Whether we like it or not, social media channels are in a phase of rapid change because of AI.

TikTok creator Roberto Nickson called AI an “infinite content machine” and predicted that content output will 100x in the next decade.

If content quality and volume are no longer bottlenecks, what happens when:

1. Brands and creators can publish fresh content 24/7.
2. Armies of realistic AI avatars host nonstop livestreams.
3. Every social feed is saturated in professional‑looking posts.

Doubters write off AI by saying “The quality still isn’t there — AI images look uncanny, avatars seem robotic, and the writing is obvious.”

Betting on these issues lasting feels risky given how fast the tools are improving.

In Nickson’s video, he summarizes this shift as one:

“from production moats (quality, volume) to taste and distribution moats.”

I agree. Winning in this new landscape hinges on two human‑powered advantages:

1. Distribution — the ability to reach the right people and build community, especially via channels and forums you own as top of funnel platforms get crowded.
2. Taste — content and idea curation, timing and relevance, instinct, unique style.

Here’s how to build your brand with these differentiators before the AI tidal wave hits.

The AI content flood: why traditional brand moats are shrinking

AI has stripped away the last barriers to production.

• OpenAI’s Sora, Runway, and Invideo AI can generate videos from a single text prompt.
• AI writing tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copy.ai can generate full blog posts, emails, and product descriptions from a few bullet points.
• In the first half of 2025 alone, Adobe, Canva, and TikTok released enhanced AI creative suites, putting quality editing, design, and copywriting inside our browser tabs.

When content production costs and turnaround times shrink, the volume of posts hitting our feeds shoots straight up.

This creates an unexpected side effect: content quality parity across the internet.

If anyone can hit a “good‑enough” standard with a few prompts, then looking and sounding polished is no longer a way to standout.

Leading creators and marketing experts seem to agree:

• Ish Verduzo has been advising his audience to invest in personal branding and distribution so they can standout as AI raises the content quality bar across the internet.
• Justin Welsh went as far as wondering if we will see a “great social media exodus,” highlighting the trend where brands and creators are flocking to owned distribution via newsletter and community-building channels. This is an attempt to combat the rising competition on top of funnel channels like social media.

Algorithms feel the strain, too.

Faced with endless variations on the same templates and hooks, they throttle repetitive formats, making sheer output an unreliable growth strategy.

Audiences adapt just as quickly.

Crisp visuals and clean scripts used to be enough to halt the scroll. Now, viewers skim faster through feeds of quality content, subconsciously raising the bar for what earns a pause, a like, or a share.

The two moats that once protected brands and creators — superior quality and publishing volume — are at risk.

To stand out in feeds that refresh at machine-like speed, we need a new source of defensibility for our brands—both personal brands and corporate.

Brand moat #1: distribution

Distribution has always been key to marketing.

However, our primary distribution channels are being challenged:

• Social is being saturated with content—AI and human-created.
• Search engine optimization (and websites in turn) now compete with AI chatbots, social search, and other alternative search behavior.
• The platforms we rely on are constantly changing — from algorithm updates to looming bans.

In this landscape, reach you don’t control or own is borrowed time.

Create owned distribution channels

Owned distribution channels, like email and community platforms, have always been invaluable for this reason.

That’s why we see community platforms thriving and major creators and brands promoting their own niche communities more than ever — platforms and forums like Substack, email lists, Reddit, SMS threads, private Discord servers, etc.

While social networks are risky because we don’t control our reach or the platform’s longevity, these channels are portable and permission‑based.

The best creators are finding ways to do soft hand‑offs on their top of funnel channels to their owned channels, creating resilient content and brand ecosystems.

This converts increasingly sparse, hard-earned social attention into connections you can reach at will without having to compete with AI content.

Prioritize making real connections

A thousand subscribers who reply, comment, and purchase outperform a hundred‑thousand silent followers.

That’s why making fewer, higher quality connections is key.

And in the landscape we just discussed, the things that don’t scale are most impactful in building those connections:

• Have meaningful conversations in the DMs.
• Set 1:1 calls to connect and go deeper with your network.
• Host AMAs, workshops, and webinars through community platforms where you continue the conversation.
• Deliver a personal touch with swag or excellent customer service, like this viral story about how Mariott returned a woman’s lost stuffed lamb along with its own custom Mariott care package.
• Host and attend IRL events, like this one Ish Verduzco hosted for creators and entrepreneurs.

Touch points like these tighten the bond and raise engagement signals that social algorithms still respect.

If TikTok actually gets banned, SEO dries up, or another marketing channel fades, owning your audience becomes your brand’s lifeline.

Brand moat #2: taste

AI can now crank out decent visuals, copy, and audio on demand.

What it still can’t do is care — or sense which ideas feel fresh and which ones are saturated.

Taste is our selective instinct. It’s the ability to spot what’s new, relevant, and on-brand for our unique voices.

When everyone can create decent content, knowing what to create becomes most important.

What is taste? By taste, I mean:

• Curation — The ability to spot a few standout ideas hidden in a feed full of sameness — and remix them into something fresh and meaningful.
• Timing — Dropping that piece content while the conversation is happening, not a news cycle later when people have moved on to the next trend.
• Instinct — Reading your audience’s vibe well enough to know when a spicy take will land and when it will backfire.
• Style— Color palette, perspective, narrative voice, personal intro hooks, lifestyle pillars (props) — the nuances that make a post genuine and unmistakably yours, whether it’s AI-generated or not.

Even before AI has significantly impacted our feeds, these unique calling cards are what make content and brands stand out. That’s why we follow the creators we connect with, even if they are creating similar content to someone else.

Examples of great taste

Some of my favorite recent examples of taste:

• Sarah Suzuki Harvard created a LinkedIn image carousel series of hilariously relatable takes about work life, internet content creation, and more. Their visual style and tone stand out big time and clearly resonate with what working professionals feel today.
• Ish Verduzco exemplified perfect timing with his viral post about Nike’s new CEO. Ish was able to approach the fresh news with a unique insight after noticing the CEO’s LinkedIn profile displaying a career journey from “intern to CEO.”
• Esther Yoon gives us some taste inception. Her LinkedIn commentary preps her readers for a marketing landscape where AI automates and creates plenty of marketing content, leaving us to focus on other differentiators, like our judgement and taste.
• Kyle Jackson anchored his recent take on the future of work and learning with a unique video scene that captures key elements of his personal brand, including his custom avatar and a depiction of his life in Singapore.

Maybe some of these creators use ChatGPT to help come up with post ideas. Perhaps they use Midjourney to help create their visuals.

We don’t know. And the key point is we don’t care.

What we care about is the fact that they came up with content ideas and a delivery that resonated with us. That’s taste. And that’s what’s going to keep standing out as our social feeds ebb and flow with AI content trends and algorithm updates.

How to make your taste a brand differentiator

While taste is rooted in our perception and preferences, it gets sharper the more we feed it — the more great content we consume, the more patterns we spot, and the better we get at curating what matters.

We can learn a lot from those creator examples—not just in what they post, but in how they apply and express their taste to make their content unique.

Here are a few ways to be intentional about how you apply and showcase your taste:

• Use feedback loops — Read your DMs, track what problems your network is navigating, and notice what topics keep surfacing in your feed. Pay attention to what people replay, reference, or steal — these are all inputs for your content. This post idea, for example, came from noticing how many marketers are trying to navigate AI’s impact on social channels.
• Create your own brand guide — Nail down your colors, tones, go-to hooks, and recurring content formats. For example, Kyle Jackson could decide to do a weekly series of those video vignettes, using them to deliver his latest industry takes.
• Make your personal brand personal — Share lessons, stories, and day-in-the-life content to wrap your ideas in a delivery style and context that builds trust and can’t be easily replicated.
• Curate the news —Stay up on the latest news in your industry and offer your own spin on why it matters or what people should pay attention to.

As AI tools make quality content the norm, taste becomes our compass — guiding us on what to create, putting our unique stamp on our content, and finding ways to resonate and connect with our audiences.

The new playbook in the AI-augmented landscape

We’re in a moment where applying AI to amplify taste and distribution gives creators and brands a rare advantage.

Right now, it’s still very possible to grow organically on social media. And AI can help you do it faster — from brainstorming ideas to producing polished content. But as more people adopt these tools, sameness will spread, and standing out will get harder.

It’s a window of brand-building arbitrage that won’t stay open forever.

As AI output floods our feeds, the differences between our posts will blur, algorithms will continue to ration organic reach, and attention will be even harder to earn.

That makes the present and near future a critical period of time for brand building.

To seize this moment, double down on the two moats most likely to survive the AI flood:

• Focus on taste so every piece of content — AI-generated or not — reflects your unique voice.
• Build owned distribution channels as much as you possibly can while top‑of‑funnel channels like social are still a viable way to promote them.

Some creators are already doing this exceptionally well — combining top-of-funnel reach with intentional taste and owned channels to build content ecosystems that last:

Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi

• Distribution: Niharika leverages her significant top of funnel presence across LinkedIn and Medium to fuel her newsletter and cohort-based courses, driving her audience to channels she owns for deeper connection.
• Taste: Her writing blends vulnerability and personal narratives with tangible value, helping her stand out in a crowded creator economy space.

Sammy Ellard King

• Distribution: Sammy uses his Instagram as a key top of funnel channel to build his email list and community where he connects directly with his audience and shares more resources.
• Taste: Sammy has developed a catchy, informative style for his personal finance advice content, complete with his own brand style guide inclusive of consistent fonts and colors.

Dulma Atlan

• Distribution: Dulma uses her TikTok presence as a top of funnel channel for her newsletter, cohort-based courses, and 1:1 consulting services for creators.
• Taste: Her signature green-screen videos that she’s been creating for years offer sharp business and creator insights with a format that’s instantly recognizable.

Eve Arnold

• Distribution: Eve translated prolific Medium content creation for her top of funnel into a popular newsletter where she owns the connection with her audience.
• Taste: Eve’s followers welcome her punchy, clever, and “to-the-point” writing style as she shares her latest lessons on writing and building content creation businesses.

These creators have built brand systems where their unique top of funnel content is fuel for their owned channels.

This not only deepens and increases the value of their connections with their audiences, it also protects their brands amid marketing channel uncertainty.

Because when this all plays out, the creators and brands able to sustain and grow won’t be the ones who published the most content.

It will be the ones whose content people can’t wait to open, delivered on channels algorithms can’t take away and AI can’t saturate.

If you’re building that kind of brand — one that lasts beyond the feed — now’s the time to double down on two things you can own: distribution and taste.