Written by: Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. Originally published in WorkLife by London Inc.
Yes, you will get a job with that arts degree
Suddenly, companies are paying a premium for a skill that predates AI: the art of communication
When ChatGPT first launched us into the generative AI age back in 2022, it put a lot of us writers on edge: here was a tool that could summon passable, if often a bit boring and em-dash-laden, copy quickly. When image generation followed, creatives across the spectrum started to get nervous. Copywriters saw clients drop off, and some of those that remained started to question what they were paying for.
But it wasn’t long until workslop started to flood the pipeline, readers hipped to, and then bristled at, some common ChatGPT-isms and the generative AI industry as a whole shifted away from text generation to more complex applications.
And now, it’s the writers and communication professionals who are finding themselves in higher demand. A number of tech companies have been investing heavily in their storytelling and communications teams. Anthropic, makers of Claude, tripled their communications team to 80 people last year, with some making north of $200k. Netflix recently posted it was looking for a director of product and technology communications with a salary range that went up to $775,000 USD, nearly seven figures in Canadian loonies. Microsoft, reported Business Insider, launched a print magazine, calling it the “antidote to the ephemeral nature of digital.”
Suddenly, a writing degree is looking hot again.
“There’s just so much garbage out there that people want to pay a premium for someone who can claim that they can cut through the noise,” said Gab Ferree, former VP of global communications at Bumble, speaking to Business Insider.
As a result of AI, one of the shifts we’re starting to see is a pendulum that appears, at least for now, to be swinging back in favour of the liberal arts education. “Students studying the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences or some combination of these gain skills that machines will never master, such as critical thinking and collaboration,” wrote Robin Holmes-Sullivan, who points to an August 2025 study that found that 93 per cent of executives and hiring managers are now ranking written and oral communication skills, along with things like ethical decision making, as the top qualities they are looking for in candidates. “This is exactly what a broad education in liberal arts and sciences delivers in spades,” Holmes-Sullivan said.
Perhaps it’s all temporary cope, and there will one day be an AI that doesn’t write so much like an AI. But for writers, communications pros and ‘storytellers’ (the corporate moniker de jour), the very thing they clung to through the first waves of AI disruption — their non-machine-ness — seems to be paying dividends, and companies are increasingly willing to pay a premium for it.
“The AI slop of it all creates so much distrust,” said communications executive Steve Hirsch in The Wall Street Journal. “The brands that are winning right now are the ones that are most authentic, and human, and relatable.”
No clear path
Promotion out of reach: Why young women see no opportunity to lead
As I write this, it’s International Women’s Day, and while a nice gesture to the ladies in your life is warranted and very likely appreciated, one thing Canadian women are really looking for, at least in their professional lives, are opportunities for promotion — and sadly, those are seriously lacking, states a new report.
According to the report from Fora: Network for Change, women in Canadian workplaces are feeling increasingly stuck at work, especially early in their careers. Ninety-three per cent of women under 30 say they see no pathway to promotions at work; 85 per cent said they do not feel challenged or stimulated; and 51 per cent said they were stuck in entry level positions and not moving anywhere.
“The opportunity for promotion, the opportunity for increased salary, it’s really being barred and prevented at that very early career stage for these young people, which then impedes and slows their progression of climbing into leadership,” said Fora CEO Emma Asiedu-Akrofi. “If they miss that first step into promotion, it slows the wage growth, it limits their access to stretch opportunities. When you compare that to their male counterparts, it’s even more pronounced.”
It’s something you can see in national data. Statistics Canada finds that while women occupy around 47 per cent of all management positions, they hit a glass ceiling at around 40 per cent of senior management positions — not an enormous gap, but a persistent one. And the stats produced by Fora offer a contrast to long-celebrated improvements to women’s labour participation rates. Higher workforce participation is often assumed to be a good thing, but Fora’s data suggests it has come at the expense of quality — that the talents of a large cohort of young women are stuck in an underemployment and underutilization rut. As much as the workforce participation gap has closed, the gap between being employed and being fulfilled appears to be widening.
How then can women be better supported? HR experts say they want to see industries of all stripes moving beyond some of the more performative supports that have become common in the last few years.
“Women have too much mentoring and not enough sponsorship,” stated Toronto Metropolitan University Diversity Institute’s Wendy Cukier, speaking to HR Reporter. She and others say that while mentorship has helped women develop skills, few are seeing themselves be championed and advocated for in formal and informal networking spaces. “They focus on performance and task as opposed to those informal networks and relationships that actually, at the end of the day, often matter as much or more than talent and accomplishments.”
Everyone wants a fancy office
Has your employer redesigned the office for RTO?
By now you’ve probably heard all the bellyaching and proselytizing there is to hear about RTO; we won’t add to it here. But one group is happy about it: commercial office renovators, who have been kept plenty busy with the growing demand for premium commercial space.
“We’re breaking last year’s records,” said Stephanie Uprichard, CEO of Studio Forma Interior Design, who told TorontoToday they had had their best year ever in 2025, primarily on the strength of demand for upgraded office space. Several other interior design firms told the publication the same thing.
CBRE is estimating that national investment in commercial real estate this year could hit $56 billion, the third-highest year in Canadian history. “Supply scarcity for high-quality assets will necessitate proactive decision making as firms compete for premium, well-located and highly amenitized space,” its report reads.
What’s underwriting the trend is a clear demand shift heading into the remainder of 2026 and beyond. Commercial firms increasingly feel they’ve weathered the uncertainty of the Covid years and are ready to build and improve office space; on the demand side, tenant companies and companies in the market for office space are learning that a premium office space is the key to getting workers back in office.
“What’s different heading into 2026 is the growing sense of stability,” said Royal LePage Commercial’s interim general manager Matt Jacques. “Businesses are no longer reacting to every economic headline and are instead taking a more deliberate, long-term approach to space planning and investment decisions.”
All of this demand is not created equally though, and brokers see more of a K-shaped market emerging, where demand for Class A and AAA office space is surging, while companies are much less interested in Class B and C space. Everyone wants a premium office tower now, and those able to provide that aren’t fighting their employees nearly as much over RTO as those that don’t.
“Those organizations that are in those spaces are seeing a little bit more success and a little bit less of an impact to employee engagement and experience from having those there,” Colliers’ Sarah Bramley told Storeys. “But organizations [that] are bringing people back to the office now [and] haven’t really touched their workspace in five, 10, 15 years — the office is just really out of date. It’s really not doing what people need to be productive.”
The unsettling rise of AI real estate slop
If that home looks little too good (or scary!) to be true, it probably is
A lot of things might make you recoil in horror when you’re perusing a real estate listing: a beautiful heritage home gutted in favour of bland investor chic; open concept nothingness where once a well-thought-out kitchen once stood; demons in the bathroom with four eyes seeming to transcend the physical plane of a mirror.
All disturbing, although it was the latter, which popped up in one rental listing last month (an AI hallucination, we hope) that ignited a big debate about how one industry in particular, the real estate sector, is employing the new wave of AI tools.
Buyers have been quick to notice the landscape of real estate listings has changed. “As I was scrolling through the photos, I noticed that some things just weren’t making sense,” one homeowner told Wired recently. “There were stairways leading to nowhere. In general, it just looked cartoonified.”
That tracks with what those in the industry are reporting in terms of the usage of AI to generate listings. “I’ve been at a few conferences over the past few weeks, and just anecdotally speaking, we’ll ask out of 100 people in the audience how many are using AI, and I’d say 80 to 90 per cent of people raise their hand,” the director of innovation strategy at the National Association of Realtors, Dan Weisman, said.
The rise of the tools is leading to lots of debate within the industry about how to regulate and enforce some standards. The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board prohibits digitally altered photos that inaccurately depict a home, but as one broker recently told The Globe and Mail, “enforcement is another story.” For its part, the Canadian Real Estate Association says it is monitoring the use of the technology but doesn’t have plans to introduce any specific rules just yet.
Although most concede the practice is a net negative for both buyers and sellers — and a potential legal liability if AI is used to cover up flaws or defects — some question whether the practice is all that different than virtual staging, and even whether it is all that different from regular staging; after all, aren’t both just about selling a dream?
“Why would I send my photos of an empty room to a virtual stager, have them spend four days and send it back to me at a charge of 500 bucks when I can just do it in ChatGPT for free in 45 seconds?” one realtor asked.
And there’s another industry trying to stave off the tidal wave of AI content: real estate photographers, who are becoming allies alongside homebuyers and warriors for keeping the real in real estate.
“People that want to buy a house, they’re going to make the largest investment of their lifetime,” one said. “They don’t want to be fooled before they ever arrive.”
