DIFFERENTIATION IN THE AI AGE
đź’Ż Being ‘great’ when AI makes everyone good
Image credits: Kiki Wu / The Rundown
The Rundown: As AI-driven design makes creation accessible to anyone, Adams says there will always be room for “greats” to stand out with their judgment, empathy, and knowing what will strike a chord with the audience.
Cheung: Canva AI 2.0 can now generate and edit at the layer level — text, elements, colours. That means anyone with a vision can execute it without touching a tool. Does the gap between a great designer and an average one get smaller?
Adams: When it comes to creativity, there will always be room for “greats” to stand out from the “goods”, but the skills that you need to stand out are constantly evolving. When you think about other eras of creative change, democratisation always makes room for more expression but also enables the best in the field to push even further.
When anyone can produce something polished, what separates the work is the thinking behind it and the message it contains. Judgement and empathy become more important: the strength of the idea, the sensitivity to context, the instinct about what will resonate, and the fundamentals of creating connection with other people. These things only humans can bring, and that’s why we’ve built an agentic experience that keeps the user at the center.
This is powerful for designers, but even more so for those who need to create visual materials but aren’t designers: a marketer creating campaign materials, a wedding planner designing a seating chart, or a student’s school project.
Why it matters: For anyone in a creative role wondering what AI leaves for them and how to shine — this is the answer. AI handles the execution. What it can’t replicate is the harder stuff: knowing your audience, your instinct, and getting what actually will work. The better you are at that, the more successful you become in the age of AI.
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