Originality in the age of AI

GenAI has rapidly become a point of departure in the ideation process from the fact that AI systems are capable of generating novel ideas that may surprise most designers. Yet the generative models used to produce texts, images, videos, or other forms of data, may result in designers producing ideas that lack original thinking. That is, the assumption that originality is manifested through individual, non-AI mediated thought and expression. Moreover, it may be argued that GenAI compromises a designer's creative identity potentially adding to the "depersonalisation" crisis. That is, how digital technology may cause people to feel disconnected or detached from themselves. Such concerns raise the question what is creativity and originality in the age of AI when knowledge production, including creative action becomes increasingly distributed, collaborative and mediated by technology, that is, collaboration between human and machine. But also, such collaboration may bring about widening participation in design, both in education and professional practice as expressed in opinions such as "everything is design" or "everybody is a designer".* The journey of integrating design and AI, then, or the journey to human-machine symbiosis is prompting a rethink of the conception of originality and its relationship to design. Indeed, what makes, or who is a designer in the age of AI? * Already back in the 1960s, designers, such as the Archigram collective were interested in how the consumer could be part of the design process, not a recipient.

GenAI's impact on ideation

While the workshop raises the awareness of the range of ideation tools available to designers viz. words, sketching, modelling and computing, design, as a practice, is inherently intertwined with technological progress. And so designers necessarily are adjusting to and adopting new ways of generating and communicating ideas - the latest being GenAI technologies such as ChatGPT and Midjourney. As a result designers, both in education and professional practice, find that GenAI is influencing the ways they go about ideation. But more than this; the rapid advancement of GenAI programmed to create new "original" content by learning from vast datasets, is having significant transformational affect on both design thinking and practice. Moreover, adoption of GenAI, as a data rich tool, is likely to help quicken the pace of, and to lower the cost of improvement and innovation in the design industry. It is also likely to challenge traditional studio-based teaching and learning transforming design education.

AI tool as agent for change

Designers are increasingly using AI in their role as agents for change to society*. That is, designers, together with AI have the capacity to influence or act in the world of design (largely defined). The human-AI collaboration, or interactive agency is now an everyday activity, from education to professional practice to an extent that text-to-image generators, for example, have become purposeful, goal-directed agents in themselves or, to borrow terminology for sociology, agents of intentional action. The rise of AI opens up the debate to what extent AI has autonomous agency. What seems certain though is that AI agency is impacting the role of the designer progressively shifting their roles from that of primarily producing a material good or service to that of ideator and facilitator addressing human needs and wants with emphasis of what is unique to human agency, notably equitable, sustainable and ethical concerns.* 41% of British architects are using AI in some way, in RIBA AI Report 2024.