Tool or Threat: The Rise of AI in Strategy, Design and Code

To start, I need to say that this article was written with the assistance of AI. It was not completely written by an AI (I’ll go into the details a little later on), but in creating this article, I wanted to illustrate both the promise of new AI-based tools and my belief that creators shouldn’t be afraid to use them to their advantage.

As AI continues to gain popularity and become somewhat ubiquitous in our lives, professionals across industries, particularly creative industries, have to face the reality of these new tools entering their spaces. We have found ourselves at somewhat of a crossroads, where we must decide which side of the AI debate we stand on.

Just over the last year (or even 6 months), we’ve seen impressive results in areas like AI-generated art. One example that has gained a lot of attention is the work of Midjourney, whose AI-generated images have captivated many viewers. The intricate and highly detailed images produced by Midjourney’s AI demonstrate the immense potential of this technology to transform the creative process. It’s exciting to see how AI is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in art and design, and I, for one, am impressed by the results.

On the other side, recently, a growing number of artists have voiced their opposition to AI-generated images, sparking a movement against the use of visual AI tools. The movement, dubbed “no to AI Generated Images,” gained significant traction on ArtStation, a popular platform where artists can showcase their work. Hundreds of professional and amateur artists alike have expressed their displeasure with the platform’s use of AI-made art.

Since its public launch in November of 2022, ChatGPT from OpenAI has seen massive growth day after day. More and more people are discovering this powerful tool that can assist you with a wide range of tasks, from writing articles to composing songs and creating app and web code. Its capabilities are constantly expanding, making it a versatile solution for a variety of needs. Its wide range of uses has also raised questions about things like plagiarism and ownership of content generated by ChatGPT. If you use an AI tool for a creative output, are you the creator or is the AI?

Day by day, artificial intelligence continues to grow in popularity and influence. It is clear that it will have a significant impact on many professions across the creative and digital space including strategy, design and software development.

At this point, we have several options for how we approach the growing influence of AI. While I believe that AI can be a valuable tool for improving efficiency and productivity, I don’t think it can ever fully replace the unique human perspective and craftsmanship that goes into creative endeavors. In my view, the best approach is to find ways to integrate AI into our processes while still honoring the importance of human input and creativity.

In the spirit of enhancing our daily experiences, I’ve compiled a list of promising and powerful AI tools that can be useful for strategists, UX/UI design teams and developers.

Galileo AI (UI Design)

I’m still on the waitlist for Galileo AI, but they are making a giant promise. The tool seems to be trained on thousands of outstanding designs. The main thing it promises is to use AI to turn natural language prompts into high-fidelity designs and generate a complex UI in a flash.

The tool leverages advanced AI algorithms to interpret natural language inputs and generate designs that are tailored to the specific needs of each project.

Some of the sample prompts on their website and YouTube videos show examples where you can ask for, “An onboarding screen for a dog walking app,” and get a hi-fi visual design result that’s editable in Figma 😱.

Genius (UX/UI Design)

Genius by Diagram is an AI-powered tool that simplifies the process of creating diagrams and flowcharts, enabling designers and non-designers alike to quickly produce professional-looking visuals.

Genius looks like a great tool for anyone who needs to create diagrams or flowcharts as part of their work. By leveraging AI to automate many of the manual processes involved in creating these visuals, it saves time and reduces errors, enabling users to focus on the content of their diagrams rather than the mechanics of creating them.

In addition, the tool’s intuitive interface and customizable templates make it easy for even those with little to no design experience to produce professional-quality diagrams and flowcharts. With Genius by Diagram, anyone can create clear, informative visuals that help to convey complex ideas in a simple and effective way.

Adobe Sensei (Design Process)

Adobe Sensei is a cutting-edge AI-powered tool that’s revolutionizing the world of design in ways that many never thought possible. If you’ve used Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Lightroom or Premiere recently you’ve probably used Sensei without even knowing it.

By automating many manual processes, Sensei has dramatically accelerated the pace of the design process and provided designers with a whole new range of possibilities. Whether using Photoshop’s neural network filters on images, adding auto-generated captions to videos in Premiere or using content-aware editing tools across almost every design product, Adobe Sensei has seamlessly integrated an AI toolset into the workflow of creators across the globe.

Uizard (UI Design)

The Uizard app is an exciting new tool that leverages AI to create customized, high-fidelity designs from simple sketches, making it a valuable asset for designers and non-designers alike.

The Uizard app is a great example of how AI can be used to democratize design and make it more accessible to a wider audience. With Uizard, even those without formal design training can create professional-looking designs that are tailored to their specific needs. This not only saves time and resources for businesses and individuals, but it also opens up new avenues for creativity and collaboration. As AI continues to evolve and improve, we can expect to see more innovative tools like Uizard that push the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of design.

Visualeyes (Strategy and UX Design)

The Visualeyes app is another AI-powered tool that allows designers to quickly and easily test the accessibility of their designs, helping to ensure that their work is usable and inclusive for all audiences.

By leveraging AI to identify potential issues with color contrast, text legibility, and other critical design elements, Visualeyes can help designers catch accessibility problems early on in the design process, when they are easier and less costly to fix. With Visualeyes, designers can be confident that their work is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also functional and user-friendly for all audiences.

Ando — AI Copilot for Designers (Figma Plugin)

Ando is a remarkable plugin that allows you to visualize your design ideas using natural language prompts, similar to the way Midjourney works. Using a sophisticated natural language processing algorithm, Ando generates a variety of unique images and shapes based on your inputted text. Once you have chosen your preferred design ideas, you can easily customize them to make them your own.

This means that you no longer have to spend countless hours sifting through online assets to find the perfect design elements. Ando is an outstanding tool that lets you quickly create and test design concepts, making it an excellent option for designers who want to work efficiently and stay ahead of the competition.

Github Copilot

When it comes to AI coding assistants, GitHub Copilot stands out as one of the most widely recognized and commercially available products in use today by developers around the globe. GitHub Copilot uses AI models from OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) to allow developers to use natural language prompts to generate code in a number of programming languages. Similar to the design-focused product I’ve highlighted, GitHub Copilot wants to save developers time by generating boilerplate or repetitive code patterns with the help of AI so that they can focus on custom features and innovative solutions.

Gen-1 by Runway

No lights. No cameras. All action. That’s the promise made by Runway’s Gen-1.

Realistically and consistently synthesize new videos by applying the composition and style of an image or text prompt to the structure of your source video. It’s like filming something new, without filming anything at all.

Gen-1 works in different modes. The first one is “Stylization,” where it transfers the style of any image or prompt to every frame of your video. The second mode is “Storyboard,” which turns mockups into fully stylized and animated renders. The third model is “Mask,” where you can isolate subjects in your video and modify them with simple text prompts. The fourth mode is “Render.” You turn untextured renders into realistic outputs by applying an input image or prompt. The final mode is “Customization,” where you can unleash the full power of Gen-1 by customizing the model for even higher fidelity results.

How I Used AI to Shape This Article

The way that I wrote this article is the way I believe in AI as a tool to help us in the future. Instead of just writing a prompt for the article and waiting for the response, I wrote full paragraphs and asked for questions, new points of view and things that I could be missing.

I believe our brains are our main superpower as humans and that robots can’t replace them. Keep thinking and using your own thoughts before asking AI for data. The point here is that artificial intelligence is a tool that can be extremely useful. The threat is always the way people deal with new things.

To finish this article, I say you now have a choice. You can keep driving your design taxi or move forward Uber style, using AI as a tool and your brain as your guide to keep building more efficient strategies, apps, websites, design systems and code.

You just have to choose your side and be happy about your choice.

Daniel Macedo is a senior product designer at Mediacurrent.

He has recently been using AI to improve his guitar skills, one of his oldest hobbies.