Will artificial intelligence replace the designer in the future?

Will artificial intelligence replace the designer in the future?

Ask a designer the question and you will get outrage and indignation.

Creativity is his very own, individual and non-exchangeable characteristic, which is why he feels personally attacked. And whenever there is a strong emotional response, it is a sign that a weak spot has been hit.

However, it is not, as many fear, creativity that the algorithm will replace, but the ability to recognize patterns and to create new contexts according to these patterns, which correspond to the rules of the patterns and - here it comes - do so thousands of times and in the shortest possible time.

Models can be trained with music notes of Bach and after a short time generate completely new pieces of music that sound like Bach. The disturbing thing here is not that a computer replaces the genius Bach. The computer can generate not only one piece of music at the push of a button, but 1000 at the same time. It is possible to feed the model with Mozart and create new pieces with 20% Mozart and 80% Bach.

Let’s look at the work of a designer on the basis of a design of a business card.

The creation process based on a designer’s business card design goes like this as an example:

The client meets with the designer and discusses what he/she has in mind. The designer then creates three drafts and presents them to the customer. The customer decides on a variant. This design phase runs two to four times. Once a final design has been agreed upon, the draft is drawn in and released for printing.

The limits of this process are determined by the time a designer needs for a design. The quality or experience and skill of the designer is critical, as the key is to arrive at an acceptable design in the time limited by the budget.

Artificial intelligence can perform creative tasks. Programmers have created some models that perform certain creative tasks according to aesthetic properties.

These models are used in the creative process, for example, as image filters, image effects, and color suggestions.

These applications all follow the old process, one design at a time, being worked out.

But the revolutionary thing about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is that there is no longer a time limit in the creative process. Where a design takes a day to complete and after 3-4 days has three drafts worked out, AI is able to create millions of variants at the push of a button. The time limit no longer plays a role. The quality of the designs depend on the quality of the model.

This changes the role of the designer. If artificial intelligence takes over creative services, the designer is put in the role of the one who filters, sorts and selects. He or she changes from designer to curator.

This raises the question of how interfaces and interaction with artificial intelligence have to look so that the designer can perform this new task.