Something is shifting again.

We’re at that turning point where one technology quietly replaces another while most people are still arguing about it.

Back in college, we were told to learn both Quark and Adobe because “you’ll need both in the real world.” I never opened Quark again. It didn’t crash, it just faded out. Everyone moved on.

That’s what this AI moment feels like.

Right now, the loudest voices are still talking about the tools. The real ones are figuring out how to make them work in the background, not the feed.

We’ve seen this movie before. Flash websites. DVD menus. Rich media banners. NFTs. VR. Each one promised to change everything, and for a while it did. Then the hype burned off and the useful parts got absorbed into the real work.

AI will follow the same path. It’s not going anywhere. It’s just about to get quiet.

The ridiculous stuff will fade. The Ethan Hawke cage matches and Princess Diana wrestling a Mercedes will become punchlines. What will stick are the quiet, useful integrations. The tools that make our edits smoother, our concepts sharper, our timelines shorter.

Gen Z sees through the noise faster than anyone. They’re already over the spectacle. They want to know what it does, not what it looks like. I see it in my younger teams every day — they can smell the difference between novelty and value before it hits their feed.

This isn’t the death of creativity. It’s a reset. The hype cycle is ending. The work is what stays.

AI won’t kill the craft. It’ll just show who actually has it.