🧠 Issue #21 – When AI Designs the World—Whose World Is It?

🔍 The Spark

This week, Figma quietly rolled out a new AI feature called "Make Design," which lets users type a prompt—“landing page for a meditation app”—and instantly receive a full design, complete with color scheme, layout, and icons.

It’s slick. It’s fast. It’s wildly impressive.

But when everyone uses the same AI to create their websites, forms, packaging, and visuals—what happens to originality?
And more importantly… what happens to human perspective in design?

Figma’s founder, Dylan Field, later admitted they had to disable the feature just hours after launch when it became clear the AI was producing designs that eerily resembled Apple’s Weather app—essentially creating near-replicas rather than original designs.

But even beyond those bugs, something more existential is surfacing:
AI is no longer just a tool we use. It’s now a designer, a decision-maker—and a taste-setter.

💡 The Insight

In every creative decision, there's a hidden layer of values.

Design isn't neutral. The font you choose signals playfulness or prestige. The image you select tells someone who belongs and who doesn’t. The default spacing, color palette, or tone? These aren’t accidents—they’re worldviews.

Today’s AI generates design by remixing existing patterns—drawing from the most common examples in its training data. This creates a fascinating paradox:

But here’s what’s exciting: this sameness isn’t inevitable.
Recent research shows AI can adapt its output when given different creative directions or cultural contexts. The technology is more flexible than we initially thought; we just need to learn how to guide it better.

Two paths emerge:

• Today: All interfaces converging toward similar patterns and aesthetics

• Tomorrow: AI that reflects diverse communities, contexts, and creative visions

The question isn’t whether AI can create variety—it’s whether we’re asking it to.

🤯 The Realization

The more frictionless AI makes design, the easier it becomes to stop thinking about design altogether.

We stop asking:

Right now, this creates a world of polished efficiency—fast, functional, but increasingly generic. When everyone uses the same AI tools with similar prompts, we get similar outputs, creating feedback loops that narrow creative possibilities.

But here’s the opportunity:
The same technology that can homogenize creativity can also amplify it.

Researchers are developing AI systems that generate multiple creative directions, adapt to different contexts, and even help us explore design possibilities we hadn’t considered.

The question isn’t whether AI stifles creativity—it’s whether we’re using it to expand our creative horizons… or just automate our existing patterns.

🔗 Curiosity Clicks

1. AI Suggestions Shape Creative Output – Cornell arXiv
   Revealing how AI tools influence creative direction and how new approaches can broaden design outcomes.

2. Toward Artificial Empathy for Human-Centered Design – arXiv
   New research on modeling empathy and perspective-taking inside generative systems.

3. Teaching AI Cultural Awareness – Cornell Chronicle
   How a single, well-crafted prompt can dramatically reduce cultural bias across more than 100 countries.

💬 Quote That Hits

🧭 Human Prompt

Look around today. What’s one digital space you spend time in… that just doesn’t feel right?

It might be beautiful. It might be fast. But something’s off.
Who do you think it was designed for?
And who might’ve been left out?

Now notice: How does this compare to physical spaces around you?

Your local coffee shop probably reflects the neighborhood’s culture, the owner’s taste, the community’s needs.
Physical spaces often carry layers of human intention—worn paths, personal touches, organic evolution.

Digital spaces, by contrast, often feel sterile. Same layouts. Same defaults. Same assumptions.

But both shape how we feel, think, and connect. The difference?
Digital can scale instantly—and influence millions.

What would it look like if our digital worlds felt as rich, specific, and personal as our favorite physical places?
And what if AI could help build more of those—not fewer?

🤔 Worth Considering

AI is democratizing design—but it's also creating visual sameness. For now.

We’re at an inflection point:

• We can outsource our ability to shape with intention.

• Or we can teach AI to become a creative collaborator—one that expands, not limits, human possibility.

The constraint isn’t the tech—it’s our imagination.
But mirrors show us more than our past…
They show us what we’re becoming.

Let’s make sure the world we’re building with AI still feels like home.
Here's to building a future worth living in.
— Jesse