Graphic Designers

Just no. AI art looks and will always look awful and soulless. People who say "ohhh its ai it'll look better in the future" just dont know how AI works. AI isnt gonna replace ANY creative processes, EVER.

AI, at its current stages, can only replicate patterns it sees in the images and text it’s given. It isn’t capable of the knowledge behind the design choices in Graphic Design. AI doesn’t understand anatomy, color theory, or other aspects of art. However, this doesn’t mean that it can’t in the future, and it certainly doesn’t mean it can’t fool us into thinking it knows what it’s doing.

it's already seeing tides where ai has already replaced a lot, but no job will be replaced completely within 2 decades. its impractical to leave the job to ai completely, but layoffs and fewer manpower are definitely the way to go

Hey my fellow designers, i know we all can recognize a good work from a mediocre to bad one, we are trained on our field after all, however there are tons of clients who will see some ai generated slop and feel like it's good enough (specially for logos or illustration).

So yeah, i don't think corporate will slow down on their demand for professionals but freelance will take a huge tool (i think), i myself am trying to expand it as of late, art comissions were never stable but i loved to them (nowadays the chance of getting a client is probably close to 0 since a lot of basic stuff is covered for the average client without high standarts) so i opt out to learn how to tattoo, so maybe if it ever comes to lose my job because of some morons from the tech industry i might have something else to go by.

A couple of years ago this was less than 5%. It is scary to see this advance in just 2 years

Looking that artist fight back against artificial intelligence by making Anti-AI Flitters that seems to lower the risk not to mention what you put as a reason for 34% risk which is that It's hard to automate Originality, fine arts.etc not to mention that every single artist have their own style even in the umbrella terms, for example you can't say style in Toilet Bound Hanako kun is the same as one in Blue Exorcist.etc.
In short: Even if hard it in theory could be possible, but I'm more for making that AI + Artist combo to help people with drawing.

Clients will get designs from automated AI, but they will start to look all very similar, lacking personality. A good graphic designer can listen to their clients and deliver what they ask, get feedback and adjust accordingly

motion graphics is too perfect to replicate

Most commentary here is from people who are either very young or very removed from the actual profession of graphic design or most art that is used professionally. It is not, at all, a field that is about "generating" art or designs. It is about exactness, specificity, and unintuitive associations. Exactness from customers, developers, clients, coworkers, bosses, etc.

The problem that people don't seem to understand is that all the generative ai programs right now produce art that's very cool to look at and art that no one would ever pay for, because they don't understand the point of paying for art in the first place.

There are billions of cool images you get get for free online right now. Graphic designers already compete against that, and yet, they're still paid.

Why?

The reason why artists are paid is because people want something very specific, and all generative AI right now, and in the future, will fail the specificity requirement because it by nature has to give probabilistic (aka common) answers, and as people adapt to AI art existing, the demands on specificity will increase.

because graphic design requires good creativity, something robots dont have

Because they dont capture the same depth of emotion and they also dont look natural as they make movements too smooth

20 years is a long time. Would you have expected this AI boom twenty years ago? Who knows how fast AI will develop in the future. Imagine showing someone SORA twenty years ago. They would be in disbelief.

Graphic design is too broad of a term in my opinion. There's logo design, web design, package design, wayfinding design, branding, mobile design, t-shirt design, print design, poster design, and much more.

Digital art and illustrations I think are already under threat. When the art being generated is general and the boundaries of art are more forgiving, then the general nature of AI will thrive. But for more exacting work like logo design, web design, and package design, AI struggles from my experience.

I have played around with Adobe's built-in AI tools for Illustrator and Photoshop. While they're cool to play with, I often find myself wasting time playing prompt engineering, when I could have created something on my own faster. If I as a designer don't have patience to prompt-engineer my way into a design, I'm certain clients won't either.

There's also levels to graphic design. Maybe AI will get rid of the bad designers and the bad clients! But the precise, custom, unique work that many clients look for is hard to replace.

Lastly, being a graphic designer is more than just the technical skills. It's about directing a vision for the design. Even if AI is 100% perfect, it may not understand the client's needs.

I first got into computing by teaching myself web design, then C++, then web development when I was 12. I eventually got into CSci and AI as an academic. I then realised what we were doing was a disaster for humanity and migrated to neuroscience (in which I also had a degree). In industry, I designed and developed over a dozen commercial websites of all shapes and scopes (including a B2B procurement interface in HTML/CSS/JS/C#/ASP.NET for a Big Pharma company that's still running 20 years later and several freelance SME sites using PHP). I attended to all the graphics and design aspects myself. Having established my expertise in all relevant areas of the conversation, I'd suggest that the only bulwark against the complete replacement of graphics designers within the next year (let alone 20) is human resistance. But one must understand that the reticence on the part of corporations is not benevolence. If they could replace you tomorrow, they would. Indeed, they will. One of the problems right now, however, is current and potential future legislative hurdles under consideration. It's not entirely resolved inside the global legal scope whether commercial use of AI generated works will *always* be considered the true IP of the company that generates them. Large corporations demand accountability and someone at whom they can point the finger. AI, currently, and hopefully never will, allow them to do that (certainly not while there are legal issues of copyright infringement etc. up in the air). Sadly, I doubt the latter will remain a status quo: there is too much money at stake for too many people. One of the mistakes you absolutely cannot afford to make is to believe that gen. AI's inability to create anything truly novel will insure you against obsolescence. Most people, including large businesses, *do not care* (especially if they don't have to make any disclosures regarding their use of AI). Given the strength of the AI lobby, it seems obvious to me that they will eventually get their way and ride roughshod over artists (much as Google beat the entire weight of the publishing industry in creating Google Books). If 95% of people can't identify, for example, 95% of AI logos, does it matter that they're AI? Not in practice. That is "good enough". And we're already there, both in de novo creation and image manipulation. Creativity is a higher human ideal; it is not the ideal of big business. In fact, looking at the variety of bland, safe, progressive corporate aesthetics over the past 10-15 years, including the so-called "globohomo" art style, they didn't seem to care about creativity even when it was undoubtedly the sole domain of humans. There's virtually zero incentive for them to spend money on an expensive or even moderately-priced rebrand or redesign or any work of human creativity when a machine can convincingly fake it for free or almost free. Your occupation's future as a mass industry depends on your ability to convince lawmakers not to tolerate the displacement of artists and on convincing businesses to somehow care, if they ever have, about art. I don't believe that's possible under current conditions of "efficiency at all costs", particularly given the proficiency of AI in achieving that goal. So I advise the utmost caution looking into the future and I don't see design of any kind as a stable career path for those starting out. Presupposing the regulatory dam doesn't hold, graphic design will be reduced to a niche profession bolstered by the increasing rejection of AI art by "ethical business" and the alignment of artists with fellow artists (note that, as the quality improves, this is rapidly becoming an ethical as opposed to functional stance). As an example of this alignment, I don't foresee many musicians breaking ranks and getting their album covers done by AI in the near future because they're on the same picket line. But the jobs market is clearly going to contract if small enterprise and fellow artists become the primary market for our work. (Like much AI art, AI music is already incredible and can, on a technical level, much of the time outperform in AB testing what I took a decade to master as a hobby. I have since given up production.) There's obviously going to be (and already is) a massive anti-AI movement in the West and it's probably even going to grow for a while longer. But how many people are going to boycott Amazon if they rebrand their portfolio of companies using AI? How many boycott Amazon *effectively* right now? Not many. I try to boycott Amazon simply to avoid them taking the Monopoly board, but I'm not perfect. I *despise* Google, for a great many reasons, including the fact that it's basically the data-slurping hub of the CIA and "long march through the institutions" (seriously, look at who provided Google's startup capital) but I still haven't managed to wholly de-Google. Most people would *like* to boycott some big companies, but most of them are just too high time preference and low impulse control to succeed reliably. Increasingly, they'll have no non-AI alternatives; that's how I see gen. AI "artistry" and "design" playing out as companies normalise it. Once one major games company starts charging £100 per game, it gives permission to the rest. Once a critical mass are using AI, esp. when you're not reliably able to determine which, the customer will find it increasingly difficult to carry out selective boycotts. (Incidentally, AAA games devs have already integrated AI around the margins -- from what I hear, more than they're letting on.) To me, the organic anti-AI movement feels a lot like the "Keep Music Live" movement: founded and adopted by keen, passionate, and strong-willed advocates. But I don't see this playing out any differently to that (which I think we can all agree ultimately failed). Keep Music Live became a tiny protest niche in the wake of incredible market forces, changing consumption habits, normalisation, and technological "progress". How long can the strikingly similar "No AI" badges hold out? How many people will care either way? It seems evident to me that, at the moment, it's mostly the passionate freelance creatives aligning themselves with each other and forming a strike line. I think the strike will grow as technological unemployment affects more and more industries (especially white collar office types who believed themselves safe), but will AI art acceptance have already become a ceded battleground by then? It's hard to say, but I'm inclined to believe it will. AI art, like AI coding[1], is an existential threat to the industry *right now* and it's going to be a struggle to hold the line until mass tech unemployment hits and the (then destitute and nihilistic) reinforcements come. One way companies are breaking apart this solidarity is operant conditioning their employees to use AI. (Big Tech companies - notably excluding X, AFAIK - are frequently giving their programmers bonuses for using AI as part of their coding and general workflow. We're stupidly piloting our own replacement scheme.) I'm sorry, lads, but most people - especially business types - simply don't care about the distinction between human creativity and the accurate AI simulacrum of it. We're seeing this in music, where AI is good enough to quietly flood Spotify without much notice. For a while, there may be a cottage industry in promptmasters (some pro-AI types on Reddit already boast about their prowess at wording perfect prompts), but I doubt that's something many true creatives are going to want to engage with, being anathema to the spirit of true art. Is true art exclusive to humans? Yes. Does it matter? Not really, no. Not enough, not to enough people, and not in the long term. [1] Over half of all patches submitted to the Linux kernel are due to be "AI assisted" by the end of 2026. And over 10% will be entirely AI gen. https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ai-generated-patches-to-linux-kernel

there are many simple posters being created by ai

High barrier of entry, high returns and low maintenance career after about 15,000 hours.

AI keeps getting better with graphic design in general. Just look at things like Sora by OpenAI or the Microsoft Bing Image Creator, and then think about what that'll look like in a couple of years.

Designers who focus their practice on critical thinking — specifically creative problem solving — are at less risk of automation. Those designers that focus more on aesthetics and technique are at a much higher risk of obsolescence due to automation.
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As a design educator at a university with a well respected communication design program who has embraced AI use by my junior/senior level students over the last two semesters, I have watched our students aided by AI, produce more strategic, well researched and well executed advertising and brand designs that far exceed their peers who are not using AI. I have seen the most progress in:
- organization
- accuracy
- time management
- writing skills
- iterative idea generation
- clarity of communication
- audience insights
- persona building
- animation
- automation of manual task
Their approach is more efficient and and happens much quicker allowing them more time for a more irrational process foe problem solving and concept generation and in turn allowing more time for refinement of initial design exploration, which lead to outcomes they far exceeded their expectations.
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In my 25-years as a design educator I have never seen this kind of student improvement and quality of outcomes in the above categories/areas.
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These students will — with a high degree of certainty— enter the market with a baseline knowledge of AI that will far exceed most of the more senior employees and management of the firms that will employ them. Most likely they will demonstrate better time management, process and modality engagement and organizational proficiency. Aided by AI and with an in-depth knowledge of AI they will be highly valued for their efficiency by offloading manual and time absorbing task like research, composing emails, etc. allowing them to be hyper focused on create problem-solving and more strategy solutions and outcomes.
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We would reserve class time to discuss the ethics and implications of using AI covering, authenticity, originality, IP volitions, copyright violations. Additionally, In compliance with our University’s Code of Academic Honesty they include citations and attributions to what AI sources were used.
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Like most of us, I’m both excited and a bit apprehensive about AI. I’m optimistic that AI can help elevate and augment a designer’s approach and creative outcomes. The difficulty I face and an educator is the unprecedented pace at which AI is expanding. There is no doubt they AI will get abused and it will require guidelines and policies that are currently non existent.

With AI, industries will easily be able to afford an in-house graphic art department that can create endless examples, in different formats. It will also reduce error of wrong prices, misspelled words, etc.

AI art is getting insane. Who knows where it'll be in 20 years?

AI is the biggest threat to graphic designers