AI Can’t Replace Designers. But it Can be a Powerful Ideation Tool

Designers who don’t use AI will soon be easily replaced by those who do.

A year ago it was inconceivable to have ChatGPT or Midjourney design proper products without messing up minor details. Heck, the damn AI couldn’t even conquer hands, leave alone actual gadgets. Things have changed now – ChatGPT’s image generation is surprisingly incredible, and Claude can actually write code to be used in Blender, turning images into workable 3D files. When you need materials, simply tell GPT to make seamless texture maps for you, and you’ve got everything you need to render products.

Want to skip the render entirely? Just tell ChatGPT or Gemini Flash 2.0 to make the renders for you. AI is allowing designers to move MUCH faster than they would with sketchbooks and copic markers. And sure, if you DO want to resort to the classical techniques, AI like Vizcom is serving as a fairly powerful tool to help turn your sketches into renders. AI is here to shake the design industry and if you’re not using it already, you might as well look at an early retirement.

Designer: Aurelien

These product renders come from Aurelien’s Threads profile (he also created these vintage-inspired hardware products last month). They don’t really have much context behind them, apart from Aurelien’s fascination with using AI to create realistic-looking products, but let’s stop to just appreciate them for what they are. A fantastic jumping-off point for designers. Rather than endlessly scrolling through Pinterest for reference images, AI lets you quite literally build iterations and concepts in seconds simply by prompting it. The products here aren’t actual products, but they’re great sources of inspiration. A boxy yet incredibly unique-looking VR headset (a la Nothing), an avant-garde tablet with speakers, a camera, and a keyboard. Sounds incredible.

How about a one-of-a-kind vlogging device with a ring light and camera? Or a phone with a Clicks-inspired keyboard. These products, although totally unreal, were created as a branding reveal for Epidemic Sound. However, they could just as easily be the inspiration for different products. For instance, the synth at the bottom totally looks like something Love Hulten could work with. The phone below feels VERY Clicks-meets-Teenage-Engineering.

And that seems like the perfect reason to embrace AI for product design ideation. The instant you think of it as a collaborator or a moldboard on steroids, you realize what you’re missing out on, and what your creativity, combined with the AI’s uniqueness, can bring to the table.

The post AI Can’t Replace Designers. But it Can be a Powerful Ideation Tool first appeared on Yanko Design.