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 will make the traditional "product pod" structure obsolete for design. Designers, empowered to learn contexts faster and cover more ground, will operate in a more fluid, centralized team. They will be deployed across entire user journeys that span multiple teams, rather than being calcified within a single product area.

Tools like Notebook LM don't just create visuals from a prompt. They analyze a provided corpus of content (videos, text) and synthesize that specific information into custom infographics or slide decks, ensuring deep contextual relevance to your source material.

In 10 years, AI will generate vast amounts of high-quality code, similar to the leap in image generation. The developer's role will shift from writing code to curation and design, exercising intent and critical judgment to select the best output from a sea of AI-generated options.

Image models like Google's NanoBanana Pro can now connect to live search to ground their output in real-world facts. This breakthrough allows them to generate dense, text-heavy infographics with coherent, accurate information, a task previously impossible for image models which notoriously struggled with rendering readable text.

As AI models become proficient at generating high-quality UI from prompts, the value of manual design execution will diminish. A professional designer's key differentiator will become their ability to build the underlying, unique component libraries and design systems that AI will use to create those UIs.

At Perplexity, the brand team's strategy is to use AI tools for 'velocity and volume,' according to VP of Design Henry Modiset. This allows a small team to produce a massive amount of creative assets, making the brand feel ubiquitous and loud in the market without a huge budget.

AI tools are collapsing the traditional moats around design, engineering, and product. As PMs and engineers gain design capabilities, designers must reciprocate by learning to code and, more importantly, taking on strategic business responsibilities to maintain their value and influence.

AI tools can drastically increase the volume of initial creative explorations, moving from 3 directions to 10 or more. The designer's role then shifts from pure creation to expert curation, using their taste to edit AI outputs into winning concepts.