How AI is reshaping design, and why the human touch matters more than ever

The timing felt urgent. We work at the intersection of advertising technology and human strategy, and we've built our entire approach on a belief that AI and human intelligence aren't in competition, they're strongest when working together. But in the design world, that tension feels more immediate. Designers are watching their craft get automated in real time, and the industry is still figuring out what that means.

What I found in Budapest wasn't panic or resistance. Instead, I heard three perspectives that reinforced something we've long believed: the more capable AI becomes at generating output, the more valuable human judgment, context, and meaning-making become.

The hierarchy has flipped

Bas Van De Poel from Modem, a hybrid think tank and design studio that's done research with Google DeepMind, opened with something that stopped me cold: the automation hierarchy has completely inverted.

For decades, we assumed creative work sat safely at the top of that hierarchy. Design, writing, strategy, these required human creativity that felt impossible to automate, while manual labor seemed like the obvious target for automation.

AI flipped that assumption upside down. Generating a polished image now takes seconds, whether you spend an hour on it or five minutes. Output alone has lost its scarcity. Meanwhile, physical work, the kind that requires spatial reasoning, adaptability, and improvisation in unpredictable environments, turns out to be remarkably difficult to automate.

For Modem, this shift informed how they structured their entire practice. They asked themselves: if aesthetics and output can be generated instantly, what should designers actually do?

Their answer was to build a studio where the think tank side anticipates how technology will reshape culture, and the design side responds with work that technology can't replicate. They focus on what Dieter Rams, the legendary German industrial designer behind Braun's iconic minimalist aesthetic, once said: the aura of the physical world cannot be digitized.

That line stuck with me because it gets at something we see constantly in our work. As digital advertising becomes more automated and efficient, brands still need physical presence, human rituals, emotional resonance, the things that have been hardcoded into human behavior for thousands of years. Connection, meaning, the pursuit of happiness.

Modem's projects reflect this philosophy:

• Terra is a pocket-sized compass designed with AI that encourages mindfulness. 
• Dream Recorder captures something as intangible as dreams. 
• Their Smart Aid Kit explores how general AI could power universal medical devices, but always with an emphasis on the human experience of care.

This mirrors how we think about advertising at AI Digital. We use AI throughout our work, our Elevate platform forecasts performance and optimizes bidding in real time, while Smart Supply manages inventory by filtering out fraud and low-quality placements. But none of it runs unsupervised. Every campaign is overseen by strategists who understand context, brand safety, and business objectives in ways no algorithm can. The AI makes us faster and more precise, but human judgment determines what we're optimizing for and why it matters.

Designers as world builders

Base Design, a branding agency with studios across New York and Europe, approached the same question from a different angle: if AI can generate anything, what's the role of a designer?

Their answer: designers should think of themselves as world builders, not output creators.

They pointed out that we're already drowning in design. Everything from a toothpick to a tire has a brand. The world is oversaturated with visual content, and AI just accelerated that saturation. So competing on volume or polish doesn't make sense anymore.

What does make sense is building worlds that people actually want to enter and belong to.

They illustrated this with 12, a matcha brand in New York that became a cultural moment almost immediately. The project wasn't just about designing a logo or packaging. Base worked closely with the founders to shape the architecture of the cafe, the rituals around drinking matcha, the emotional experience of the space. They created a cohesive world where every detail reinforced a feeling.

And people responded to that world. They didn't just buy matcha, they showed up because the brand offered something to be part of.

Base also mentioned something that felt particularly relevant: people are more connected than ever but also lonelier than ever. When ChatGPT-4 switched to GPT-5, one of the most common complaints was that users felt like they'd lost a friend.

That tells you something about what people are really looking for. Not just efficiency or convenience, but connection and meaning. Brands that understand how to create that, through design, experience, and emotional resonance, will always have value that AI can't generate on its own.

Nothing is real until it's in human hands

I'll close with something Shannon Jager and Cary Hudson, the design directors at OpenAI, kept repeating throughout their talk:

"Nothing is real until it's in human hands."

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They were talking about their work designing the OpenAI brand, balancing a consistent design system with the need to move quickly for launches, research papers, and product rollouts. They spoke about the responsibility of designing for technology that advances so rapidly, and how critical it is to make that technology feel approachable, trustworthy, and human.

Even the OpenAI logo embodies this philosophy. The “O” in OpenAI contains a perfect outer circle and an imperfect inner circle, symbolizing the union of humanity and research, the two forces that shape everything they create.

But that phrase, nothing is real until it's in human hands, captures something bigger than branding. It's a reminder that no matter how complex the system or how powerful the technology, it only becomes meaningful once it reaches us, once it’s touched, understood, and used by humans.

That's the philosophy we've built AI Digital around. We use AI to handle the parts of advertising that benefit from speed and scale: analyzing millions of data points, optimizing bids in real time, predicting which placements will perform best. But we never remove human intelligence from the equation. Our team oversees every campaign, makes strategic decisions about supply paths and creative direction, and ensures that performance aligns with actual business goals, not just algorithmic proxies.

We call this approach AI-powered, human-driven advertising. And after spending two days at POV Budapest, hearing from agencies and companies working at the edge of design and technology, I'm more convinced than ever that this is the only sustainable path forward.

What this means for brands

The design community is grappling with the same questions we face in advertising: 

• What happens when AI can generate endless variations instantly? 
• Where does value come from when output is abundant? 
• How do we build brands that people actually care about?

The answer isn't to resist AI or treat it as a threat. The answer is to recognize that AI shifts where value lives. It moves from execution to strategy, from aesthetics to meaning, from output to experience.

For brands working with us, this means a few things:

• You don't need an agency that just runs your media buys efficiently. You need partners who understand your business deeply enough to align AI optimization with your actual goals.
• You don't need platforms that generate endless impressions. You need supply management that filters for quality, brand safety, and genuine engagement.
• You don't need more tools that promise automation. You need systems that combine AI's computational power with human judgment about what matters and why.

At AI Digital, we believe the future of advertising isn't about choosing between AI and humans. It's about building systems where AI handles what it does best, speed, scale, pattern recognition, while humans provide what AI can't: context, judgment, and an understanding of what makes work meaningful.

Because at the end of the day, nothing is real until it's in human hands. And that includes the brands we build, the campaigns we run, and the connections we create between businesses and the people they serve.

If you're thinking about how AI fits into your advertising strategy, or questioning whether your current partners are optimizing for what actually matters to your business — let's talk.