Articles

Does AI realize our creative visions?

There have always been inventions that have revolutionized the world. The wheel, the printing press or the steam engine, which all helped push technological development further forward. And in our time, computers, the internet, and smartphones have emerged as new technologies that have transformed our everyday lives, work habits, communication, and social lives.

Now, we are once again standing with the foot on a new step on the ladder of technological evolution: artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the most hyped buzzword at the moment. Everyone is talking about it, and no one can foresee the extent of its amazing possibilities or what it might evolve into in the future. Almost every industry is considering how AI can be implemented and used in the smartest way possible. Our graphic industry is no exception. The mixture of creativity and technology opens up many new possibilities while also raising a number of questions about the creative field and the ethical consequences.

Artificial intelligence has already changed the way our graphic designers work. New software with built-in AI features helps designers optimize their workflows, generate design proposals, process images more intelligently, explore new possibilities, gather inspiration, visualize data in new ways, and much more. When used correctly, it can lead to more targeted and efficient design solutions.

One of the most exciting applications of AI in graphic design is Generative Design. Here, the designer uses algorithms to create a range of design possibilities based on specific criteria and constraints that are fed (prompted) into the system. The software helps generate a series of examples and suggestions that serve as inspiration for the designer’s further work.

It’s important to emphasize the word inspiration here. Although we use the term “intelligence” for the technology, it is, strictly speaking, just a piece of dumb software. Advanced, but dumb. The software follows orders and only performs the tasks it is asked to do. The algorithm is not capable of thinking in context, emotions, intuition, or even cultural nuances—all the things that a skilled graphic designer can bring to an intelligent design solution through insight and creative vision. The automated use of artificial intelligence can be a golden tool as a source of inspiration, however AI cannot take over the craft of graphic design or replace the skilled designer. Good design is still carried out as a creative process using all the human factors that cannot be replaced by a digital algorithm.

In the end, we humans still have to decide how an image or campaign should look. It’s something we tell the computer – not the other way around.

The use of artificial intelligence also entails a number of ethical considerations. Questions about copyright, originality, and of course, who ultimately controls the software or platform being used are central to the debate. Who owns the rights to a design generated by an algorithm? Do we know all its sources of inspiration, and where is the invisible line between inspiration and plagiarism? Do we know the data the algorithm has been trained on? And where is the moral boundary for generating visual content that may reflect a reality that doesn’t actually exist? The answers to these questions are not necessarily easy. And many considerations go into our use of AI.

At BGRAPHIC, we see AI as an assistant that can help our graphic designers realize more ideas, thoughts, and visions faster. It saves time and opens up new creative directions and opportunities for experimentation. As long as we can control the input and output and stay within ethical boundaries, AI helps make the design process faster, smarter, and more innovative. Artificial intelligence is, of course, here to stay and is already a powerful and advanced tool in our toolkit, but it is still the designers’ creative visions and professional expertise that remain the decisive factor in any design solution.

Used respectfully, AI is our new, good colleague helping us make things happen 🙂