Should Designers begin to fear AI?

Graphic Designers, and creative professionals generally, will need to embrace the opportunities and overcome the challenges that rapidly evolving, industry-disruptive AI technology brings. The impact is multifaceted, affecting processes and way of thinking. Although the tech is impressive by any standards, many Designers are resistant to fully embracing it; they don’t believe the output comes close to replacing what they can do manually. It is wise however to begin considering how best to take advantage of generative AI (GenAI) tools, figuring out best practices to incorporate into their workflows as the technology races ahead at breakneck speed. Undoubtedly, AI offers Designers the benefit of increased productivity and improved workflow, allowing them to focus more on creative thinking and innovation.

What AI can help Designers with now

Creatives already have a plethora of generative AI tools at their disposal capable of creating a variety of visuals, ranging from graphics to mock-ups and layouts with multiple swiftly produced variations. Adobe’s Firefly technology has been baked into its industry leading design software for years and is constantly improving, allowing designers to play around with generated results, if only to visualise ideas and swiftly iterate on their existing work.

At present, AI is best utilised to enhance efficiency and productivity. It can handle most repetitive system tasks – resizing images for various outputs, swiftly adjusting colourways, and generating multiple variations – allowing Designers to focus on more creative aspects of their work. Besides tasks relating to designing content, it can help you learn best practices to improve and speed up workflow, providing smart suggestions to streamline design processes. The best thing about gen AI is that you can use some of the most powerful image generation tools for free online now, with leading platforms like OpenAI’s DALL·E, Bing’s CoPilot Designer and Midjourney and many others (check out ZDNet’s Best of 2024 list) to create stunning visuals in styles ranging from ultra photo realistic to illustrated or abstract.

Key challenges and opportunities AI presents to Designers

Online simplified design tools such as Canva incorporate simple but useful AI features in combination with templates to allow non-Designers to create decent content they’d have never thought they could make before. Democratization of design has been a hot topic in the industry for some time; even Adobe has simplified their toolsets in recent years to appeal to a larger non-professional demographic. Designers need to be aware of these challenges, as many small to medium sized business, often only afforded shoestring budgets towards their creative objectives, will take “good enough” over unaffordable or nothing at all. Designers should not be quaking in their boots just yet. The quality of work produced by non-professionals is immediately visible and rarely backed by any strategy or consistency. There remains high demand for talent Designers to create more complex, higher quality work that can’t easily be replicated. It’s worth noting that GenAI presents concerns about bias and diversity. As these systems are fed existing content into their models, they typically perpetuate existing biases. Designers will need to be vigilant to ensure diversity and inclusivity comes through in their work.

What does the future hold?

AI technology will undoubtedly transform the role of a Designer. Optimistically, it will enhance their work and allow them to focus on design thinking and strategy. The key skills to develop will be creativity, empathy and refinement. Designers will need to become better at creative direction and curation, as interfacing with AI requires clear and succinct text-based prompts. Undoubtedly, we will see emerging creative roles in the industry as the job market changes to align with technological changes and business needs.

Ethical and legal implications of AI generated images

Of course, GenAI can only work when existing content is fed into its model. This means it can learn to generate images in almost any style simply by mimicking art styles that have been created by talented illustrators, photographers and graphic artists. Where do intellectual property rights come into play, and how will it affect professional artists, when a computer program can create a high-quality piece or art within seconds based on a prompt, when artists can take days or weeks to produce just one artwork? Genuine concerns are discussed in this post from Torresburriel Studio. Currently, there are no clear legal directives or ramifications for imagery created by AI (although Australia has introduced a ban on non-consensual deepfake pornography, seen as an egregious form of abuse), however, there are various concerns (some are briefly highlighted in this article from IDEO) to protect artists and designers. The legal and ethical framework is already under serious consideration by government and industry bodies and will undoubtedly evolve into a series of regulations in the coming years. Royal Society takes a deeper dive into governing AI.

How will it affect stock photo businesses?

What does GenAI mean for stock photo and illustration repositories online? If you have the tools at your fingertips to generate almost anything you can describe, why pay for existing stock photos from the major platforms like iStock and Adobe Stock? The state of AI currently is nowhere near what a perfectly staged photo looks like. Even with a reference image in place, photorealistic people are often generated with 6 fingers and strange cloth and skin textures; however, as AI models quickly evolve they’ll address these details and in time may be capable of generating photographs indistinguishable from real life. The stock photo providers are scrambling to adapt GenAI technology into their existing products, and it will be interesting to see just how this impacts their future operations.

Designers must begin to incorporate AI into their process

Now is the best time to start learning. Learn what tools are available to you now; for example, Adobe’s Firefly GenAI works directly in-app in Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator. Learn to better articulate the results you wish to see. The result will only be as good as the direction you provide. Learn what AI excels at and its limitations; and consider how your traditional skills can uplift the result. Learn the process of prompting and iterating to quickly produce a multitude of variations, from which you can select the best results to work from. There are a plethora of free and paid online learning courses available online, such as this focused AI for Designers course from Interaction Designer Foundation. Many more (of varying quality) are available on Udemy, Coursera and a growing number of video tutorials on YouTube. This guide from 10xconsultant.ai is a great read for beginners trying to understand the complex nature of Generative AI in practice, with recommended courses and certifications. If you prefer a traditional read, this practical guide on Generative Art by Matt Pearson is recommended. Due to the speed at which the technology is evolving, ensure you stay ahead of the game and adapt to change by integrating suitable AI tools to enhance your skillset and expertise to increase your value.

In summary, while AI presents Designers with certain challenges, it also offers numerous opportunities. By embracing AI, Designers can enhance their creativity, efficiency, and productivity, ultimately leading to more innovative and strategic roles in the design industry.

* All images in this post have been AI generated.