How is AI design technology going to affect us?
We often tell graphic designers that AI design technology will steal our jobs. How will the advancement of AI software affect the graphic design industry?
Let's explore the current limitations
In our experience, whilst AI is great in some situations, it can be very frustrating. Usually the problems occur when you are trying to do something very specific. Let’s explore some more about some of the issues and classic AI fails we have seen during our AI experimentation.
What design issues did we face?
At the moment AI software can’t understand that muslim men and babies don’t wear hijab. It knows what is a typical muslim dress, but fails to apply it in the right context.
At the moment AI design technology doesn’t seem to be able to add the text you asked it to add in your instructions. The software failed to write Happy Birthday correctly.
AI design technology creates perfume bottles which would be impossible to manufacture in a glass factory. The image has a strange proportion at the top, therefore it would not be possible to fit a perfume pump inside. Often proportions of AI designs are wrong and impossible to manufacture.
Another issue we have faced is that AI does not understand what constitutes a certain style of design. For this bottle we asked for a French simple style design with a wooden cap, though the resulting design doesn’t look like a French design. It is is too elaborately decorated to look French, while the software gave a more oriental design.
Further AI design issues
For this image we asked for an Arabic man smelling some paper perfume blotters. We didn’t ask for smoke or floating bottles to be present. We reworded this request many times, however the paper smelling strips never appeared. AI doesn’t seem to understand what they are.
We uploaded an image of a beautiful lady with bare shoulders and curly long hair and asked to generate something similar. She has twisted her body and positioned her head to face the camera. There were two bottles of shampoo to the right side of the image which we were unable to remove. Hence when we asked AI software for a similar type of image, this is the result. We got shampoo bottles in the beautiful hair !
AI design technology doesn’t yet understand that a ladies blouse is not an acceptable dress for men in most countries. Because of this, when we asked for an African American family smiling together we got a man with a ladies blouse on him.
Finally, we were exploring options for UAE national day. Every time we asked for images relevant to the UAE with flags, we got the wrong flag. AI software just doesn’t know the flags of the world well yet, which is quite surprising.
Our take on AI design software
Despite all of our AI design technology fails, we also got some surprising and useful results. Often AI design software can be a useful tool to generate some quick ideas and on occasions these can be reworked and used slightly differently, provided you have the right experience. Most people agree that AI design software is likely to improve a lot over the coming years. This is due to the fact that many people are using it. Each inputted image or command is giving it the tools to improve, as it can learn from experience. Often the images we got from AI were not a big file size, sometimes a bit hazy and low resolution. Though it is possible to generate higher resolution files if required. Whilst AI tools are still not perfect, they can be used to speed up some workflows. Moreover, they can also generate some quick new ideas. Will AI design software steal our jobs? Only time will tell, but we need more improvements in the software to make it a reality.
What is the outlook of AI design?
AI design technology is going to improve in the coming years. It learns from the mistakes and the information which the users input. Probably we will need to train up a new breed of designer to use the new upcoming AI design softwares. The new experts will need to know which effective prompts to give the software in order to achieve the best results. Poor prompts give poor results, or as they say ‘ Garbage in, Garbage out’.
What are the positives of AI design technology?
What positive things can we say about the new AI design softwares?
- AI design software can speed up workflows
- The new softwares for designing can be useful sources of inspiration
Research conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University featured in the Design Research Society showed that most designers feel that AI design technology is beneficial for speeding up workflows. In addition they also rated it highly as a good tool for increased creativity.
Are you interested in learning about different aspects of design? Our article on the top 20 innovators and rule breakers in perfumery packaging shows the most innovative and creative perfumery packaging design in the market. We hope you enjoy the read!