It changes … something
I tend to find things when they are "THE NEW". Not all of "THE NEW". Just some. Some of those are the important New's. Some are just impressive to some. And others, now more often than not, are "THE NEW" to some but not so new to others.
ChatGPT's image generation capabilities represent precisely this tension. The announcement arrives with the familiar chorus of "this changes everything" proclamations, followed by the inevitable pushback questioning what "everything" actually means.
The truth lies in the space between these positions. What any new technology actually changes remains undetermined until it settles into use. But what technologies invariably do is expand the horizon of potential futures. They create space for imagining different outcomes than were possible before their arrival.
So claiming ChatGPT's new feature "changes everything" is simultaneously false and true. For many, nothing meaningful has shifted. The world continues as it did yesterday. Yet for others – designers, agencies, content creators – it means reconsidering entire workflows, business models, or creative approaches. Their landscape of possibilities has genuinely transformed.
This is the subtle pattern worth recognizing: technological change doesn't sweep uniformly across society. It creates pockets of transformation, areas where new futures become imaginable while leaving others virtually untouched. The New arrives in fragments, unevenly distributed, recognized by some while invisible to others.
The challenge isn't determining whether something changes "everything" but rather identifying for whom and how it changes anything at all.