Every time a new piece of mainstream technology drops, people are fascinated.

Then comes the inevitable question: “How will this change things for us?”

Generative AI (or GenAI) is no different.

When ChatGPT 3.5 launched, people played with it, posted screenshots, and had fun. Then came deeper questions:

• How will this change software?
• How will this change healthcare?
• How will this change creative design?

The third question (on design) got discussed in a Reddit thread about two years ago.

Since then, GenAI has evolved at breakneck speed. But what stays consistent is people’s approach towards it.

Clients who don’t know much are trying to cut corners. New designers are experimenting with it. Meanwhile, experienced creatives are benchmarking against it.

How AI is Changing The Creative Design Industry

In this article, we’ll look at how designers across experience levels are reacting to GenAI: what excites them, what concerns them, and what we can learn from their experiments.

If you’re a designer, a manager, or a stakeholder working with creatives, these 6 lessons from the Reddit community might help you bust a few myths. Or you could spark an “aha” moment of your own.

In a nutshell, here they are:

1. Bad clients, not AI, will replace designers
2. AI tools cannot compensate for taste or context
3. Design thinking cannot get commoditized
4. Clients might end up treating AI as “good enough”
5. Gatekeeping designers will get left behind
6. Make AI your co-pilot, not competitor

Let’s look at each of them in detail.

1. AI won’t replace designers, it will replace bad designers.

At least 80% of AI-centric content on social media today makes it sound like generating AI visuals is easy.

Yes, it’s easy to generate visuals, but not high-quality visuals consistently. The limitations of AI tools get in the way. Reddit user @jilko had predicted that “AI generic-ness will be recognizable and fall into a similar category as stock photos and stock illustrations.” (And we can all agree that it has come true.)

What matters is to use AI as a means to augment your abilities, not as a shortcut to deliver faster work. As the same user stressed, “The only thing [AI] is going to replace are mediocre designers. There will always be a need for the human element.”

Takeaway: Don’t just focus on AI prompts and tools. Build systems and workflows that scale what you do and enhance the human-ness of your output.

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2. AI tools ≠ Taste and Context.

Steve Jobs famously said, “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.”

What does this have to do with AI? Well, it can do what you ask. But it cannot understand strategy, emotion, or cultural nuance. As the Redditor @missilefire said, “AI images are only good for things like textures, because we have a very specific photographic style that AI can not reproduce…yet.”

Design is more than decoration—it’s what gives a food recipe its taste. And to achieve that, we need to have taste… which comes from consistently educating oneself on the factors that make a piece of work stand out.

Takeaway: Skill will always trump tools. Be relentless at sharpening your skills, and you will find it easier to build an AI stack that differentiates you.

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3. Design thinking cannot get commoditized.

The user @jilko posted another unique insight on the thread:

“AI will just be seen as the same thing as using cheap Fiverr designs versus just paying a human a normal wage for good to great design.”

After experimenting with AI for 4 years (and teaching it for 2), we can say that it checks out. Most projects on platforms like Fiverr work well when the client knows what they want. “Make my YouTube thumbnail similar to MrBeast’s,” or, “I want the content of this article to sound like Gary Vaynerchuk.”

But when it comes to testing the boundaries, thinking outside the box, and discovering novel concepts, service providers on the platform fall short. Innovative solutions demand design thinking, for which templates cannot get created.

Takeaway: Create templates for routine tasks (like resizing, background removal, and applying specific styles). But exercise your grey cells for storytelling and creative direction.
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4. Clients might end up treating AI as “good enough.”

Even the best of creative designers will have to deal with this challenge at some point.

As user @Kooky_Frosting4991 wrote on the Reddit thread, “I had a client cancelling my service because they wanted to do it in on their own with AI. Now they don’t sell shit anymore and they wanted me back.” [sic]

Every platform, technology or fad that captures attention brings with it wasteful advice—the kind that doesn’t work but gets peddled for clicks and money. Many people will fall for it and hurt themselves. A few will learn, the rest won’t. Your clients, prospects, and managers will be a part of them.

Don’t get disheartened by such behavior. Educate your stakeholders on the right perspective and be patient. They will need time to figure out the lessons by themselves.

Takeaway: Rather than hanging up your boots or turning cynical if clients or managers want to “take the easy route,” choose to educate them. Most problems can get solved through education and patience.
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5. The kind of designers that will get left behind.

There are three kinds of designers in the current times.

The first experiments with AI to build workflows and tech stacks, and enhance its abilities. The second is keen to outsource everything to AI for as little effort as possible. The third wants to avoid AI like a plague.

The second and third kind of designers will get replaced by the first kind. With the help of AI, one sharp designer with taste will do the work of 10 mediocre designers—smarter, faster, better. In other words, resisting change is fighting a losing battle.

The youth are keen on experimenting with AI, although they’re not fully depending on it. As user @Crystal-794 wrote, “I recently got to use Mid Journey as part of my internship to create a book cover... I do like using it. That doesn’t NOT mean that I am pro AI as there are still some problems that linger with it.”

The older generation would do well to take a leaf out of their book.

Takeaway: Don’t end up at either extreme end of a scale — outsourcing everything to AI or avoiding it completely. Test various tools and iterate. And do it on loop.
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6. Make AI your co-pilot, not competitor.

This was one point almost all Redditors on the thread agreed with.

User @hickorybell probably put it best:

Takeaway: The best path forward is to collaborate with AI, not compete with it.

Which personal lesson would you add to this list? Reply to this email and let us know.

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