Alex Barashkov@alex_barashkov
For the last 6 months, we’ve been burning tokens like crazy building and designing different things.
And honestly, I still feel optimistic.
I don’t think AI will replace actual designers any time soon. I don’t see signs of it at all.
With every release, AI gets slightly better at “design”. But try to build a macOS app with it. With or without skills installed, you will still get garbage most of the time.
And actually tweaking it to a proper state still takes a lot of time.
Try to make a site. Try to make branding. Same thing. The result is still usually quite bad.
Just think for yourself: if AI was already that good at design, why would AI companies hire designers at all?
However, AI is changing the way we design.
And more importantly, it changes what we can design.
Things that we potentially would never do before are now becoming basic things that we do constantly: building dedicated apps for branding and project assets, WebGL animations, doing product design straight in code, making small tools around projects, etc.
This part is real.
But the current bullshit around “AI kills designers”, “AI kills motion designers”, etc. mostly comes from a narrative incentivized by social media platforms.
People are getting paid for these posts because they get attention.
Influencers, bots, and AI companies buying likes, posts, and quotes all help create the hype.
Does it affect designers?
Yes.
But not because AI actually replaces them.
It comes from a few things:
1) The algorithm no longer values design as much.
There is a drastic shift in interest toward AI. People see only posts about AI on all social media platforms. As a result, plenty of designers are experiencing a reduction in leads, since their content just don't get to the audience it was getting before.
2) Companies are in a rush and in a transition period.
We literally see this even with our clients. Companies know they have to transform the business for the AI era, but many still don’t know into what.
Since there is a lot of uncertainty, businesses are trying to find new product-market fit and iterate quickly, rather than investing properly in design.
3) Due to the hype, some founders really start thinking they don’t need designers.
They ask developers or marketers to design. Some developers definitely can design with AI, but only because they already have an inner designer sitting in them. Not because AI is a magical tool that designs instead of them.
4) Junior and middle designers who used to do routine tasks are affected the most.
Some of those tasks can already be replaced by AI. Again, not because AI knows how to design, but because those designers were doing routine things that are far from being counted as real design.
So no, I don’t think AI is replacing designers.
But it is changing the work, the market, and the expectations.
And it is definitely exposing the difference between people who actually design and people who were mostly producing design-looking things.
