Ah, not another luddite on Medium, comparing AI to the Dot Com Bubble.
Not really though.
Last year, I predicted that Adobe would introduce some form of AI into their creative suite…and guess who released Firefly ? Yes.
I did get cooked in the comments by designers who have been in the industry for as many years as my age — but I had the last laugh.
But, didn’t Firefly and generative-fill in Photoshop make the life of designers easier ?
Yes, but only for a select few.
The ones who were thrown under the bus were illustrators, logo designers, photo manipulators, collage designers etc.
These examples might be niche, but they’re losing work due to AI already.
Now here’s the thing that still keeps me up at night — when will AI actually get good enough to replace digital designers?
Because, you are lying to yourself if you think currently it’s anywhere near it.
Internet forums in general, especially the mainstream ones like Twitter, LinkedIn or even Youtube should be the last place where you search for “objectively” sound opinions on this topic.
Everyone is now an influencer who’s pitching AI prompting courses.
They all have an ulterior motive to only share what will benefit them.
But what about you, the designer who is scared of being out of work ?
I still wasn’t satisfied with anything in the generative AI space, and needed to wait for a couple more months to form an opinion.
So I did.
I speak to random people a lot, and many happen to be senior designers and business owners using AI.
And I shamelessly asked for their unfiltered opinions on the topic.
Most went like this…
- Nah, don’t worry pal
- AI is a skill, you’ll learn and evolve
- Boooo, run away and become a farmer
- Too much money for an unmonetizable sector
A lot of opinions that I had to synthesize, but the last one stood out.
Is AI afterall, not profitable ?
This isn’t a concern for me, but for the investors who have already poured in $600 billion in funding to these companies.
Yes, ‘billion’ with a ‘B’.
And we are still not ready to put anybody out of work, forget a highly skilled designer.
Because AI in its current form, is just not there yet.
Don’t take my words but of Goldman Sachs, who put more effort into their research.
A huge reason for this is the lack of quality datasets to train from.
The “data” issue
Quality datasets are rare, and most of the time, industry-specific and harder to acquire unless unethically.
You can’t create bots that are capable of doing every type of design.
Many design trademarks are intellectually protected by companies (hey, steamboat willie!)
The cost of hiring a designer will be cheaper than paying for a lawsuit.
And Figma learned this the hard way.
This company is very shady to start with, they don’t allow you to protect your own work from AI.
The fact they had to roll back their generative AI feature after all the backlash must’ve opened their eyes, right ?
It won’t.
But they don’t have a choice, they aren’t profitable yet.
Selling high-quality user data to larger AI companies or using it themselves in some way will make more revenue for them.
Sad, but they’ll follow this path for sure.
People are tired
I am tired, so are you.
Everyone is, except the tech-bros hellbent on changing the chemical wiring inside our brains.
We are now reaching a point where AI is synonymous with “cheap” and “low effort”.
Why else would you be using it anyways, to cut corners ? Of course.
And generally, people seem to reject this.
Nobody wants to see soulless crap in front of their eyes at all hours.
All the brands using AI will realize this sooner or later.
Because brand value matters, no company wants to come off as cheap to customers.
This will force them to understand that their customers value craft and effort.
I mean low effort also works, but not ugly degenerative and morphed photos of weird creatures that we have to call “art”.
What’s next for designers
I had one lead for an AI app design project, where after seeing my prices, the client went forth with a UI kit generator instead.
Their product is still not live, I wonder why, lol.
But this is only short-term.
AI is currently over exaggerating its use cases
It is still only good for small repetitive business tasks and coming up with v1 for ideas.
However, this doesn’t mean it can’t get good.
Correction in the market is inevitable and someone will find a way to delegate some parts of our current work.
But that will take a lot of years, you’ll jump from a junior to a senior role by then.
So make what you want to out of this.
And for the love of god, don’t quit design yet.
Hi there 👋🏻 I’m Sharanya — a freelance UI & Web designer writing about design and documenting his journey.
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Good News Designers, AI Bubble Might Be Bursting Soon was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.