The biggest threat to creativity isn't robots, it's us

Remember that guy who made an action figure of himself on LinkedIn? 

Not a plastic one but an AI-generated, blister-pack, comic-con-style figure, complete with accessories.

It was clever. It was fun. It was unexpected. It stood out. And dare I say it? It was 'creative'.

He used a new tool to say something new. It wasn’t just AI for AI’s sake. It was a creative act. And then, right on cue, the copycats arrived.

Suddenly, everyone and their UX cousin had one.

Same pose. Same packaging. Same accessories; MacBook, iPhone, moleskine notebook, coffee mug. Maybe a dog if they were really pushing the boat out.

What started as 'creative' quickly became 'content'. That slippery word we now use for anything mildly visual and algorithm-friendly.

It’s like watching someone invent punk music, only for everyone else to show up dressed as Sid Vicious, playing the same three chords, badly.

This isn’t a critique of AI, it’s a critique of what we do with it because the problem isn’t the machine, it’s the lack of imagination when we touch it.

AI is just a tool. Like a paintbrush, a camera, or a bloody hammer. In the right hands, it builds something new.

In the wrong ones, it copies what’s already been done. Again. And again. And again.

LinkedIn is now a sea of same.

Different faces, same figures.

Different roles, same props.

Different industries, same idea.

That’s not innovation, that’s karaoke.

What this trend really shows us is that the biggest threat AI poses to creativity is the temptation to stop thinking. We get a shiny tool, we see something that works, and instead of creating or originating, we replicate.

In seconds, we go from inspired to derivative.

From making to mimicking.

This is how creative industries die.

Not with a robot apocalypse, but with a thousand lazy prompts and a million samey LinkedIn posts all pretending to be original.

AI isn’t killing creativity. Our reaction to it is.

The first action figure? That was different. It was fun. It was someone being creative with the tools they had.

The rest? Well, let’s just say not everyone deserves to be shrink-wrapped.