AI-pilled bosses and clients are turning designers into ‘pixel pushers’

Emily Foran, a creative director and graphic designer, has not been asked by clients to come up with an original idea from scratch in a year. “That’s kind of killing my soul,” Foran says. “I’m having clients, new and existing, send me crap they had Claude or ChatGPT mock up for them, and then ask me to either clean it up or straight up work with it. And I hate that. It’s such an insult.” These days, she feels more like a “pixel pusher” than a creative, a concern echoed by many of he...