The TEMU-fication of Software, Digital Goods & Services
The TEMU-Fication of Software, Digital Goods and Services
A hypothesis on the near future of software, books, music, and movies, where AI-generated 'slop' becomes the cheap, abundant norm, pushing human-made work into a luxury tier. Drawing parallels to fast fashion, the piece argues that LLMs compress historical labor, enabling a flood of 'vibe-coded' software, books, and media that are just barely good enough, while externalizing costs onto quality and security. It predicts a two-tier market and questions whether platforms like Netflix will truly resist the trend.
The garment in your hand is only cheap to you because it has been expensive to someone else, in ways that the price tag does not show.