Am I irrelevant? How creatives can thrive in the age of AI
💌 Maxiemize Advice Column #1
Dear Maxie,
I’m not burnt out exactly, but I’m feeling… irrelevant? Or like I’m slipping into it.
I’m good at what I do. I’ve built a career I’m proud of. But now I’m watching AI tools do 80% of what used to make me valuable, and I can’t stop wondering: what’s the point?
I used to feel original??? Now I feel like a relic???? What do you do when your creative identity is suddenly up for grabs?
— Trying Not To Be a Relic
Dear Trying Not To Be a Relic,
Ooooooo, buddy. I hear ya. First: You’re not a relic. You’re a bellwether, and just early to the discomfort. And being early is never easy (just ask Van Gogh/Marie Curie/Billie Jean King).
You’re doing what ambitious creatives have always done when the landscape shifts: you’re feeling the wave of fear and change in order to recalibrate. And that takes more guts than burying your head in the sand (Some days, all of this makes me want to bury my head in the sand…block it out…pretend it’s not happening).
The moment you described, the sense that you’re excellent at work that machines are replacing? At the heart of your question is less about AI and more about relevance…that’s something we all feel. Something we all struggle with. Something all ambitious creative contend with.
After my first book came out…after all the fanfare, the book tour wearing exclusively hot pink suits, the talking about it, the being paid to talk about talking about it…I didn’t have another book in me. And I didn’t even have much of a “what’s next” in me. As the space between my book launch date and “today’s date” expanded…I tried not to think about it too much. Because I was finding plenty of quiet success writing books for other people. But it left me feeling like I had nothing to talk about (not just because of the NDAs). When a ghostwriting book becomes a bestseller, who do you tell when you can’t tell anyone?
My feelings of compounding irrelevance weren’t just because my work had gone from very front of camera to very back of house, just to mix metaphors for a moment. My book You’re Not Lost had come out at the peak of #girlboss career days, and while it was a pushback to that culture, even at the time, I still felt like the moment was very over what I had to offer. But to be fair and frank… I was very over it, too. As I kept writing for other people, and kept retreating from the social media sites where I’d built my platform, the irrelevant feelings lingered. Every quarter that passed, dug me further into a creative hole. My talent was in high-demand but my creative/independent identity was on mute.
At the peak of these feelings, my very talented galpal Lisa Raphael of Relatable Content asked if I’d be her guinea pig to go through a branding overhaul. It required a willingness to reset how I showed up, to consider and excavate toward everything I wanted to be. But the 6+ months of working on that with her was less about “branding” and more about remembering what I cared about when the world was telling me that there was already enough, that what was out there was already better, that everyone had already moved on.
It was in that chapter that I started to ask harder questions.
Not: How do I stay relevant?
But: What’s worth being relevant for?
That’s the kind of reckoning you’re in Trying not to be a relic. At the bottom of a collapse can be a creative renewal.
But I know at the edges of what you’re asking is a fear many of us share. Are we being replaced?
The Real Shift: Creativity, Repositioned
I’m of pretty strong belief, Trying not to be a Relic, that AI isn’t just some tech trend. It’s a structural, seismic shift in how we’ll live and work…and how we’ll create.
Video didn’t kill the radio star. It expanded what “star” could mean.
AI isn’t killing creativity–it’s shifting the terms of engagement.
And yeah, I’ve had my existential spirals. My strongest skills—storytelling, voice, writing—can now be semi-decently replicated in seconds with the right amount of source material. What used to take me days, AI can do (kinda okay) in 30 seconds.
And yet... believe it or not….I’ve never felt more creative.
Because now? I have a critique partner. I have a research assistant who does what I hate. I have an ideas engine who helps me generate—so I can refine and curate and get my outputs to a better place for those real/amazing/talented humans I’m collaborating with.
I don’t use AI to replace my process. I use it to accelerate the parts that slow me down, so I can spend more time in the parts that make me feel alive.
This is the rise of the AI-Native Creative.
AI-Native Creative
noun
A creator who uses AI to accelerate originality—not replicate what’s already been done. They don't fear being replaced by machines. They fear becoming indistinguishable from them.
This Isn’t the End of Your Voice—It’s the Invitation to Use It Differently
Let’s be honest: AI can write quickly. It can draft a pitch, generate a voice, mimic a tone. And the better you can prompt it (more on that later), and the better you can give it source material (also more on that later), the better it becomes.
But AI can’t want something. It can’t know the difference between resonance and noise. It can’t feel the tension between a sentence that almost works and one that lands with precision. It can’t gauge what a reader may read between the lines. It can’t send emotions and energy through its outputs like artists can.
That’s your job.
And yes—some people won’t agree with me here. Some will scoff at creatives who use big-tech tools made by billion-dollar labs trained on work we never got compensated for. I get that. I respect that. I also weirdly agree with that??? My book was in their models for goshsakes.
But here’s what I know: Most Creative Maximalists aren’t trying to replace their art with machine output. They’re just trying to spend less time in the sludge—so they can art their art harder.
This isn’t about giving your creativity away. It’s about maxiemizing what you already carry. Stretching it. Reclaiming it. Scaling it with discernment and depth.
90-Second Maxiemize Moment
Write one word that describes the emotion you want your next project to evoke. Stick it on your laptop.
This will help you anchor every decision, every artistic choice, to human feeling, not a mechanical output.
The cold hard truth is freezing: the market is not going to wait for us to get comfortable. But our creative careers? Mine, yours, and the the women that I spend most of my days with. Those can still be crafted, on our terms.
AI can handle the speed. The phd level information. We bring the taste, the discernment, the voice. As my dear friend Libbie Summers likes to say, “Taste cannot be taught.”
We’re not here to out-machine the machine. We’re here to build something too human to automate. That’s where to put your focus Trying not to be a Relic…the parts of your creativity that are too human to ever automate. That’s your edge. That’s your relevance. And I’m writing this to you as much as I’m writing it for myself.
When I was rebranding with Lisa, she helped me see: when you’re doing great work that no longer feels relevant, the answer isn’t to burn it all down…
It’s to build a bridge—from the version of you who needed that work… to the version who’s now ready for more. Let AI handle the repetition. You handle the rare. How much fun would it be to spend more time in the rare this week!? Every week!?
Creative evolution doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in drafts. In rebrands. In pauses. In a refusal to pretend the old system still fits. We’ve entered the era of AI. But that doesn’t mean your/my/our originality is obsolete. W can use it to give us more space, more breathing room, more insight to dig into the edge of our creativity, the heart of our originality, and who we’re here to become.
You’re not a relic. You’re a Creative Maximalist—and the next version of your career is going to be the most ambitious, the most original one yet.
The best is yet to be made,
Maxie
Trying to make your creative work work—for you?
I answer real questions from people building ambitious, creative careers. Submit yours here: hello@maxiemccoy.com