Design Taste vs. Technical Skills in the Era of AI

Summary: The need for discernment is amplified when generative AI enables anyone to create anything. Creative skills will still be necessary to produce superior designs.

Shift in Technical Capabilities

Generative-AI (genAI) tools are enabling people to create things they never could before. You don’t have to own a camera to create a photograph, you don’t need any visual-design skills to make an illustration, and you don’t have to know anything about meter to create a poem. With just a few clicks, anyone can generate almost anything, unbound by traditional barriers.

This is one of the exciting benefits of AI tools — they fill skill gaps and reduce the boring, technically tedious tasks often required in design. However, just because someone can create something that they couldn’t before doesn’t mean it’s good.

Technical Capability ≠ Taste

While AI can produce all kinds of outputs, the quality of those outputs is not guaranteed. Technical capability does not equal creative ability. The perfect analogy came from Oisin Hurst on LinkedIn: “ AI is to creativity what microwaves are to cooking.”