Stop Microwaving Your Designs

The Last Thing I'll Write about Generative AI

There’s an AI-generated poster pinned to my village noticeboard.

I don’t know who made it, or more accurately, prompted it. It’s perfectly fine. I now know there’s a food market next Sunday at 11am. But every time I walk past it, something in me sinks a little.

That sinking feeling is my position on generative AI as a substitute for human creativity.

Before you jump to conclusions, I’m not a staunchly analogue artist, protesting change simply because it’s uncomfortable. I was a day-one ChatGPT user. I’ve tried a new tool almost every week for the last few years, genuinely looking for ways to make my life as a designer better. But I’d be quite happy if we could go back to the before-times, and here’s why I think that:

If you’re pushed for time, skip this article and read Colin Cornaby’s piece comparing generative AI to microwaves — I’ve borrowed the analogy from him.

In the 1960’s, microwaving food was revolutionary. Magical. But in 2026, ‘microwaved’ is about the most damning insult that we give to restaurant food. Nobody brags about their microwaved baked beans in the way people brag about their ‘microwaved’ AI designs on LinkedIn.

The compliment machine.

What bothers me the most, in design specifically, is the way that generative AI’s skipping of the creative process is reframed as some kind of victory.

“Prompt to poster! Prompt to website! Ship 10x faster!”

But are we actually winning? Design requires connection, and connection requires someone to actually think through something. To make weird, intuitive, biased, imperfect leaps. To try a terrible approach and learn something new.

I keep being reminded of neuroplasticity; if you stop doing something, your brain will get worse at it. Not immediately, but quietly over time. I’ve noticed places in my life where I’ve offloaded my thinking to AI.

I think that a lot of people are starting to feel something similar. “Clankers” (the Star Wars slur getting a second life as shorthand for AI-scepticism) feels like another term added to the lexicon of collective unease, alongside brainrot and doomscrolling.

Virginia Dignum puts it well in The AI Paradox:

“The more AI can do, the more it highlights the irreplaceable nature of human intelligence.”

And that’s before we get to the energy. The environmental cost of running these models at scale goes beyond the internet’s already staggering footprint — and is largely invisible to the people celebrating the output.

The stock market and LinkedIn echo chamber may disagree, but I think people will start craving things made by real, talented, weird, fallible humans. And I hope that by the time generative AI’s ‘creativity’ is as mundane as microwave cooking, I won’t have quietly forgotten how to be a creative — because somewhere along the way, my thoughts, mistakes, and instincts weren’t profitable enough.