How AI Is Shaping the Future of Web Design
For many everyday users, artificial intelligence (AI) seemed to move instantaneously from a theoretical technology of the future to something very real and useful. For professional web designers, AI tools can already assist a number of relevant areas from coding, to design, image generation, copywriting, and more. In 2024, AI’s influence on web design is likely to become unignorable as new AI-powered tools proliferate and improve. Whether or not you choose to embrace these tools, AI has the potential to transform the industry itself in both small and big ways, as well as the aesthetics, structure, and character of the wider web.
How does AI relate to web design?
Broadly speaking, AI is a field of computer science that aims to create systems that perform tasks that otherwise require human intelligence to complete. While numerous companies, individuals, and institutions have used AI and machine learning for a wide range of tasks over the years, a suite of new and emerging AI tools help ordinary users generate compelling imagery and written content, solve problems, automate tasks, and more. These popular tools fall into basic categories.
AI-powered generative art models produce unique imagery in response to prompts and other inputs from the user. These models draw on large collections of reference images, allowing them to produce complex, captivating imagery on command. These models are integrated into some professional image-editing software and are also available as standalone tools.
Natural language processing models use ordinary language as an input and output. These models can craft web copy, blog posts, or content marketing materials. Some of these models are also capable of producing code in various programming languages—a feature that could help designers without coding experience to experiment with custom code elements.
Both of these models can be used for brainstorming, leading to more innovative and functional designs. Generative art AIs can help spark visual ideas that designers can continue to develop and refine. For the lone web designer, natural language AI can be like an indispensable conversation partner that asks the right questions, takes ideas a little further, or gives insight that makes the rest of your project click into place.
Leveraging AI for client websites
Web designers may be especially well positioned to take advantage of emerging AI tools. Many AI models have especially broad knowledge sets, so experimenting with their capacities can be surprisingly fruitful. If you’re facing a particular technical web design challenge, AI can sometimes set you on the right path. Some AIs are capable of writing code snippets and troubleshooting in multiple coding languages. AI can provide tutorials, suggest resources, and explain concepts that take your current abilities to the next level.
AI is also great at getting you over the hurdle of an intimidating blank page. Squarespace AI can help you and your clients write site and email campaign copy much faster. With AI writing the first draft, you can focus on the fine tuning and achieving the broader strategy.
AI can provide guidance on SEO practices, site layouts, site optimization, and user experience. Moreover, these models can highlight considerations that may be especially important in your client’s specific use case. With a little back and forth, AI can help you develop tailored SEO keyword strategies, marketing plans, and other areas that require domain-specific knowledge.
AI is also tireless, making it ideal for repetitive or labor-intensive tasks. It can automate data entry and formatting tasks, check for keyword density and perform other SEO analyses, troubleshoot code and check for errors in copy, and perform maintenance tasks like searching for broken links across your site.
While the recent advances in AI are breathtaking, you should carefully review any content generated by AI for quality, factual soundness, and potential intellectual property issues.* Often, this means rewriting and refining things like site copy to be fully on-message and in the client’s voice. AI is a lot like a tireless, talented, and eager intern, but also one that’s prone to mistakes.
*Note: The information in this guide is for informational purposes and should not be relied on for legal advice. Enhancing design elements with AI
AI’s broad knowledge base means it can propose color schemes and other design elements for your client’s site in alignment with both design theory and accessibility guidelines. AI’s ability to suggest code snippets can also supercharge your design elements—empowering more experimental, innovative, and visually interesting sites. As always, you should test your sites for potential problems caused by custom code.
Generative art models can create graphics and visuals for client sites in response to prompts. Just like their language-based counterparts, these AIs often produce outputs that require fine tuning from a professional.
Generative art models may be especially useful in areas where somewhat generic imagery is appropriate. If you’re after background imagery that elicits a specific feeling, like a sunset over a Tuscan vineyard, AI will probably produce an excellent result. If you need a dynamic modern backdrop for a client’s product images, AI can also handle it.
Balancing AI and human creativity
Great conversations often produce great, original ideas. Sometimes, it can be difficult to say whose ideas they were in the first place, as they emerged from the magic of a free-flowing conversation. Some of AI’s greatest potential is not as a replacement for human creativity but as a complement to it.
Current limitations in AI are a result of the models’ relative novelty. Other limitations, however, are structural. Designers can take advantage of this dynamic to create things neither humans nor AI models could produce on their own. AI models often can creatively and dynamically process huge—and sometimes technical—knowledge sets. With a creative human interlocutor, those skills can be directed towards new types of creative expression.
Preparing for the future
The camera didn’t replace the painter—and it certainly didn’t replace the artist. It did, however, challenge artists to develop a deeper concept of what makes their work valuable. It’s impossible to predict with certainty how AI will impact the industry of web design, but if history is a guide, technology often replaces the mundane, technical, and repetitive dimensions of work. Designers, therefore, are more likely to discover AI as an indispensable tool that expands their abilities, rather than as a menacing competitor that leaves them without a job.
Those who gain familiarity with AI’s potential can leverage it to learn more, do more, and develop professionally. AI models can serve as tutors to expand your professional skill set and direct you to great resources. They can help you write copy, streamline and automate repetitive tasks, and generate compelling imagery. If AI tools continue to proliferate and improve, even those who ignore AI will be challenged to think about web design in new ways. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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