I’m not anti-AI. Let’s get that straight from the start.
I use Claude daily as a personal assistant. It/he helps me think through problems, organise my thoughts, and work more efficiently. The tool itself isn’t the issue, it’s how companies are shoving it into everything without considering what gets lost in the process.
The Creative Shortcut Problem
Take Photoshop. For years, you’d spend hours hunting down the perfect elements, blending them together, making sure lighting matched, shadows felt natural. You’d learn composition, colour theory, and how different elements work together. Now? Type a prompt and let AI generate it for you.
Is that faster? Absolutely.
Is it better? I genuinely don’t know.
You’re trading the creative process (the problem-solving, the experimenting, the learning) for efficiency. You’re becoming a prompt writer instead of a designer. And I can’t decide if that’s progress or just another way we’re devaluing what it means to actually create something.
When Professional Tools Pander to Beginners
Here’s what really gets me: Adobe Illustrator now has AI prompts to set up bleed.
Bleed. The absolute basics of print production. Something every designer learns in their first week of working with print.
Who exactly are they designing these tools for now? Because it’s not professional designers who’ve spent years learning the craft.
The Freepik Problem
I’ve got a Freepik subscription. Been using it for ages for stock photos and design assets. Solid resource. But every single email I get from them now is pushing AI tools.
Their homepage currently screams: “Creative work, reimagined. One suite: top AI models, pro editing tools, and stock assets – trusted by 700,000+ creatives.”
Let’s be honest about what “creatives” means in their marketing copy. They’re not talking to designers. They’re talking to DIY-ers, marketing coordinators, small business owners who want to skip the creative process entirely and just generate a “brand suite” with a few prompts.
The things they’re pushing (logo creation, brand guidelines, colour palettes) are literally what designers have trained years to do well. And now it’s available to everyone with zero understanding of why certain choices matter.
The Devaluation Cycle
I saw this creeping in over the last few years, which is why I’ve been deliberately adding more strategic thinking to my toolkit. I’ve always needed to understand the why behind every design decision, but now I’m actively positioning that strategic work front and centre. It’s not just about creating the thing anymore, it’s about explaining why this particular solution works for this particular business problem.
And here’s the thing: I don’t begrudge people doing it themselves. Most small business owners don’t have time or budget to hire designers for everything. That’s reality.
But when “anyone can do it,” the perception of what we do shifts. Our expertise gets diminished. And suddenly, clients expect to pay less because “it’s so easy now, can’t you just use AI?”
When AI Becomes the Brief
The most recent example? A client came to me with AI-generated logo concepts. Not for inspiration. As the actual brief. “Can you just make this work?”
It’s actually insulting. They’ve skipped the entire creative consultation process, bypassed the strategy conversation about what their brand needs to communicate, and jumped straight to “execute this thing the computer spat out.”
Sure, I know there’ll still be a place for proper designers. AI can’t create print-ready files. It can’t set up packaging on dielines. It can’t build a multipage brochure or catalogue with proper bleed and layout. The technical skills still matter.
But it sucks watching the strategic, creative side of what we do get devalued in real time.
Where Does This Leave Us?
I honestly don’t have an answer.
AI tools aren’t going anywhere. Companies will keep cramming them into software whether we want them or not. The barrier to entry for “creative work” will keep dropping.
Maybe the answer is what I’ve already been doing. Lean harder into strategy, into the thinking that AI can’t replicate. Focus on clients who understand the difference between generating assets and actually solving problems.
Or maybe I’m just frustrated that the creative process I spent 25+ years mastering is being reduced to prompt engineering.
Either way, I’m not against the tools. I’m against what we’re losing in the rush to make everything faster and easier. It’s never the daily crappy stuff we do that gets replaced, is it? It seems to be the actual creative fields like writing, design and the analytical stuff like coding that’s being swept up in this.
Am I overthinking this, or are we watching creativity get systematically dumbed down in real time?
