[March 25, 2024]
Artificial Intelligence has improved by leaps and bounds in the past few years, leaving many creative individuals, especially graphic designers, wondering about long-term job stability.
Many of these remarkable advancements enable the generation of images based on a series of prompts, producing a near-finished product almost instantly (Generative AI).
However, graphic design is more than merely creating aesthetically pleasing images. It is about connecting with the viewer, evoking emotion and eliciting a response. These are things AI can’t, and maybe never will be able to replicate.
“But I see AI-generated images all over the place! Surely it is the future of graphic design.”
That may be true, to a degree. Let’s jump into why Generative AI won’t be replacing human graphic designers anytime soon.
AI Work in Advertisements
One key reason that humans are more valuable to companies than Generative AI is the ability to control the created material.
In 2023, United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that AI-generated artwork can’t be copyrighted. In her decision, Howell stated that copyright has never been granted to work that was “absent any guiding human hand,” adding that “human authorship is the bedrock requirement of copyright.”
This ruling will most likely serve as a linchpin for human involvement in creating, designing, writing and implementing marketing and advertising work for many years to come.
If a company is not able to protect their brand, trademark or other work because of the lack of copyright, they are very unlikely to resort to the use of AI at all.
The Problems with AI-Generated Art
While there are some cool images generated from AI, that is far from the norm. The use of AI to generate images requires a fairly solid vision of the finished product. It also requires the ability to put that vision into words, something that anyone in the agency and design world knows can be tough.
Clients often change their mind, are vague with their direction, and want to provide input from start to finish.
Without precise prompts at the beginning, AI-generated images are about as valuable as a crude drawing on a napkin…that is, not very.
“As designers, part of our job is to not only decipher what the client is asking for, but understanding the request in such a way that we can provide them with a concept that they didn’t even know they wanted,” said Brent Thomsen, Creative Director at AKC Marketing. “AI is not going to give you that much forethought. It’s just a machine following orders. It can’t think strategically or read the emotion of the client like an experienced designer can.”
It is this human element of understanding that is irreplaceable at this juncture. In fact, much of the artwork generated by AI that you see bouncing around the internet isn’t the result of typing in a few keywords and hitting enter. It is often much more involved than people let on, essentially requiring almost code-like languages, a lot of refinement and a preexisting familiarity with the platform.
Even if you are able to use AI correctly and efficiently, there are still other limitations to consider. Perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks involves creating a series of images.
When creating a marketing campaign, there are design elements that carry through. For instance, if you are designing a series of advertisements featuring a middle-aged farmer on a farm, you can enter all the prompts to create that image once. If you then try to create another version, perhaps with the farmer driving a tractor, the AI image will be generated from scratch, perhaps giving you a completely different farmer and look from the first image.
Additionally, editing an AI-generated image can be challenging. If you like a generated image, but want to make a small change, the new prompt will generate a brand-new image, and you could lose everything you liked about the original.
The Future of Generative AI
Like anything, predicting the future is an educated guess at best. The same is true when trying to see where Generative AI might go months from now, let alone years.
There are some that actually believe that Generative AI might have already peaked and begun a downward descent.
While this may seem far-fetched on its face, there might be some truth to it. Generative AI relies on combing the internet for existing content to use as a sort of amalgamation. The recent rise of these types of tools have flooded the internet with synthetic content, potentially creating a strange form of design inbreeding, where these works feed other works, which in turn feed other works until you are left with something unrecognizable.
One study showed that training models based on data from other Generative AI models eventually leads to an irreversible degenerative process.
Generative AI is not likely to replace human graphic designers any time soon. And, like the industry killers that have come before, will likely just become another tool in the toolbox, allowing for more creative, efficient work to be done.
There will always be something new, but there will always be humans that need to be involved.
Do you need some graphic design help? Contact us today and we’ll talk to you, human to human.