Why Porsche's "No AI" Ad Went Viral: The Economics of Human Suffering

We are witnessing a strange moment in history. Recently, Porsche released an animated advertisement featuring hand-drawn art and 3D animation. It was a beautiful piece of work, but the most interesting part was a small caption that read "No AI used at all."

That video went viral. It racked up 20 million views on X.

This tells us something profound about the current state of the market. The internet is currently flooded with AI-generated videos, memes, and songs. Some of these clips get millions of views, yet there is a growing hunger for things that are difficult to make.

At ZLink, we have been asking a fundamental question: What makes something valuable?

The Value of the Struggle

To understand value, we have to look at why humans care about anything at all.

Consider the game of football. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. But if you strip away the lights and the cameras, it is just a game where 22 people fight over a ball to shoot it into a net. It is an arbitrary concept invented by humans.

Yet, this simple concept creates millionaires and sells out stadiums. Why? Because it is difficult. We value the physical limitations of the players. We value the suffering and the discipline required to be great.

If we watched two AI robots playing a perfect game of chess against each other, most of us would get bored in minutes. But we are glued to the screen when two humans play chess. We love it so much that we create rules to protect the struggle. We ban cheating and performance-enhancing drugs because we want to see what a human can achieve through their own pain and effort.

Scarcity and backstory create value. The Mona Lisa is physically just paint on a canvas. If you look at it without context, you might get bored after ten minutes. But it is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars because of the story. It was painted by Da Vinci. It was stolen and lost for 40 years. The history and the human connection make it priceless.

Why People Fear AI

The reason many people feel a resistance toward AI is that they feel it creates a "loss of meaning."

If a computer can write a poem, create a video, or generate a model's face in seconds, where is the suffering? Where is the discipline? If you remove the challenge, you remove the connection. Deep down, we know that if everyone has a Bugatti, a Bugatti is no longer valuable. If perfection is easy, perfection becomes worthless.

However, this view misses the bigger picture of how technology evolves.

AI Means Depth, Not Just Cheapness

There is a misconception that the purpose of AI is simply to make things cheaper. The logic goes that if a movie cost $100 million to make yesterday, and AI can do it for $1,000 today, then the future is just about saving money.

We believe this is wrong. AI does not mean cheaper. It means deeper.

Look at the history of cinema. In the past, making a black and white movie was incredibly expensive. It cost millions. When technology advanced and cameras became better, digital, and color-capable, the cost of capturing an image dropped to almost zero. You can now shoot a 4K video on your phone.

But did Hollywood stop spending money? Did filmmakers say "Great, now we can make movies for $100?"

No. They kept spending $100 million. But instead of spending that money just to get a blurry black and white image, they spent it to create massive worlds, CGI universes, and complex storytelling that was previously impossible.

When the cost of the "technical" work drops, the standard for the "creative" work rises.

The New Context

This is the vision we see at ZLink.

If AI creates abundance, it forces us to find value in new places. If a video that used to cost millions now costs $1,000, the pressure creates a new challenge. To be valuable in the future, you cannot just do what was done before for a lower price. You have to go deeper.

You have to create a context and a depth that creates a new level of connection.

The "suffering" doesn't disappear; it just moves. In the past, the suffering was in the technical execution. In the future, the suffering will be in the depth of the idea, the complexity of the emotion, and the authenticity of the brand.

We are entering an era where the tools are infinite, which means the only limit is the depth of the human imagination. We will not value the AI for doing the work. We will value the human for pushing the AI to places we never imagined possible.