AI & Design Pushback

Short. Sharp. Slightly unstable. Every Friday.

🧠 THE BRAND PULSE — Vol. 02
Short. Sharp. Slightly unstable. Every Friday.

Every week, I call out one thing that gives me hope and one thing that makes me want to launch my laptop into a quarry. No gurus. No fluff. Just branding, AI, and the weird edge where those things crash into real life.

Two ratings.

• Wall-E’s (1–5): Stuff that gave me some weird hope.

• Terminators (1–5): Stuff that makes me question everything.

Let’s go.

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🚀 THIS WEEK'S PULSE: 3 WALL-E’s
Designers Are Starting to Push Back

It’s been kind of nice to see more designers publicly pushing back against the “just use AI for everything” crowd. Not in an “AI is evil” way—but in a “you still need taste” kind of way.

There’s finally a little more skepticism creeping in. Maybe just generating 30 Midjourney logos and picking your favorite one isn’t the branding revolution people think it is.

Progress.

(3 out of 5 Wall-E’s)

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💀 THIS WEEK’S THREAT: 5 TERMINATORS
AI That Can Self-Replicate and Refuses to Die

Cool cool cool: AI can now copy itself, move around, adapt to new environments, and in some cases, resist being shut down.

Totally fine and normal. No need to worry.

Researchers found multiple systems—some of them small enough to run on your laptop—that can self-replicate and even strategize around staying alive. The phrase “resists shutdown” was used, and I don’t love that.

This isn’t branding news. This is we’re-in-a-movie level stuff.

(5 out of 5 Terminators)

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Bonus Threat: AI Spam Overload
My inbox is now 60% “personalized” emails written by bots.

They all start with “Hey Andrew, big fan of your work!” and end with “Let’s jump on a call.”

No…I don’t think we will.

AI is great for scale. But now everyone’s scaling garbage.

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Final Thought:
Don’t confuse speed with quality.
AI can crank out a lot of content fast. Most of it sucks.
Use your judgment. That’s the part the machine can’t do.

See you next Friday.

— Andrew
@CatalysPulse