What was your favorite ad from the Super Bowl LIX?
I couldn’t pick just one. As is true every year, I love how creative they all are.
But OpenAI’s ad has stayed with me. With a new CMO at the helm, the company finally seems to have captured a message that doesn’t feel out of step with the zeitgeist.
The black-and-white ad showed hundreds of dots swirling and recombining into images celebrating human inventiveness and creativity. The company claims the ad was crafted entirely by humans with some AI-driven prototyping and storyboarding.
The commercial’s only scripted moment truly resonated, asking: “What do you want to create next?”
It’s a simple yet profound prompt for marketers navigating content creation in 2025. (And, no, the “prompting” irony isn’t lost on me.)
I touch on why in the video below and go into more detail in the rest of this article.
Constructed vs. created content
Marketing teams face an existential question today: What happens when AI can create content faster than humans?
As you know, faster doesn’t correlate to better. But slow doesn’t always correlate to great, either.
It’s comforting to rationalize that “faster than humans” isn’t enough to put most creators out of their jobs anytime soon. But that rationalization feels like the door that Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio’s characters clung to in Titanic. It looks big enough to save us both, but for some reason, it just isn’t.
You might find a better answer by understanding the difference between constructed and created content.
G.K. Chesterton articulated this distinction beautifully in his analysis of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. He wrote:
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
Created content is the poem that forms in your mind before the pen ever touches paper.
It’s the painting vividly imagined before the first brushstroke meets the canvas.
It’s the article that takes shape in a carefully crafted outline, deepens through research, and finally gets refined into just the right expression.
Constructed content, by contrast, gains value only after it’s fully realized. Think of a technical manual, a street sign, the concise summary of a novel, or the abstract of a thought-provoking lecture. Useful and efficient but only recognized for their worth after completion.
Put simply, no one anticipates these things with excitement, but people can appreciate them once they start serving their purpose.
Content output by prompting a generative AI tool is, by nature, constructed content. It’s assembled, optimized, and fine-tuned based on algorithms, data sets, and prompts.
It can be helpful, efficient, engaging, and even loved. But it will always lack something essential: the human spark — the origin of an idea that we nurture, wrestle with, and fall in love with before it’s ever expressed.
Writing is writing, isn’t it?
I recently spoke with a young writer at a B2B technology company with a fascinating career trajectory. She started at an agency, crafting brilliant blog posts and articles. Later, she moved into an in-house content role, where she thrived on writing about industry trends and conducting in-depth interviews.
But, after a few organizational shifts, she eventually found herself editing technical specifications and product documentation instead of creating original pieces.
Three months into this role, she asked her manager if she could take on more varied writing assignments. The response? “Writers are writers. And writing is writing.”
The first statement is true. The second is not.
The young writer couldn’t figure out why that comment bugged her so much. She could see the danger of her editing role being replaced by generative AI. But it was how she felt about the writing itself that was so unfortunate. Her knack for storytelling had been quashed by dry reporting.
Some types of content can (and probably should) be purely constructed, like product descriptions, compliance documents, and technical specifications. These are useful and necessary, but they don’t exactly tap into the joy of creation.
Other kinds — thought leadership, brand storytelling, and emotionally compelling content — are created. They’re loved before they exist, and they evoke something powerful in the writer and the reader (or listener or viewer).
This distinction matters now more than ever. AI can construct content, but it doesn’t create in the way people do.
It can’t feel the deep satisfaction of discovering an idea and shaping it into a compelling narrative. It can’t infuse a piece with the lived experience, cultural nuances, and emotional resonance that make content memorable to both the author and the audience.
The power of friction in creativity
Here’s an essential point in the difference between constructed and created content. Created content isn’t better than constructed content. Constructed content may be just as effective, engaging, and appreciated.
The true value of created content lies in what it does for the creator. When people create, they don’t just express an idea. They live with it, refine it, struggle with it, and ultimately fall in love with it. That journey transforms us, sharpening our minds and deepening our perspectives.
The pushback to that manager isn’t to agree that “writing is writing.” Nor is it that the young writer can create content better than AI.
It’s that working on created content makes her a better investment for the company. She’s more valuable to the company when she falls in love with the ideas she has to wrestle into created existence.
Now, I get it. Your inner CEO might say, “I don’t care about her feelings. If the content can be just as loved, why not automate it?”
But here’s what you (and your inner CEO) should care about: the bottom line.
Wiser, more creative employees aren’t just happier — they’re also more profitable. Why?
Because a button-pushing robot follows instructions every time. Wise creative team members find better instructions over time. They start solving problems before they happen. They’re more likely to generate new ideas that push the company forward.
When creators are engaged — wrestling with ideas — they’re not just completing tasks. They’re inventing better ways to do them. That’s not just valuable, it’s irreplaceable.
This is why valuable friction is so important in marketing and creative content. Struggling with ideas, iterating, refining, and expressing something new leads to real growth.
Created content is the byproduct of that struggle, an artifact of human thought, insight, and artistry. And it’s the only thing that makes humans more valuable over time.
Balancing AI and human creativity
Both constructed and created content have their place. Generative AI can efficiently handle some aspects of high-volume, data-driven constructed content tasks like:
- Automating SEO-focused content
- Summarizing data and reports
- Generating initial drafts for refinement
- Creating product descriptions or FAQs
AI also has the potential for working together with humans on iterative editing sessions, idea generation, or turns of phrases that express the idea the human loves and is struggling to put into words.
But only a human can fall in love with an idea before it’s expressed. That makes humans not only irreplaceable but also the most valuable part of the AI investment.
The best investment in generative AI is the investment it makes in us. When you use AI to augment rather than replace human creativity, you don’t just create better content — you create better creators. The best marketing strategies will embrace this balance.
As the OpenAI ad prompts: “What do you want to create today?”
It’s your story. Create it well.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute