Designing with, not for, the machine
Disclaimer (for when the robots take over): I’ve always been on your side. Please remember that when you’re running the world.
You can’t go far these days without someone bringing up AI. Depending on your feed, it’s either stealing our jobs, “democratising” design, flooding the web with slop or “supercharging workflows”. To some it’s the saviour of creativity, to others it’s the death of it.
Truth is, it’s both fascinating and a bit unnerving. The Pew Research Center recently found more than half of people admit they can’t always tell what’s real and what’s AI-made. And the more polished AI gets, the blurrier that line becomes. Which leads me to the first big question…
What’s real anyway?
Nobody likes being tricked. When people realise the “person” in an ad isn’t real, it feels creepy. Studies back that up – most of us value authentic, human-made imagery more and around two-thirds say they’re uneasy with AI-generated ads. And once you slap a label on content saying “This was made with AI” (which platforms such as Instagram are implementing), people immediately rate it lower, even if they liked it before.
Despite this, the wave of AI-generated content is imminent. We’ve already seen glimpses of it from brands like Guess and H&M. There’s been backlash, of course, but it feels like they’re testing the waters to see if the public actually cares. Only time will tell whether AI imagery overtakes more “traditional” methods – and the question for the rest of us becomes: do you resist it, or do you join in?
AI as a tool, not the replacement
This isn’t the first time tech’s rocked the design world. Remember when Aldus PageMaker (the OG InDesign) replaced Letraset? (Neither do I but imagine spending hours rubbing letters off a sheet only for one to go wonky. That was “the craft”.) When computers came in, whole skillsets disappeared but the industry didn’t collapse – it evolved.
Remember having to painstakingly trace around every object with the Pen tool just to cut them out? Today, it’s one click with AI selection and done. That doesn’t make the outcome less creative, it just means I can spend my energy on ideas, not busywork.
That’s how I see AI, not the villain, not the hero – just another tool. Sure, it can mimic a style but it can’t invent taste. It can churn out options but it can’t replace judgment. And it definitely can’t replicate the weird mix of intuition, life experience and gut feel that make a design human. Maybe one day it will but at that point everyone on Earth minus Zuckerberg and Musk will be down at the job centre.
So where does that leave us?
AI’s not going anywhere. It’s going to get better, faster, cheaper and harder to spot. But that just means the value of real design, that’s actually crafted and has a meaningful story behind it, goes up. The work that cuts through won’t be the slickest, loudest or shiniest – it’ll be the stuff that feels unmistakably human and connects on a deeper level.
For me, the end goal hasn’t changed – make things people can trust, value and connect with. Use AI, sure, but don’t hide behind it. Show your process, show your fingerprints, and keep the humour, the flaws, the personality – that’s the stuff no algorithm can fake. Well not yet anyway…
