The Compression of Creativity
We're approaching the moment of Creative Singularity
If you had an idea, you first had to ask, “What am I good at?”
A writer had to stay in their lane. A filmmaker needed a team. A musician couldn’t animate. Medium was destiny.
That’s changing rapidly.
We’re approaching a singularity. I am not sure if this is of the tech kind, but it is a moment of creative singularity.
Thanks mainly to AI, the entire creative stack is getting compressed.
Compression of the Creative Stack
Traditionally, the creative stacks have operated as discreet but highly connected grids.
As you go up, the complexity increases. Ignore the artist right on top if you don’t like them, but the idea is that there are uber-artists in respective fields making one-in-a-million creative output. As you go down, access and the ability to create at that level continue to increase. The quality may drop (debatably), but it serves a purpose or niche that isn’t served at the level above.
The horizontal stacks are mediums-of-expression. When humans have traditionally felt something that they needed to say, they had to pick a form of expression. It could be painting, writing, singing, or capturing your point of view as a three-hour exposition that ten people watch. The fact is, the medium was often picked as an expression in itself (a representation of the creator in some ways). But also, it was picked as the best way that the creator could express her ideas. They were almost always constrained by it (some reveled in it).
AI is compressing creative endeavors in both directions.
1. Vertical Compression: The Quality Gap Shrinks
In the past, creative quality was tied to access and taste. Access to gear, teams, editors, and budgets. There was a vast gulf between what a solo creator could make and what a studio could produce.
But AI is compressing this pyramid drastically.
You can now write a story, generate visuals, synthesize a soundtrack, and even animate scenes—all from a browser window. Tools like Runway, Midjourney, Suno, and GPT-4o don’t just automate tasks. They compress multi-stage pipelines into something a single person can do in a weekend. What used to take dozens of specialists and hundreds of hours is now a function of taste and direction.
This doesn’t mean amateurs will instantly create Oscar-level films. Your average reel maker isn’t suddenly going to become Chris Nolan. However, it does mean that the gap between a TikTok creator and a mid-budget Netflix documentary is no longer unbridgeable. We’ve compressed the effort-to-quality curve. And that changes who gets to play.
2. Horizontal Compression: Medium Is No Longer the Message
While the vertical compression is a continuation of something that’s been happening for a while (although now with rocket fuel), the horizon compression has arrived and is unique to this moment.
Traditionally, creatives expressed themselves in silos.
A writer might dream of how their words could look or sound but lacked the skills or resources to bring that vision to life. A musician had melodies in their head but couldn’t animate the feeling. A designer could sketch an interface but not code it.
Now, the tools are breaking those walls down.
An essayist can prompt visuals and soundtrack their work. A musician can animate a story to their beat. A podcaster can turn their thoughts into short films. Even coders, once separated from the design and narrative process, are now using tools like Replit AI or Vercel’s SDKs to iterate in real time with aesthetic control.
The medium used to dictate the message. Now, the message finds its medium or many media. A single idea can manifest as text, image, motion, or code, depending on how you want it to resonate.
Why This Moment Matters
While I am not disputing the blandness of AI or the dystopian nature of how it is now a mere facsimile of ideas stolen from creative artists, this is a natural evolution in humanity’s expression of ideas and emotions.
For creators, the implications are
Taste becomes the differentiator. Everyone has access to the tools. What sets people apart is what they choose to make and how sharply they curate their output.
Direction becomes the new craft. You don’t need to know how to draw or code or compose. But you need to know what “good” looks like and how to guide the machine toward it. I wonder if this means there is value in studying how the great movie directors went about planning, thinking and executing their creative vision. Because in this world, we will all need to act like directors.
Cross-media fluency becomes table stakes. The best creative minds will no longer be defined by their medium. They’ll jump across them like composers conducting multiple instruments.
Final Thoughts
In a weird way, AI is making creativity more human.
Art has always been about expressing a thought or a feeling, conveying an artist’s view of the world. Humans have always been multimodal creatures. Writers put in the effort to capture this feeling they have in words. Musicians do the same. Painters and movie makers have tried to express ideas in the medium they have chosen. But at its core, an idea, thought, or feeling is a nebulous form that can be unleashed in many ways. We were always thinking in mixed layers of sight, sound, memory, and metaphors.
It’s just that the tools never let us express it all.
Now they do.
Are you a creator? I want to learn more about how this moment has affected you and potentially feature your story here. You can reach out to me by replying to this email or messaging me here on Substack.
Breaking Good,
Tyag