Can AI express original taste or is that the last thing we’ll have?

In one of my most responded to of these newsletters, (thanks to everyone who writes, I consider you all to be my friends) I wrote that the only thing worse than having bad taste was having no taste. The thesis was that not caring about how you dress or how your house looks was a fundamental dereliction of the gift of life.

The world is increasingly beige; homes look like sorry approximations of luxury hotels, and everyone wears pretty much the same thing. This, my friends, is a world of no taste and it sucks.

I would far rather walk into a home that really jars, that oozes awful taste, than one that looks like a luxury hotel copied from AI slop on Instagram. At least that bad taste has personality, it has the character of its residents, writ large.

I find houses that have been immaculately restored and frozen in time -let’s say a Georgian home- where everything is correct, nothing is newer than the house, to be expressions of no taste. These places are historically accurate and often fawned over by interiors mags etc, but, honestly, with a budget literally anyone could do that. Such houses are museums and that’s fine, but they are not expressions of good taste because they take no risks, illustrate no originality or personality. Soz!

Wonderful taste is a clear opinion and in all cases that is a layering of things that you like; modern art with ancient oils, new cushions any an old armchair, cheap jeans with handmade shoes, whatever. Taste is personality. Express yourself!

So, back to my first question. Can AI express original taste or is that the last thing we’ll have? I don’t think it can. I mean, to be honest, I have no idea what I am talking about, despite having thought about and discussed this for hours (and just getting tied up in knots in so doing). But I will say that AI can’t express original taste and await your thoughts.

Big love.

Charlie X