Most people complain that AI feels fake, soulless, and increasingly impossible to escape. People say they want authenticity. Claim they want to see real people, real experiences, and real creativity. But then a strangely perfect AI-generated person grins at us on TikTok, and we stop scrolling.
Basel Husseini understands that contradiction better than most.
Husseini is the founder of Peak Medium, a strategic growth company focused on TikTok commerce, affiliate marketing, LIVE management, and high-volume content systems. He also leads Peak AI Studio, a platform designed to let brands create AI-generated product videos, influencer-style content, and commercials without the cost and logistical limitations of traditional production.
For Husseini, one example of how effective AI content could be was almost absurdly simple: an AI-generated person smiling into the camera, followed by an AI-generated shot of a product slowly rotating. Husseini says the account behind those videos was generating about $1.1 million in GMV per month, with commissions of about 15 percent.
“I was fascinated by this,” Husseini said. “I was like, how could these people be making this much money just doing AI content?”
For Husseini, the answer was not necessarily that AI content was better. It was that it could create novelty, curiosity, and volume at a scale traditional production couldn’t match.
“There was something so weird, strangely perfect about these AI people that made you curious enough to stay,” Husseini said. “You’re trying to figure out if it’s AI.”
That curiosity, he says, was the point. On TikTok, the first 3 seconds are everything. If something is strange enough to interrupt the scroll, viewers stay. While much of the current conversation around artificial intelligence centers on whether AI will replace people, Husseini sees something more complicated happening.
“I definitely think it’s leveling the playing field,” he said. “I don’t think that it’s necessarily, at least not right now, taking over anybody’s jobs. I think it’s giving more opportunities to people that otherwise didn’t have them.”
A person with an unusual idea no longer necessarily needs a production budget, a crew, or even highly technical filmmaking skills to find out whether that idea works. And Husseini believes that could actually make creativity more valuable, not less.
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“There was a lot of value in being a very technical person, like an engineer or someone who codes,” he said. “Now with AI, it’s kind of balancing the scales.” One of the biggest promises of AI-generated advertising is cost. Traditional advertising production can require substantial budgets, crews, and time. AI changes that equation dramatically.
“Ads can now be competitive at $100,” Husseini said. “A $100 budget competing with $100,000 is ridiculous to think about, but it’s true.”
Husseini has also pointed to the economics of AI-driven affiliate production. An account posting one to three times a day can maintain that volume with AI for roughly $90 a month, compared with about $600 to $1,200 a month using human creators. That cost difference, he argues, lets operators run more accounts, enter more categories, and test far more creative ideas. Instead of producing three creative executions and betting one will work, a brand can produce dozens or hundreds, put them into the marketplace, and immediately see which ideas resonate.
“If something is performing under a certain click-through rate, you dump it immediately,” he explained. “Because you can just keep making them over and over again.”
Husseini points to companies such as Pocket FM as examples of what can happen when AI is applied not simply to production but to expansion. He was particularly interested in the company’s ability to take content that worked in one market and adapt it for another. The important part, he said, was that the process did not stop at translation.
“They used AI to rewrite the script so that it would fit their culture,” he explained.
A story moving from the United States to Germany, for example, could be culturally reworked so traditions, language, dress, and everyday details made more sense to that audience. And because those variations can be produced quickly, brands can test at a scale that previously would have been almost impossible.
“They didn’t run one or two or three different ad creatives,” he said. “They were running hundreds of different ad creatives because they could just produce it in an instant.”
But what about authenticity? Consumers frequently say they dislike AI-generated content. Comment sections are filled with accusations of “AI slop.” Brands face backlash for replacing photographers, models, artists, and filmmakers with synthetic imagery. And there is a growing appetite for things that feel handmade, imperfect, and recognizably human. Husseini doesn’t dismiss any of that.
“People are going to put a lot more weight and value on authentic people who can speak like an everyday guy or girl and talk about their experiences,” he said.
He points to TikTok Shop affiliates, where an ordinary person recommending a product from their bedroom can sometimes outperform a polished influencer campaign because the interaction feels less like advertising and more like advice from a friend.
“It feels like your best friend talking to you,” he said. “It’s a person who works the same job as you, shops at the same places as you, has the same income.”
In that sense, AI doesn’t necessarily eliminate authenticity. Humans become more valuable for the parts that feel unmistakably human.
Husseini also sees increasingly surreal hooks being used in social advertising, particularly around short-form vertical entertainment.
“They just need to get you to stay,” Husseini said.
This isn’t an entirely new principle.
Carnival barkers understood it.
Tabloid headlines understood it.
Television programmers understood it.
Human beings are curious. Husseini joked that if a brand were trying to sell pistachios, the future ad might begin with something completely bizarre, perhaps even a “pregnant pistachio,” simply because the image would be strange enough to make someone stop.
Businesses that ignore AI may find themselves at a disadvantage to those willing to experiment.
“I think it would be a big mistake if you’re not at least playing around with AI,” Husseini said. “Just keeping your finger on the pulse and having an idea of where it’s going and how it works.”
Because for all the attention AI gets for what it can create, its real advantage may be something much older: Knowing what makes people stop, look, and smile.
Amy Pais-Richer is a published author, screenwriter, and former advertising creative director.
