We read Kyle Chaykas recent New Yorker article ‘Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste’ as the new competitive advantage in AI with a wink and a nod. Because we never doubted it. I guess they just weren’t smart enough to grok it from the get go. Taste is entangled with who we are, the environments we move through, the arc we trace through our decisions and attention over time. In tech, taste is starting to be framed as a kind of filter, the ability to discern what will perform, resonate, or scale. Essentially, an optimized prediction. But taste, at least in creative ecosystems, isn’t just computing what works but in some way being moved by it. We have over 2 Million Hand Curated Human Created images in our Stock Collection. So we get it. We don’t do it just to maintain a standard, but to hold judgment in context, to track how aesthetics shift, how meaning changes across culture and time, and to recognize when something does more than “work.” To notice when something feels alive. When it surprises you a little. When it stays with you. And that’s deeply personal. Taste is shaped over time through exposure, experience, and attention. It reflects where you’ve been, what you’ve noticed, what felt meaningful enough to return to. Thankfully, as more of the act of making becomes automated, we’re starting to value the parts of creation and selection that still require a life behind them. Photo by Stocksy Contributor Volia Bigel
Scott Belsky wrote a nice and jazzy take on it. What are We Gonna Do Now? Winning The Era of Superhumanity https://share.google/i7WvdKFuiRoqGJjag
“In tech, taste is starting to be framed as a kind of filter, the ability to discern what will perform, resonate, or scale. Essentially, an optimized prediction.” Trying to commodify Taste is so on brand for 2026. And to weaponise it as a way of being even more opaque when it comes to evaluating how good someone is at their job. I love how clearly you named this but hate how I feel now that I read it.
This is especially true in stock and creative ecosystems. It's so much more than just about picking what looks good. It influences curation, search, commissioning, and the overall trust users place in a collection. You can scale distribution and even parts of production, but if that layer of judgment gets weak, the experience starts to collapse. People may not always describe that as “taste,” but they feel it immediately.
Taste as a filter is the tech framing. Taste as a history is closer. It's not what you'd pick if you were being strategic. It's what you can't help noticing because of everything you've already lived through. Like you said it takes a life behind it.
Trace Cohen I just wrote a Substack post on how I am working on giving words to my own taste. I made myself have an AI agent who is helping me better understand the things that I find delightful, noticeable, that I want to come back to and the patterns that help me better communicate my taste and vision. https://johnmmdavidson.substack.com/p/my-personal-agents