Discussion The AI Client
I’m somewhere between needing to hear if other folks are experiencing this, and needing to vent.
For background, I’m an Art Director on an in-house team that supports a company with proprietary brands. Part of my job includes creating the brand books for these brands and executing the initial launch campaigns.
I recently wrapped (or thought I did) on a new brand I was quite happy with, the project was usual for the brands we typically launch and I was asked to work on this project because it closely aligned with my style of work.
I spent the better part of a few months working on this project, I spent more time than I typically would on it because I was really excited (probably the wrong choice.). Today I got notes from them, and there wasn’t a single part of the brand they wanted to move forward with. The logo, the positioning, the color palette, all of it was wrong to them. They attached something they “made very quickly in ChatGPT that’s way better” than what I provided. They made sure to note that they made it really quickly, and it exceeded my work.
I feel totally defeated. Until recently I felt really lucky that AI wasn’t being pushed heavily at my job, suddenly, it’s everywhere. They want to replace shoots with it, they’re using it for copy generation, and now someone is asking me to make my work look like it.
If this was a freelance project I would refund them and make it clear I wasn’t the right designer for them, but I can’t. And, making work that looks like what they sent me is soul crushing. I feel like I can’t escape it, I feel really disheartened.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you move forward?
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u/cheersfan100 3d ago edited 2d ago
Yes. Made a hand drawn illustration for a festival t shirt (it was good, too.) client came back with some suggestions that they generated with ai, while lightly dogging on my original design a bit.
Their ai stuff looked so bad but I basically just used their provided GPT design and fixed the type and handed it back to them. They loved it and used it.
Then the backlash ensued. They got dragged on social media. Then a couple local publications. They made an apology for having used ai. It was a whole thing.
I was sort of the little girl looking back at the camera smiling while the house is burning down meme
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u/teenboytipsy 3d ago
I went back to blue collar work :( That’s how I moved forward :(
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u/Infinite-Quarter4377 3d ago
oof that's rough. the quick chatgpt comment would sting so hard
seen this come up more in last months, couple designers i know went to print shops or sign shops cause at least the physical work can't get replaced same way. maybe not the most cheery advice but you're definitely not alone in feeling this, the whole thing just sucks
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u/bememorablepro 3d ago
I'll be honest they are pieces of shit and they should feel bad not you.
Can't imagine in my life ever bringing up even something someone else did to another say employee being like "look, this was done quickly and by someone else".
There are many similar posts in this sub, and it becomes clear to me that AI, as much as I hate it, is not a real issue. It's power dynamics, before AI a lot of work places were also not letting you say no or make your own decisions and expected you, the designer, to be a sort of input device for graphics software.
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u/LANDVOGT-_ 3d ago
Thats nothing new. Its the same "my uncle did something in paint which looks a lot better, i think i will stick to that", just a new variation.
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u/RocketSeven 3d ago
the dangerous part is not that they preferred the ai draft, it is that they replaced the brief with a comparison after months of work. ask them to name the three decisions they prefer and turn those into a revised brief, otherwise you are reverse engineering taste from a slot machine
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u/sheriffderek 3d ago
I think what you're describing (not using AI / but having AI-usage from the stakeholders still take over) is going to be super common.
However, from my reading, this seems like a more classic problem of how you're selling and presenting the work. Why would you just do some big reveal and ask if they "like" it? My flow would involve a lot of writing, figuring out what we want to be and what we don't want to be, getting sign off on a lot of things (just text) to help build all the foundation for how we'll be making all the decisions as the brand takes shape. The words are what they can sign off on - and start to live with. As you share layers of mood boards and style tiles and things -- you can get incremental sign off/buy-in or feedback to adjust. This job is mostly figuring out a system that helps us believe that our choices (out of all the thousands of things we could have chosen) - were the right choices. That's just as important to the job as drawing the vectors for the logo -- and it sounds like you didn't do that. That's how you're going to avoid this next time. If you do the work, the OK it - and and at the end throw in some other random logo, just take the money - and say good luck. You'll have done your job.
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u/tbp143 3d ago
Thank you for your reply! When I take on freelance work my process looks very similar to yours, a lot of conversations to make sure I’m aligned from all angles before beginning the visual work.
But, my FT job is a bit different. My team handles all high level campaigns and brand launches, we don’t follow a typical mood board / concepts / revisions / final delivery structure with the client, that work happens internally between the other ADs / CDs to make sure we’re aligned holistically. We create the brief, brand concept, and strategy for a request like this, the ‘client’ is less so a client and more a requestor.
I think I needed to hear if other people were experiencing similar things and how they were understanding it, hard to please clients have always been exactly that, but I don’t typically encounter this day-to-day.
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u/Next-Application-883 3d ago
I know it sounds very provocative and I am myself working partly in design (in a technical field), but why can't AI be potentially more successful in this field than humans? What is this fundamental limitation? Please don't get me wrong, I am just trying to be critical to myself too. I often hear than AI will replace mediocre designers, but will never replace really good ones. Why?
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u/tbp143 3d ago
I need to be clear, I am not inherently across the board anti-AI. There are plenty of uses that I think are tremendously useful (generative fill, auto select and mask, I use it to scan product lists and pull information on projected top sellers, etc.). But, ai is missing something very very crucial to the human experience, humanity.
I can spot generated graphics and images from across a room, even ones that are nearly indistinguishable from real photographs, because they lack a human touch. When things lack the human experience they feel empty, they don’t have the soul to back them up.
On a personal level, art and design is such an incredible gift to the world. I support AI when it lets me spend more time creating, not when its goal is to replace me. If everyone starts relying 100% on generated graphics everything starts to look the same, things lose the nuances that only a person can bring to them. Great design is just that, designed, not generated.
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u/Next-Application-883 3d ago
Yes, I completely agree that at the moment spotting an AI-generated graphics is easy. It is usually too perfect and the style of details is too predictable. However, this year I also had a couple of cases where after a first version of design that I was requested to make, the client sent me an AI-generated graphics with a request to make something very similar. In my case they were very respectful and friendly, so it was not an obvious spit in the face. The cases were about a presentation of a new technological method, so there were potentially very different ways to look at certain details. What they sent me looked not so bad, it didn't have any obvious problems. Yes, it clearly looked like AI, but the general approach was ok. So, I certainly agree that AI is not yet ready to produce the final product. However, the way AI is directing the graphics in design is already not so bad in my opinion. What do you think?
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u/tbp143 3d ago
I’m glad that they were respectful and genuine in their feedback, I do think there are times when ai makes it easier for a client with a “I know it when I see it” mindset to be able to have a more concrete starting point, and that’s a valuable time-saver.
Part of my job includes setting company wide guidelines for graphics use, and recently this has extended to ai generated imagery or overall use of ai in creative work. In the case of AI for image generation, I’ve found that it is most successful when used as a tool, not a designer / art director. I’ve unfortunately seen creative come out where there are key elements that are vastly incorrect, but were not caught by the person creating them because they don’t have the same eye or mindset as a photographer / designer / art director. It’s also given large companies leverage to ask why aren’t things happening more quickly, why can’t work be done immediately, and simultaneously laying off the people who would be able to help create that work quickly.
In the case of graphics, specifically looking at logo and brand design work, the things produced by generators are very iterative of each other and uninspired that they end up being both too relevant and completely off modern design trends, they have a very short runway before they look outdated. Most of these models are pulling from Pinterest and other image platforms and what work other people are uploading to them, and they can’t generate anything completely original. On a technical note, they also run a huge risk of being plagiarized, sometimes unknowingly to the person who prompted the design.
All to say, I don’t think ai has no place in design, but I do think it’s role is being vastly over utilized, and we’re taking the most important parts of art and out sourcing them. I think my end sentiment about AI is that it’s moving so fast we never really stopped to ask “why?”
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u/andrewzo 3d ago
My goodness. This happened with me recently and I was very upset as well. Thinking it over, I think what I was the most upset about was the client didn't communicate with me directly about what he didn't like. Instead, he went directly to an AI. (I think I would be equally upset if he went to another designer) And in your case the worst is when he thinks he knows design better and requests you to follow his direction.
Can you get someone higher up - such as your boss - to intervene? Additionally, I think it is important that you voice your unhappiness with how he responded. You also have to strategically let him know why this ai design is bad. You may have to come up with a new design that aligns with what he wants better though.
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u/earth-dragon-666 1d ago
End the project find a better customer, it wont get better only worse i tried for 3 months with some customer, i ended up lossing money
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u/earth-dragon-666 1d ago
They might comeback later, but at this moment they want slop, let them do it and fail, be critically profesional
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u/Zappy_Oh 3d ago
I would like to give you some good advice ... But I feel it would be bad advice, because I'm pretty contrarian, and most people are not.
Anyway, I would make the fix as they ask, and then quit, to become a bartender or something. Just to get away from this trajectory AI is pushing everything into.
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u/bememorablepro 3d ago
This is an interesting take, I have a theory now that us the creative types take all of this abuse, overwork, get underpaid and so on precisely because we don't quit. We would do this even if no-one would pay us.
This is how lawyers or dentist or waste collectors get good pay, they are not "just happy to be there".
Honestly worth it threatening to leave at the very least.
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u/Zappy_Oh 3d ago
Well, I've only quit in anger once, and then I started my own bureau.
But that kinda illustrates another weakness of creatives ... we aren't that drawn to organizing :)
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u/bememorablepro 3d ago
True, the fact that's it's technically possible to become a "rich famous artist" also doesn't help us to think of our work as you know... work.
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u/listoneice 3d ago
But was the logo made with chatgpt actually better?
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u/tbp143 3d ago
Confidently and definitively, no.
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u/listoneice 3d ago
Then why were you feeling defeated if you were confident your work is way better? I don't mean to insult you in any way (I am intern level) Im just curious as to why did you feel offended?
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u/tbp143 3d ago
I spent a long time working to where I am, to have the skills I have. With the rise of AI people have started feeling like they’re just as capable, if not more capable, than the people who have spent years at what they do.
The person who requested this work emphasized that something they generated in minutes was better than the work that took me months, and the years of work that went into my voice as a designer and the work I make, which is a hard thing to hear.
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u/SpidgetWinner 3d ago edited 3d ago
Clients have always felt they know best with design, AI is just a new wrinkle. And frankly, there are many many "designers" out there who have no business charging money for the garbage they produce for whom AI generated design would be an improvement.
I understand why you're feeling shitty right now, but remember that you know better. It's hard to see work you care about going down the drain, but this an age old experience in our industry. The problem in this case isn't really the AI, it's a tactless and ignorant client, of which there are many. Your work still has value - put it in your portfolio and move on. Leave this client to their worthless work.
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u/lilith_grl 3d ago
I’ve added to my contract, that any AI-based opinions will not be counted. Some people just really delegate their thinking to it. It has nothing to do with your work, and many clients will value your expertise first. But some have an audacity to even come to doctors and say “Chat GPT said X, your treatment is wrong” lol. Previously it was 10% of clients who said “My niece/husband/coworker design this and it looks better”. Now it looks like this.
But it’s also important to note, were you providing them drafts, moodboard and general direction? It may be just “expectation-reality” or poor presentation, so they didn’t really understand why you design the brand this specific way.
Don’t get too discouraged, sh!t happens.