Artificial intelligence is being attached to nearly every workflow, service, and product category. Some applications create meaningful value. Others add the language of AI to familiar work without improving the experience or resolving a real problem.
In Fast Company Executive Board’s “19 Overhyped Trends That May Not Be Worth Your Time,” ArtVersion Principal and Creative Director Goran Paun identified the tendency to rebrand everything around AI before asking whether it improves the outcome.
The useful question is not whether AI is involved
Technology is most valuable when it becomes part of a well-understood system. For a website, that may mean improving content operations, search, personalization, or internal workflows. For a design team, it may support exploration or accelerate repetitive production. In each case, usefulness depends on the problem, the context, and the people who will live with the result.
When AI becomes the headline before those conditions are understood, teams can end up optimizing for novelty. The work may appear current while becoming less differentiated, less accountable, or harder to use.
Strategy gives technology a role and a limit
ArtVersion’s digital and AI strategy work begins with business goals, audience needs, existing systems, and the decisions an experience must support. Technology choices follow that understanding. They are selected because they improve clarity, capability, or efficiency—not because they make the project sound more advanced.
This is not skepticism about AI. It is a case for applying it with more confidence and less theater. Organizations gain more when they know what the tool is responsible for, where human judgment remains essential, and how success will be evaluated over time.
Read the full Fast Company Executive Board panel for other trends leaders believe deserve a more critical look.