolest thing a brand can do in 2025 is loudly, proudly, righteously hate AI.
Not ignore it. Not quietly use it.
No — publicly denounce it like it’s the new palm oil.

Every second campaign now has this tone of:
“Don’t worry, we’re still human, unlike those soulless robots over there 👀.”

And look… I get it.

I’m also sitting here looking at these ads, muttering to myself… “hell ya… AI sucks. You tell em’ Heineken!!!”.

We all crave connection. We all crave authenticity.
Nobody wants creativity turned into an automated sludge factory.

But something about this trend feels off.

Somewhere along the way, demonising AI became a marketing aesthetic — not a thoughtful position.
It’s the new “we care about the planet” badge.
A story that feels safe. A story that signals humanity.
A story that doesn’t require much thinking.

Humans ≠ Replaceable. Obviously.

AI isn’t a replacement for the messy, warm, irrational bits of us.
No tool ever will be.

But here’s the part we’re not talking about:

What if AI isn’t taking connection away — it’s giving some of it back?

If I graphed the past decade of my life —
hours writing code,
hours designing,
hours buried in emails,
hours wrestling a PDF,
hours in meetings that could’ve been texts,
hours being “productive” —

…and compared that to the time I get with my kids, my partner, my family…

For the first time ever, the “genuine human moments” bar is going up.

Not because I became enlightened.
Not because I cracked work–life balance.
Not because I downloaded a mindfulness app.

It’s going up because AI quietly stole the chores.

It stole the repetitive work.
It stole the blank-page anxiety.
It stole the stuff that used to consume entire nights and weekends.

AI isn’t replacing connection — it’s creating space for it.

And this is where my real fear kicks in:

If we beat the anti-AI drum too hard, are we just dragging ourselves backwards?

Back to the old paradigm.
Back to the world where I’d spend days diagnosing some stupid bug.
Back to the nights staring at a screen while my family sleeps.
Back to sweating over deadlines I’m too embarrassed to admit are slipping because of something microscopic, obscure, and impossible to explain to anyone who doesn’t code.

I don’t want that world back.
I don’t think anyone does.

But if the cultural narrative becomes “AI bad, human good,”
we risk throwing out the one tool that’s finally reducing burnout rather than contributing to it.

We need to stay careful about the stories we sell.

Because stories become beliefs.
Beliefs become behaviours.
And behaviours shape culture.

If brands keep training people to fear AI, we’re not protecting humanity.
We’re just blinding ourselves to the ways it actually supports humanity.

Yes, there’s nuance.
We need boundaries.
We need ethics.
We need creativity that comes from real humans.

But we also need honesty:

AI isn’t the enemy of connection.
Distraction is. Burnout is. Overwork is.

AI is the first tool in years that pushes back against those things instead of amplifying them.

If anything, it’s letting me be more present — not less.

That’s the part of the story we’re not telling.

And yes, I wrote this with ChatGPT’s help (em dashes intact).
Not because I’m lazy — well, maybe a little — but because I’d rather spend my morning making memories with my kids than fighting a blank page.

AI gave me that time.

Happy trails. ✌️