Resistance Is a Stance

When you take a stance, you articulate your point of view. And resistance is definitely a stance.

Procreate, the company behind the beloved drawing and animation app for the iPad, published a short statement against generative AI. “Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things,” it says, and Procreate is “not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity.” The whole statement takes about a minute to read.

It’s a clear articulation of how Procreate sees the world and its community of creatives, the customers it serves. It also sets the company clearly apart from its competitors, Adobe first among them.

A point of view like this is worth putting into words. It tells customers and employees alike how you intend to deal with a new technology, or with a shift that has changed the context of your whole industry. For long-established brands, it matters even more.

Most companies don’t do that. They chase the latest technology (remember NFTs?), or they relabel what they were already doing (from machine learning to “AI”) because someone internally feels they have to. But ask them how the shiny new thing fits into the big picture, and nobody seems able to tell you.

Usually, that’s because there is no big picture. No stance. No common point of view.

Procreate’s stance might not win it more market share in the short run, but it will definitely strengthen its bond with its core customers. It’s authentic, believable, and truthful: this is what the company believes, and these are the products and features that follow from it.

At Forward Momentum, we can respect that. Kudos!

An earlier version of this appeared on Forward Momentum’s LinkedIn page in September 2024.