AI won't replace designers because it lacks taste and subjective opinion. Instead, as AI gets better at generating highly opinionated (though not perfect) designs, it will serve as a powerful exploration tool. This plants more flags in the option space, allowing human designers to react, curate, and push the most promising directions further, amplifying their strategic role.

AI models are proficient at the busywork of turning concepts into tangible formats like mockups or code, but they still lack genuine design thinking. This elevates the designer's role, freeing them to focus on deep thinking and strategy, as their primary value now lies in the quality and originality of their ideas.

AI lowers the technical barrier to building products, making design taste and judgment the critical differentiators. An AI can execute tasks, but it requires a designer's discerning eye to guide it toward a high-quality, cohesive, and valuable user experience.

As AI accelerates software development, basic functionality becomes table stakes. Figma's CEO contends that differentiation and winning now depend entirely on design, craft, and a strong point of view, as 'good enough' products will no longer succeed.

As AI makes software creation faster and cheaper, the market will flood with products. In this environment of abundance, a strong brand, point of view, taste, and high-quality design become the most critical factors for a product to stand out and win customers.

Just as tools like Squarespace raised the bar for websites, AI will elevate the average quality of app and product design from a 6/10 to an 8/10. This makes truly exceptional, differentiated design (the 9s and 10s) even more valuable and necessary to stand out from the AI-generated baseline.

Figma's CEO believes AI will create the "10X designer." As AI automates basic design tasks, making "good enough" the new baseline, the premium on true craft and system-level thinking will skyrocket. Designers who can leverage AI to execute a holistic product vision will become indispensable leaders and key drivers of a company's success.

Since AI can handle much of the executional design work, a designer's value shifts. Core skills are now product thinking, scrappy research, and brand taste to create products that are differentiated and emotionally resonant, not just functional.

With AI tools like Gemini 3.0 democratizing execution, the ability to generate unique, scroll-stopping ideas and provide strong design references becomes the key differentiator. Good taste and a clear vision now matter more than the technical ability to implement a design from scratch.