Some day, people will look back at our era and call it the age of the Great Imitators. That’s what today’s AI engines really are – incredibly skilled at identifying and following patterns, predicting the most probable next word. The next chess move. The next protein fold. The next frame in a video. The next landing page.
It’s impressive. Lovable – what a fantastic tool. You can create websites and apps with a database and backend, just by chatting. Veo – generate videos with speaking actors from a single prompt. Genie – build traversable, playable worlds. Prompt is all you need.
And yet, the Great Imitators stumble when it comes to the bigger picture. Building fully functioning software. Producing a physically sensible video. Why? Because they lack the luxury of understanding. They can only mix, match, and mimic.
You might have seen it too: Twitter engagement farmers sharing stories of how they supposedly automated an entire business – from brainstorming an idea, doing market research, writing a requirements spec, to programming and launching an app – all using AI tools. The reality? The Great Imitators aren’t quite there yet. They cannot deliver consistent results without human intervention. To overcome these limitations, they need to become more than imitators. And I’m not sure if that’s even possible with the current tech foundation.
But even with imitation, isn’t it mind-blowing what we’ve achieved so far? And even more so, what’s coming in the next few years? What an era to be alive!