Can AI be used to generate authentic work slightly than mere “slop”? That’s the query going through many designers who each hope to leverage AI’s energy to generate and refine new concepts rapidly, and fear about their capacity to compete with a flood of AI-generated, but subpar, content material.
But Mike Peng, the CEO of design consultancy IDEO, thinks that human creativity, enhanced by AI, might be the trail ahead for designers.
AI’s sample recognition functionality could make it an extremely highly effective software, famous Peng at Fortune Brainstorm Design in Macau on Dec. 2. However its reliance on averages can result in “somewhat mediocre” outcomes, he warned.
“Creativity is all about not being mediocre and being on the edge,” he added.
Equally, AI is great at iteration, however solely creativity can decide the place to use these iterated concepts. “This comes from taste, curation, discernment—you need to know where to look,” Peng suggested.
And whereas AI may outperform people by way of execution, or find out how to get from “point A to point B,” bringing it to life requires creativity and empathy, which Peng stated “can only be done by folks like us.”
So how finest to inculcate a artistic mindset and unlock the facility of AI? “The only way we can get better at it—and the only way we as creative people, as designers, can become superpowered—is to be able to experiment” Peng stated.
Playfulness, curiosity and experimentation, together with human-centered design are, hallmarks of IDEO, the world-renowned international design and innovation consultancy based in Palo Alto in 1991. Peng took over as IDEO’s CEO earlier this 12 months, after spending 5 years as chief artistic officer of Moon Inventive Lab, a enterprise studio affiliated with Japan’s Mitsui.
“There is no play without friction,” Peng famous. “Play is about overcoming something, achieving something.” That’s counter to corporations typically making an attempt to make their services and products sooner and simpler to make use of. To keep away from mediocrity, “we have to play, we have to experiment, we have to be on the edge” with new know-how, he stated.
IDEO, he notes, is “in the business of creating something that AI cannot exactly do on its own.” But, for him, the human superpower stays understanding human complexity and interactions.
In spite of everything, Peng urged, creatives and designers will “be the ones to bring this experience to life.”
Correction, Dec. 10, 2025: An earlier model of this text misstated Mike Peng’s earlier place at Moon Inventive Lab.
