We never called ourselves “Figma-powered designers” or “Photoshop-driven creators”. Our engineering colleagues never went by “Java-powered” or “C++-powered” either. Those tools were essential, but we knew the tool doesn’t do the thinking or make the decisions.
Lately, as I spend my days solving journeys, I see a new title appear a lot: “AI-powered designer”. It has me thinking about what we are saying with that label. Are we saying the model understands our users’ frustrations? That it knows why one layout builds trust while another accidentally breaks it? I know that’s not what any of us mean, but the words we use shape the story.
Here is where I’ve landed from my own day-to-day work. AI is a very good collaborator. It helps me generate options and explore ideas faster than I could alone. But it has no lived experience. It doesn’t feel a real user’s frustration, and it can’t tell me why a journey that tests perfectly on paper still feels a little off in practice.
That empathy, taste and judgment is still ours. So is the responsibility to get it right. Maybe a more honest description is not “AI-powered” but creators who are learning to guide a powerful new tool toward better outcomes, the way we did with every tool before it.
Is “AI-powered” a meaningful title, or a placeholder until we find better language for what we actually do?