Everyone wants to be seen with AI. Is it innovation or insecurity?

There’s an interesting pattern emerging across discussions, forums, friendly chats, teams, industries, and LinkedIn feeds alike. People are rushing to associate themselves with one of the new and emerging AI tools, not always out of a clear product vision, but often from a place of wanting to appear relevant.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against AI. In fact, I welcome it. Tools like Galileo AI, ChatGPT, and Figma’s AI features can and have meaningfully enhanced my own design workflows. But they need to be used thoughtfully.

Increasingly, this rush feels less like progress and more like panic. I totally get that many of us feel our relevance is under threat.

Here’s what usually happens in that kind of environment:

1. Surface-level experimentation. People want to “use AI” for the sake of it. So you get half-baked POCs, chatbot widgets nobody uses, UI generators that don’t fit real workflows, or copies of existing models.
2. Fear-driven culture. Instead of driving innovation, the focus shifts to job preservation. People scramble to latch onto trends to “look busy with AI”.
3. Lack of meaningful integration. AI tools are bolted on, not baked into the core experience. There’s little thought about user value, ethical implications, or long-term maintenance.

It’s not innovation. It’s the fear of being left behind.

Real innovation comes from empathy, problem-solving, and long-term thinking. AI, at its best, should amplify human creativity, not replace it, especially in UX and UI design, where human understanding is the core value.

As designers, our focus should stay on:

1. Solving real problems
2. Understanding our users by applying what we know about psychology
3. Being methodical in our UX design approach
4. Exploring where AI helps, and where it doesn’t. Find a balance; make a truce.