Every time a new tool arrives, designers panic. Stock photography. Photoshop. Canva. Now AI. The chorus is always the same: “This is the end of design.” But here’s the truth. Tools never killed design. Weak designers did.

AI is not dangerous because it can generate images. It is dangerous because it can generate mediocrity at scale. A billion safe, pretty, empty images. A tidal wave of beige content drowning feeds in wallpaper. That does not erase design. It just raises the stakes.

The ones who will be replaced are the decorators. The ones who were already tracing Pinterest boards, recycling trends, and polishing layouts that could be generated by a script. They were already dead. AI just finishes the job.

But for the real ones, AI is gasoline. It can accelerate execution, amplify scale, and sharpen chaos. It is not the enemy. It is the raw material. What matters is not what the machine spits out. What matters is the hand that chooses, distorts, edits, and bends it into something unforgettable.

AI will not replace designers. But it will expose them. The weak will disappear. The bold will sharpen their knives. The ones who provoke will always survive.