Abstract: As generative AI transforms the boundaries of creativity and intelligence, the role of the designer is undergoing a profound redefinition. This article explores how design practice must evolve in response — not by resisting AI, but by reshaping how it operates within human systems. Drawing on two decades of fieldwork, product development, and leadership in conversational and multimodal AI, the author proposes four emerging identities for designers: advocate, curator, orchestrator, and mediator of emotion. Each represents a distinct but interdependent response to AI’s strengths — and its blind spots. Designers must now move beyond aesthetics and usability to safeguard meaning, ensure ethical alignment, and preserve emotional resonance in systems that otherwise optimize for efficiency alone. The author argues that design’s most vital role is to act as a counterforce to algorithmic reduction. In a moment defined by speed, scale, and automation, we must ask not just what AI can do — but what it should do, and for whom. The future will be automated. But it must also be human.

Implications for research: As AI decision-making increasingly requires designers to advocate for human values (Section 3), those designers must recognize what kinds of UI elements and properties impact values in AI-based interfaces, and how. A validated framework could focus designers’ attention on crucial aspects. The assertion that AI cannot curate the quality of generated material as well as humans (Section 4) begs investigation, and an understanding of how human curation differs from AI curation might crystallize human capabilities that must be preserved. Systems that coordinate multiple models (Section 5) might compound the uncertainty inherent to AI, and standards for such systems must be further developed. And most directly, the discussion of the emergent area of neuroaesthetic design (Section 6) culminates in a call for frameworks that can strengthen arguments for system transparency over engagement metrics.