Thinking Outside The Box: Digital Design In The AI Era

This article is a sponsored by MacPaw The phrase “artificial intelligence” has many excited, especially those in tech. But for those of us in creative fields like digital art and design, AI can be more concerning than it is exciting. AI-generated art, videos, and images have flooded the internet, raising questions about whether more companies will turn to tools like OpenAI’s Dall-E, Midjourney, Leonardo.ai , and more, rather than employing human artists. What’s more, the fact that these AI models are trained on real artists’ work without their consent leaves many feeling as if they have no choice but to accept AI into their work and lives. In a digital world increasingly dominated by faceless AI chatbots, agents, and features, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by all the technology. AI will certainly play a huge role in reshaping many industries, including design. We can’t deny this. But at the same time, humanization , empathy , and having a person at the wheel have never been more important. Rather than viewing AI as something that replaces human creativity, we at MacPaw saw an opportunity to explore how we could make AI feel more personal and accessible — all the while keeping humans at the center of the experience. That led us to rethink how AI assistants are created. The Concept Of A New AI Assistant Traditional AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT typically take the form of a conversational textbox or webpage on screen, as this is how users have interacted with their devices. It’s comfortable and familiar. While extremely useful for a variety of tasks, interacting with these AI assistants can feel transactional and technical. Using the same textbox format across all AI assistants does provide consistency. But we wanted to create a new, more personal and differentiated experience for users. But what format would be best? Even if we change how an AI tool looks, it still needs to be useful and intuitive to use. As humans, it’s easier to understand and connect wi