AI won’t steal your design job

As someone who has worked in design for over 15 years, I’ve seen trends come and go. Every year brought a new video proclaiming “the newest trend” that would change everything. But AI is different. This isn’t a trend; it’s a fundamental shift, a tectonic plate moving beneath our feet. I’d compare the scale of this change to the Industrial Revolution. Back then, machines replaced manual labour, forcing society to redefine work. Today, AI is automating cognitive labour, and it’s happening at a pace that is both exhilarating and terrifying.

The good news? This shift doesn’t mean the end of designers. But it does mean the end of the designer as we knew them. It’s time to evolve, or we risk being replaced — not by AI, but by designers who know how to wield it.

A reality check: The roles and tasks AI is already winning

Let’s be brutally honest. AI is getting exceptionally good at standardised design tasks. Certain roles, especially those built on execution and repetition, are becoming obsolete.

• The Junior Visual Designer: The traditional entry-level role, focused on creating simple graphics, resizing assets for different platforms, or exploring basic layout variations, is disappearing. Why would a company hire someone for a task that an AI can perform in seconds with perfect consistency? The bar for entry is now much higher.

• Routine UX Writing & Copywriting: While nuanced, brand-specific voice still requires a human touch, generating functional copy for buttons, tooltips, forms, and standard user flows is a perfect task for a large language model. The need for a dedicated copywriter for every minor UI element is dwindling.

• Low-end freelance gigs: The market for quick, cheap, and “good enough” design is being swallowed by automation. A small business owner who once might have hired a freelancer for a simple logo or a basic landing page can now use an AI tool to generate dozens of viable options instantly, for a fraction of the cost.

• Repetitive production work: The soul-crushing task of churning out endless social media post variations, creating dozens of banner ad sizes, or other high-volume, low-creativity production work is no longer a human-scale job. It’s now the domain of the machine.

Seeing this list can be disheartening. But it’s not the end of the story. This automation is clearing the table, forcing us to move beyond the mundane and focus on what truly matters.

The human frontier: Where AI fails and we excel

While AI can execute tasks with incredible speed, it has a human-shaped hole at its core. It lacks the very things that define great design. This is where our new value lies.

1. Empathy and human context

AI is a language model, not a life model. It can process data, but it can’t understand the lived experience behind it. It doesn’t know the frustration of a single parent trying to navigate a banking app with a crying baby on their arms. It doesn’t feel the anxiety of an elderly user encountering a confusing interface for the first time.

Accessibility is the ultimate proof of this. The upcoming European Accessibility Act (2025) isn’t just a set of rules about colour contrast; it’s a mandate for inclusive thinking. Designing with true empathy requires a deep understanding of human impairments, context, and emotion. AI can check a compliance box, but it can’t truly feel for the person behind the screen. It’s this gap that led Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, to suggest that typos are the new signal of authenticity. An AI is designed for perfection; a human is not. That small, imperfect signal is a powerful reminder of the human touch.

2. Uncovering hidden truths: The power of research & user interviews

AI tools like Perplexity and Gemini are phenomenal for secondary research. They can synthesise vast amounts of public information in seconds. But here’s their critical limitation: AI can only know what’s already been written down.

True, game-changing insight doesn’t come from a database; it comes from a conversation. It’s found in the pause a user takes before answering a question. It’s in the flicker of confusion in their eyes when they look at a screen. It’s in the non-verbal cues and the subtle nuances of a one-on-one interview. This is the gold that AI can’t mine. Your ability to sit with a real person, listen deeply, and interpret not just what they say but what they mean is an irreplaceable skill.

A Quick Reality Check with AI Tools: I recently tested this myself. Using a tool called UX Pilot, I fed it our design system and a detailed prompt to generate new screens. It came back with… something. The screens were technically correct but emotionally sterile and far from what a user would actually need. It proved that without the strategic and empathetic guidance of a human, the tool is just an executor, not a creator.

3. Ethics and judgment: “Should we?” vs “Can we?”

AI can be prompted to create a highly addictive user flow or a dark pattern that tricks users into making a purchase. It operates without a moral compass.

Our job is evolving to become the ethical gatekeepers of technology. As Mike Monteiro powerfully argues in Ruined by Design, we are responsible for the consequences of our work. The most important question a designer can ask is no longer “Can we build this?” but “Should we build this?” This requires judgment, foresight, and a commitment to human well-being — things that cannot be programmed.

4. Strategy, leadership, and breaking the rules

Here’s a simple framework for where design value lies now:

• A junior designer asks, “What are we designing?”

• A mid-level designer asks, “How are we designing it?”

• A senior designer asks, “Why are we designing this at all?”

AI is excellent at answering the “what” and the “how.” But it cannot define the “why.” It can’t set a vision, understand the overarching business goals, or create a strategic roadmap. This is the domain of human leadership. True innovation often comes from breaking established patterns, not just replicating them. As humans, we know when to break the rules because we understand the context. Our ability to think laterally and navigate ambiguity is a uniquely human strength (still).

How to evolve: Your action plan for the AI era

So, how do you become the designer AI can’t replace?

1. Become a strategic partner: Move beyond the screen and start asking “why.” Involve yourself in business conversations, understand the strategy, and contribute to it. Think in systems, not just pixels.

2. Master your co-pilot: Stop seeing AI as a threat and start seeing it as your assistant. Use tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Lovable, or Cursor to accelerate the tedious parts of your workflow (research summaries, mood boards, code generation) to free up your time for deep, strategic thinking.

3. Double down on human skills: Your most valuable skills are now collaboration, communication, leadership, and empathy. The ability to lead a workshop, interview a user, and interpret their unspoken needs is your superpower.

4. Champion the user, relentlessly: In a world obsessed with automated tools and metrics, be the unwavering advocate for the human on the other side of the product. Fight for their needs, their context, and their experience. Your role is to be the human heart in the machine of product development.

The choice is yours

AI will not replace all of us. But it will mercilessly replace designers who refuse to evolve. We are at a crossroads where we can either cling to the past and become obsolete or we can embrace this new reality and elevate our roles to be more strategic, empathetic, and indispensable than ever before.

The machine can generate a thousand screens, but it takes a human to know which one to build. It takes a human to understand who it’s for. And as Steven Bartlett also discussed, just as a child learns empathy over time through experience, perhaps AI will too. But until that distant day, that role is uniquely ours.

Your ultimate value is no longer just in what you can make, but in the wisdom of what you choose to make, and why.