Ep 7: AI & Design - recent news & highlights ✨

Welcome back to AI Goodies!

This might just be the first “generic” issue we do, but I promise it’s pretty compelling nevertheless. The AI & Design industry has seen some juicy things announced recently and it’s an interesting time to explore what’s being done in the space, there’s a nugget of “prepare-to-get mind-blown” somewhere along the way in here ✨

🫣 Why AI branding sucks

I’m sure most of us might have seen how most companies’ branding is just: simply. the. same. The sparkle icon has become so pervasive that the Nielsen Norman group is documenting it in their iconography guide. Purple, magic wands, orbs and the like of. 🔮🪄

But why is it more or less the same thing, repeating again and again?

It all starts with the nature of tech itself. Tech has some unique quirks, like how software’s low costs and scalability push companies to chase rapid growth. Founders often aim for big payouts, which leads to overblown claims about what their products can do. As a result, many tech brands end up repeating the same empty promises: “change the present,” “shape the future,” “transform B2B” and “revolutionize email marketing” – all paired with visuals that look nearly identical. Exemplified above in a slide from my talks about AI from 23’-24’ 😅

The reason brands keep recycling the same language and imagery often comes down to fear. In today’s tech landscape, companies pivot constantly, trying to keep up with big players like Meta or Google, whose updates could make them irrelevant overnight. This kind of pressure makes it hard for brands to commit to a clear identity, so they end up with vague, often meaningless messaging.

Instead of taking a stand and defining what they’re truly about, many brands stay noncommittal, thinking that being too specific might hurt them. But in a world full of inflated promises, there’s real value in being clear and tangible. Now that the days of easy money are gone, investors want to back companies that are actually doing something, not just talking about it. The best way to show you’re the real deal is by building a brand that stands for something concrete—because otherwise, you risk being just another product that no one really needs.

This brilliant explanation of why AI branding ended up so homogenous is laid out originally by one of my favourite content creators, over here.

So, I think it’s time we start expanding the limits of AI branding, and I recently discovered the perfect tool for that. The fun thing, if you think about it, is that we can use AI to improve how AI is represented and visualised. In a way, it’s a metaphor for systems that improve themselves, which is, uhm, exactly what AI is: an adaptable artificial organism.

Enough philosophy, here’s a hands-on design tool to make your design life easier.

💜 AI Tool for Visual Design

I recently discovered a product that’s aimed exactly at pushing the boundaries of branding with the help of AI and a super friendly experience, cool templates and so on - it’s called Kittl.

This tool takes away the mundane design tasks of resizing a finalised picture, recolouring artwork automatically and moving vectors in a group instead of using them one by one, so it should leave more room for us to be creative and innovate beyond the “what’s been done before” safe branding bets.

🌟 Notion AI - what’s new?

Notion has just launched its improved AI experience which enables you to:

• Search to find answers from Notion, Slack, Google Drive, and more.

• Generate docs: client proposals, a UX case study structure, a user-research plan, user-research questions & whatever you need

• Analyze and get insights from PDFs and images.

• Chat about anything powered by GPT-4 and Claude.

• More things: generating diagrams and flowcharts, translation + all the text improvement capabilities that were already there.

• To see all the AI stuff they launched, read here.

The little face icon they use for AI manages to disrupt traditional sparkle-branding, but it’s giving me intense Clippy vibes 😅📎 

(not that I mind that, I’m all about nostalgia when it comes to tech products and the 90s’)

But, since we can’t escape our controverse-seeking nature, even if Notion’s branding is getting a lot of praise, there’s obviously a creative scandal around it as well, if you’re in the mood for some juice 🍿

 😱 Figma reintroduced the controversial ‘First Draft’

Figma brought back its initially-called “Make designs” GenAI tool under the rebrand “First Draft”, an AI-based design generator that has caused a lot of backlash as it was trained on data from other products and was producing designs identical to Apple’s Weather app, in a popular example.

But, they’re taking another try at it, and they also introduced some other cool tools such as creating a design out of a screenshot, creating a prototype automatically between screens & many more. Read more about Figma’s AI tools.

🔎 NotebookLM - the most mind-blowing AI tool I’ve seen so far 🤯

Here’s a meta-example of why it’s incredible. 😱 I fed it all this newsletter text and it produced a two-person podcast that sounds absolutely unbelievable.

*fun fact: if you listen long enough, you’ll hear NotebookLM promoting itself. SO META

And this is not even its main use case. Basically, NotebookLM is a personalised AI search assistant powered by Google’s Gemini: you just simply upload your data and ask it to centralise the conclusions of your data. It is a great tool for analysing user research data, and not spending time on noticing key patterns.

It also provides essential sources for the answers provided, it can be of great help in market, and competitor research & as on understanding key user behaviours across different cultures as a starting step.

Try out the (this time the term is well-deserved) magic on yourself! 🪄🤯

🗞️ Other news in AI x Design

1. AI startups make more money than previous hype startups, read here 

2. Meta just launched some cool AI tools, check them out

3. OpenAI has just launched the natural audio chats, which are available on its paid version. Now you can have a natural conversation, choose the desired accent and even get an empathetic response. Read more here

4. The European Commission has created an “AI Pact”, an initiative to encourage accountability amongst big companies on how they will use AI in the future. Read more here

💛 Canvas ‘24 by Miro: Are you ready?

I was supposed to go to New York on October 8th to attend Canvas 24’ but I had to turn down the invitation due to personal reasons. 💔 I’ll be attending online and I hope to see as many of you joining me for this super cool line-up of speakers and topics 🙏 

🙋‍♀️ Register for free at the link below 👇

🧐 Not convinced? Maybe learning that Refik Anadol is the keynote speaker will make you click on the link above, after all. 😉

🔥 Let’s collaborate 🤝 Get featured in my newsletter 👍

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💜 Next on AI Goodies: Episode 8 - Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

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AI & Design Love, Ioana ♥️