I was reading an article last week about how the analogue revival in design isn’t really analogue. It’s a digitally fabricated imperfection with texture packs simulating hand-lettering and the aesthetic of human effort, without the effort.

The sharpest line in the article: once handmade becomes valuable, it becomes something to mimic. The signal gets mistaken for the thing itself.

L&D is doing the same thing.

When AI makes content generation cheap, the field responds by performing visible humanity. Lo-fi facilitation and deliberately rough slides to avoid the question ‘Did AI make that?’. I’m also seeing behind-the-scenes posts showing the human work behind AI-assisted programmes.

The aesthetic shifts, but the logic doesn’t.

“Human-centred” has become a stylistic register, not a description of method. The signal is being optimised but the function is not.

It won’t hold, of course; AI is already learning to fake warmth and human-sounding judgement.

The move isn’t adding human touches to AI-generated content but reorganising what the function actually does.

Strip away the language and ask:
What does your function produce?
What would stop working if your team didn’t exist?

If the honest answer is mostly content, that’s the real problem.