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Weekly Exhale

“Taste” is having a moment. It’s the latest entry in the canon of why we’re okay and AI isn’t. Like all buzzwords, it’s already buckling under the weight of overuse. It shows up in posts, usually followed by some version of: “That’s why AI will never be able to...” Feel. Curate. Discern. Taste is being positioned—somewhat desperately—as the last human moat.

As a lifer in creative advertising, this is something you'd definitely want to slap a heart on or clap three times for. At first.

Whether it’s Jony Ive being hired by OpenAI, Google partnering with Gentle Human, or the simple fact that Microsoft’s head of AI takes a keen interest in fashion, there are signs that taste is eating Silicon Valley (the phrase first made the rounds via Anu Atluru in Spring 2024).

Yesterday, Meta took a $3.5 billion stake (3%) in RayBan's parent EssilorLuxottica. The logic follows: In a world of technological abundance (and in the race for wearable AI), what matters now is aesthetics, visual design and artistry.

And only we can do that. Only humans know what others will like before they do. Only we have instincts that the data never shows. Right?

You can see this playing out in the valuations of ‘wrapper products’. Perplexity packages multiple LLMs into one elegant front-end (valuation: $9 billion). Cursor drops those same LLMs into a VS Code environment (same valuation). And Superhuman is just Gmail made to feel slick (just sold to Grammarly for $875 million).

None of these reinvent the engine. They refit the interior. Streamlined controls, butter-smooth steering, every dial exactly where you want it. Maybe they don’t go as far as the delight of an entirely unnecessary walnut dash. But the instinct is the same: Make it feel better, make it feel yours.

To invoke taste is to push back against AI. Maybe it can replicate intelligence. But not imagination. Not intention. Not the irrational, unreasonable desire to build things that move us.

As the late artist Sebastian Horseley once told me: “Unlike animals, culture is what separates man from his faeces.”

Except he was wrong.

Animals do have culture. And it's likely that AI can learn to mimic taste, too. The highest-grossing movies aren’t artful indies; they’re Minecraft and Mission Impossible 8. Porsche’s best-seller isn’t a walnut dash sports car, but an SUV with rubber mats and Isofix child seats.

And for brands, the gap is wider still. As we were reminded again this week, most of what wins at awards shows—the arbiters of supposed taste—was never even real.

So yes, fashion, design, and good creative choices are having a moment. Long may it last. But the conversation isn’t being led by artists. It’s being led by VCs and MBAs, people trained to harvest culture. People fluent in creative destruction.

The truth is that a tsunami of capital has gone into AI, and no one has drawn up the people plan. No one’s figured out what happens to anyone.

And if this change unfolds slowly, and the flood seeps in, then “taste” will live up to its worst reputation: a velvet rope for elite hacks to justify who gets to stay and who gets left outside.

Arthur Curran was born in 1920 and died in 1991, aged 71. A picture of him is burned in my memory. Sepia-toned and softly lit, a formal portrait in his army uniform, regulation haircut, somewhere between service and homecoming. There’s a smile that doesn’t quite show itself, but you know it’s there. A sense of duty in his eyes.

That photo was always on the wall, in all four houses I grew up in. This was my mother’s father. My grandad.

He was old, of course. And old people, to kids, are fair game.

He’d served in the army as a cook. My mum would joke about how they lived off scraps he reworked into “something edible”, always with far too much salt. Her line was that we’d won the war by feeding his food to the enemy.

My Dad and I had a particular nickname for him. We called him Supersonic Arthur. It started because he insisted on fixing everything with wood. Bookshelves, fuse boxes, car window handles, you name it, he’d patch it up with some scrap of two-by-four pulled out from the shed.

And when he visited, he’d insist on walking you through each repair like he was a NASA engineer. I just wanted to play computer games or watch TV. He wanted to give me a nail by nail, screw by screw breakdown.

The truth is Supersonic was out of touch. A bit pointless, I thought. We all kinda laughed at him.

When my mother passed, I boxed up his service records. His medals. His cookbooks. A faded certificate from a county ping-pong tournament. Photos of his garden roses.

And I started to see the outlines of someone else. A master pastry chef. He could flick sheets of pastry onto baking trays with such precision they’d land in rows.

He once survived a bomb raid by crawling beneath a tank. Later, he became a cook at a specialist military hospital, looking after those men who’d lost their limbs.

And I remembered his hands. Huge, strong hands. Builder’s hands. Baker’s hands. The kind that could hurt you, but never would.

When it came time to leave, his large fingers would wrap around mine. He’d smile. And later, as you walked away, you’d open your palm to find a pound coin or two had appeared. A little magic trick.

Back in the present day, I’m on the move through the streets of London. I receive a message. I pull up my phone.

The profile picture stops me cold.

It’s my grandad. In uniform.

Arthur Curran is WhatsApping me.

hi dad do you know NONA’s dad name?

My 12-year-old son had changed his profile picture to that photo.

As part of his final week of summer term, he’d been tracing the family tree. Rummaging through dusty folders. Finding photos I’d all but forgotten. And something about Arthur, his look, his poise, maybe just his presence. He decided to step into it.

My son being the only pathline from my side of the family, all I could think about was my Mum. How she would have laughed and cried. What it would have meant to her.

It’s easy to be cynical about technology. To talk about algorithmic rot. To debate whether things like “taste” even matter. They don’t, not really. To my son, AI is no more than Supersonic’s wooden handles or reheated leftovers. But the picture, this person, was something else.

And in this strange, digital moment, a pathway opened between two hearts separated by nearly a century. My son found Arthur. Or mabe Arthur found him.

Later that evening, I spotted my son’s workbook open on the kitchen table. Scrawled in pencil, underlined for emphasis, missing capital letters, were the words:

“the measure of a man is not in the strength of his hand, but the kindness of his heart.”

Those are words from a card my Mum had written to her Dad shortly before he passed.

And just like that, someone I had forgotten about, and used to laugh at, suddenly seemed so majestic, important and hero-like.

Supersonic, in every way.

I felt the faintest signal that maybe, for once, I’d done something right.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Moves

Britain’s economic bind | New York Times

US job reports keep Fed rate cuts at bay | CNBC

What’s on Rachel Reeves' menu for raising UK taxes | Financial Times

Brand Beat

Meta invests $3.5 billion to acquire 3% of RayBan parent | Business of Fashion

Fixing up Nike is a marathon, not a sprint | Financial Times

Should your brand open a coffee shop? | Marketing Brew

WeTransfer co-founder on marketing with no money | The Drum

Del Monte Foods seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection | Adweek

SharkNinja’s CEO on home domination | The Verge

Unilever launches AI design unit to cut reliance on TV | Marketing Dive

As it also cuts off Ben & Jerry’s charity | New York Post

Liquid Death commercial made by AI and it slaps | YouTube

As BCG faces scandal over involvement in Gaza | Financial Times

Hiscox shocks customers with wine-stained mailer | The Drum

The Gen Z creator fueling Ryanair’s TikTok success | Business Post

Inside Burberry CEO Joshua Schulman’s plans | The Wall Street Journal

Ex-fossil fuel ad maker backs UK ad ban | The Drum

Greggs pastry sales slump as June heat deters shoppers | The Guardian

Duolingo experimenting with calmer, less unhinged content | Mediacat

The rise and fall of Hims | Pharmacopoeia

This restaurant gained 54k TikTok followers in 14 days | Milk Karten

Trump to open China talks on US version of TikTok | The New York Times

What AI startup Cluely teaches us about attention | Digiday

Consumers are more likely to buy from women’s sport sponsorships | Marketing Week

NASA is coming to Netflix | Tudum

Starting Up

Bold Bean founder, Amelia Christie-Miller, shares her vision| The Grocer

Solo founder, $80m exit, 6 months, meet Base44 | Lenny’s Podcast

GetWhy raises $20M Series A to overhaul $140B market research | Tech.eu

Peachies secures £2.1m investment to fuel luxury nappy growth | The Times

Tonic Health launches first gen-AI ad and podcast with Channel 4 | LinkedIn

Tech Tidbits

Serial moonlighter exposed for holding 19 jobs in Silicon Valley | Fast Company

SpaceX heads towards $400bn valuation | Financial Times

Why water, not silicon, should power true AI | iai.tv

Grammarly acquires Superhuman for productivity suite | Newsweek

DocuSign threatens legal action over copycat Lovable app | Sifted

Venture Vibes

Why billionaire Michael Moritz is betting on the news | New York Times

AI captures record UK venture capital share in 2025 | ffnews.com

Figma moves forward with proposed IPO registration | Figma

CEO, Charles Kantor at H Company steps down after one year | Sifted

How Andreessen Horowitz disrupted venture capital and what’s next | Simplecast

Why venture capital firms die and what goes wrong | Sifted

Design Driven

Ben’s Original unveils fresh identity five years after dropping ‘Uncle’ | Marketing Dive

Porsche surfboard collaboration channels 1970s Southern California | Wallpaper

How Victor Edeh finds presence and slowness through photography | It's Nice That

Boycotts over Alligator Alcatraz merch on Etsy | Fast Company

Happiness

Why memento mori is the ultimate life hack | Big Think

God bless Brad Pitt | New York Times

Remembering Andrew Kassoy, co-founder of the B Corp movement | YouTube

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