AI, Art, And The Exaggerated Death Of Freelance Design

Fears of AI replacing designers are real, but we're not there yet.

Every sign, logo, and banner you see today was born, at least in part, in someone’s head. The tools that artists and designers use to create have gotten more advanced over time. Software from Adobe, Corel, and others replaced pencil and paper for modern designers years ago, and it was seen as a natural evolution. 

Now, a new kind of technology threatens to replace the artists themselves… or does it? 

Drawing the line… sort of

Design work is big business for freelance artists who make their living on marketplaces like Fiverr and 99Designs. Many have spent years building their brands and racking up positive reviews for their services, with some artists serving hundreds of customers per month. 

You tell the artist what you want, review early concepts, give feedback, and ask for tweaks and adjustments along the way. The end product is the result of a collaborative process between you and the artist. You walk away happy and in most cases pay a very reasonable price for their services. 

It’s a system that works well and it’s why freelance marketplace sites can exist and thrive. But is it a sitting duck, ready to be swallowed up by easy-to-use AI art tools? 

In response to increased interest in AI-related services, Fiverr launched new AI-only categories in late January of this year. The company says it saw AI searches explode by over 1,400%. 

The new categories — which cover AI-based content editing, fact-checking, art, and even music videos — should help keep things straight. Still, there will inevitably be some crossover, especially as AI tools become more ubiquitous. 

“AI can be utilized as a tool in other categories (i.e.flyer design, presentation design, etc.), and is used by traditional designers too,” Yoav Hornung, Head of Verticals and Innovation at Fiverr, tells me. “And ‘traditional’ is constantly being redefined. Just like in the past, Photoshop was a technology that raised the eyebrows of some designers, now Photoshop is commonplace. AI tools, like Dall-E and Midjourney, could be considered the ‘new Photoshop.’”

99Designs reacted in a similar way, adding AI design categories to bolster its offerings without directly overlapping with traditional designers. 

My Coffee Shop Needs A Logo

Midjourney is one of several AI-powered art tools available to the public. It’s also one of the most powerful, with new improvements and tweaks coming along at a regular clip. It’s important to understand how these tools work, and why a traditional designer might want to use them, or may even fear them. 

You start by giving the system a prompt. This can be (almost) anything, written in plain language. 

If I’m launching a new coffee shop, and have absolutely zero design experience or knowledge, I might ask Midjourney for “a logo for a coffee shop” and I’d get something like this: 

You can see where some of the AI’s inspiration comes from here. The top left logo has some Starbucks vibes, with the woman in the center of a circle and wings along the sides, similar to the siren in the popular coffee chain’s trademark. The other logos are a mix of coffee cups, leaves, and eclectic imagery. There’s no rhyme or reason behind the designs and we’ve given the AI very little guidance. 

More information yields better results. Here are the results for the prompt “a logo for a coffee shop, coffee cup, simple design, flat colors, greens and blues, coffee beans”:

This is a little closer to what I’d imagine a logo for my modern coffee shop might look like. Lots of coffee leaves here and a couple of the logos contain cups as well. 

By default, Midjourney will use the most reliable version of its AI when rendering the images. We can force it to use the most recent update of the algorithm, too. Adding “--v 5” to the end of the prompt forces this change, as version 5 is the newest. The results can be iffy, but they’re often also the closest to the prompt. 

These logos follow the rules we set more rigidly, with a cup in all of the images and a greater adherence to the “simple design” and “flat colors” instructions. If I like one of these, I can ask for variations as well. I’ll go with the upper right logo. 

I really like the second logo, so I’ll upscale it. 

Assuming I’m asbolutely in love with this particular design (not a guarantee by any means), I created my new coffee shop logo in about 5 minutes. That’s impressive. I’m done, right?

Not quite. 

The image is fine for a website or business card, but it’s still relatively low resolution. If I wanted to upscale it to something that would be useful for a large sign, banner, or even uniforms, I’d need to figure out how to do that. 

Additionally, if I’m getting my merch from a company that requires vector files, which are much higher in fidelity than your typical image file, I might still need an expert to help me convert it. 

And what if I wanted a more ornate logo, with text included? Revisiting the second batch of logos I requested, let’s go with option #4. 

Ah yes, our new coffee shop “C CAPFF FIR O.” Unfortunately, that’s not English — or any other language — and this is where AI art tools often fall flat on their faces. 

Asking a tool like Midjourney to accurately include text in an image yields extremely poor results, meaning that if I wanted this as the logo of my new coffee shop, I still need at least a basic understanding of Photoshop, Illustrator, or another design tool in order to correct the text. If I don’t have that, I’m right back to looking for a designer to create — or at least fix — my logo. 

On top of that, we’re stretching things a bit by assuming that someone with no design knowledge is up on the latest developments in AI art and is willing to pay for it. 

A standard Midjourney account costs $30 per month. The service recently halted free trials, which allowed up to 25 jobs, due to a massive influx of users. 

Just Another Tool

Bilal Haider is a Fiverr designer that has been freelancing on the site for the past seven years. He’s earned the coveted ‘Top Rated’ badge for his design work and has a 4.9/5-star rating with nearly 10,000 5-star reviews. 

He’s not worried about an AI art takeover. 

“Many clients still prefer human designers for their logos,” Haider, who says he receives between 200 and 250 design job requests per month, tells me. “They may use AI for some reference materials, but still want to work with a person for the correct feedback and detail.” 

Haider’s design offerings include business logos, branding, business card design, and website layout. His services start at around $20. 

“[AI] will make the work for the designer easier,” Haider says. “Clients will be able to provide the exact idea they have in mind, submit it to the designer, and the designer works on it, which means less effort and more ease of mind.” 

Haider isn’t alone in his optimism. In fact, in speaking with a handful of Fiverr artists, not one person expressed serious concern for the immediate future of their craft. Even artists that lean heavily on AI are realistic about its limitations. 

“We've been interviewing some of the sellers in the AI artists category,” Fiverr’s Hornung says. “And one of the things we keep hearing is that as much as the technology is amazing, sometimes it's just impossible to get it (AI) to create exactly what a buyer wants, and very often, there's a need to continue refining the AI output with tools such as Photoshop, Procreate, etc. to cater to the buyer’s needs.”

“It should also be noted that freelancers are allowed to post multiple services on Fiverr. Therefore, a ‘traditional designer’ who draws illustrations with pen and paper may also have a service on Fiverr for AI-related art,” Hornung adds, emphasizing the overlap in the services each artist provides. 

Copy, right? 

AI’s status as a tool for designers, rather than a system that replaces them, may be settled for now, but there may be a larger issue brewing: Copyright. 

At present, many AI art platforms are trained on images from all over the internet, including art that is copyright protected. Art that results from prompts sometimes includes unrecognizable (but obvious) artist signatures and watermarks. 

The art itself could be considered original, but the style is often easily recognizable. This is even more obvious when many user prompts include artist names, instructing the system to closely mimic art that in most cases is protected. 

In the future, issues like this could lead to a copyright reckoning across the AI industry as a whole. At present, it’s the wild west. 

The US Copyright Office released a statement just a few weeks ago stating that if the art in question required significant human input (beyond a simple text prompt), it may qualify as an original work. 

The policy also mandates that art submitted for registration must carry a note as to whether AI was used in any part of the work.

These are small steps in the right direction, but it’s clear that additional regulations and guidelines will arrive sooner rather than later. Limiting the art that an AI is trained on could dramatically hinder its capabilities. If that happens, the AI tools could regress, at least for a time.

Getting Smarter

The road ahead is far from straight. AI art tools will continue to get better over the long term and will inevitably solve their issues with text and (hopefully) copyright ignorance.

Artists, writers, and software engineers have legitimate reasons to be concerned, and those concerns have already led to some regulatory measures and guardrails. It’s vitally important that rules continue to evolve as the tools get smarter and even easier to use.

For now, the human element remains irreplaceable. Hopefully, that never changes.