Controversies of AI
Who will win…
With the integration of Artificial Intelligence being introduced into the tech field, specifically into the world of web designing, conflict and chaos between AI and web designers represents a paradigm shift in how websites are created and managed. AI’s new presence in the field has ignited a debate surrounding its promising advantages and impact on web designers' careers.
Benefits of AI
The integration of AI technologies in web design processes has brought about a myriad of positive impacts, revolutionizing the way websites are created and enhancing user experiences; one example of this is more time efficient for web designers, allowing them more time for creativity and innovation. According to the article by Analytics Insights[NC1], AI has helped designers cut back on time by carrying out the workload. AI can generate layouts, design interfaces, and optimize code, streamlining the development process and enabling websites to be built and deployed more quickly.
The introduction and helpfulness of artificial intelligence have not only been beneficial to web designers and workers in the tech field but have also shown to be helpful to daily online users. Based on the users’ passed prompts and history, AI’s can generate forms that will automatically autofill information asked for in forms from different websites for them, “this allows visitors to submit their information quickly and easily without having to fill out any fields or data manually.
Humans are known to make errors, make bad decisions, cross-contaminate, and do everything wrong. Still, AI can detect and fix errors, improve coding accuracy, and show better website proficiency. Analytics Insights writes once more that AIs’ can now automatically identify and fix coding errors, ensuring smoother functionality and improved performance,” meaning that this takes away the need and time to debug the mistakes and provides cleaner codebases with easier manual maintenance.
Another positive way that AI helps web designers is that it offers a way to streamline repetitive tasks and expedite the process of design, which adds to the fact that AI is a time saver. This allows designers to dedicate more time to innovation and create user-focused design strategies. AI-powered tools can automatically generate code based on design mockups or wireframes, saving developers time and effort writing repetitive code. This means that automation of tasks like layout generation, color scheme selection, and image optimization not only accelerates development but also allows for deeper exploration of creative approaches and can significantly contribute to the precision and consistency of design elements. AI algorithms execute tasks meticulously, minimizing errors and ensuring consistency throughout various design aspects. Designers can also benefit from the reliability of AI-generated layouts and color schemes that provide a strong foundation.
Controversies of AI
For multiple reasons, AI and other design tools involving AI have become a very controversial topic in the art and design communities. One of them is that there is no real effort by a human to make the art. Most, if not all, AI art tools take up to a couple of seconds to create an image from whatever prompt you give it, compared to the hours or days of work an artist works on one specific piece. AI art also needs more creativity because it takes inspiration from many existing things to create something. The launch of AI art got many people so angry that there were protests on many websites where artists posted their work to bar anyone who used AI for a project from posting there.
Many people who do something related to art and design work worry that if AI keeps improving, it will eventually come for their jobs. Disney has already started to do this but with lots of pushback. Secret Invasion is a new Marvel TV show on Disney Plus, and confirmed by its director, the opening credits of the show were made using AI-generated material. Many people were quick to talk about how this took away the work of the visual development teams, with many people from the visual development team who worked on the show coming out on Twitter saying that AI is dangerous to artists. Jeff Simpson is a man who worked on the show and
tweeted - “I’m devastated; I believe AI to be unethical, dangerous, and designed solely to eliminate artists' careers. “A storyboard artist who didn’t work on the show, Jon Lam, called the intro “salt in the wounds of all Artists and Writers in the WGA strike”
This statement refers to how the WGA (Writers Guild of America) was trying to negotiate with TV and movie companies to gain higher pay and protection against AI.
Another reason for the uproar is that the machine learning tool needs something to train the AI on, so it uses thousands if not millions of images from the internet, including other people’s work that they have made and posted. Most of the time, the people whose work gets put into the AI are not told or compensated for using their art, which raises many ethical questions on whether AI is stealing from people. In 2022, there was a lawsuit by three artists against many AI generative platforms. Many people filed many other lawsuits in 2022 and 2023, all about the same, if not similar, things. The main crux of this is that AI work may not be transformative enough to avoid copyright, so in every suit, the court was asked to clearly define what counts as derivative work and what doesn’t.
The Future of AI in Web Design
In recent years, AI has achieved massive success in all fields, from health care to business. With its success in getting the attention of the corporate elite, it’s no wonder AI is evolving so fast. Many web developers wonder what AI's future in web design will look like.
Unicorn Platform’s new AI tool can optimize website editing to a whole new level. According to Unicorn Platform, their AI can “easily edit blocks of content on your landing page based on your prompt.” and is intelligent enough to “know what’s already in a block, so you won’t have to spend time manually creating new blocks for each page.” This could be insanely useful for web developers and people who don’t have much experience. For web developers, it can cut down on the time needed for revising, and for inexperienced web developers, it can make a difficult task easier.
User experience is a big part of web development. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your website, as well as what content people are looking for, is valuable information for web developers. Unicorn Platform believes AI has the potential to revolutionize web development by optimizing content delivery for each visitor. With AI, developers can deliver more relevant content to each user based on their past behavior and interests. AI can also analyze data, saving web developers time and energy for other tasks.
Further Opinions
The opinion is neutral regarding whether introducing Artificial Intelligence crossing paths with the web design world is good or bad. This new tool has equal positive and negative benefits for web designers and their careers for various reasons. AI is a positive trait in that it can be a time saver and help finish projects faster by providing fast and automatic answers to situations and problems using ChatGPT. You can ask the simplest or very complex and descriptive questions, and the system will generate a detailed explanation. This has its positive side, but AI doesn’t provide the same common sense and understanding of the English language as when someone writes it word for word. An excellent example of this would be using Grammarly as a helpful tool to correct spelling errors and form good sentences. However, I’ve noticed that Grammarly is sometimes very forcing or annoying when correcting the use of a word or the structure of an entire sentence, and sometimes, when you use the “helpful” hint, the sentence or phrase doesn’t make sense.
Overall, AI has the foundation to grow and, no doubt, provides assistance; the big question and huge debate is whether it will eliminate careers and humans. After all, humanity is about improving and adapting to change, or will there be a time when there are few humans?
