{"id":640941,"date":"2026-10-25T14:36:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/640941\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T14:36:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:36:31","slug":"why-do-ai-platforms-want-humans-to-design-their-branding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/640941\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do AI platforms want humans to design their branding?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How&How rebranding<\/a> AI image generator Ideogram. Lazarev crafting the identity<\/a> for AI video app Elva. Together giving AI audit firm Clusia<\/a> a four-petal mark. Meta asking lettering artist Jessica Hische<\/a> to draw the new logo for its new AI platform, Muse.<\/p>\n

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So why do the companies who seem most invested in machine-made creativity keep reaching for the human kind? And should creatives whose livelihoods AI threatens be helping them? The more I think about these conundrums, the more confused I seem to get.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos FromCreative Bloq<\/p>\n

What branding does<\/p>\n

The first question is, if we accept that AI can make nice looking images, why wouldn’t AI companies want to use them for their own branding? It’s a simple question, and actually there’s a simple answer too. Branding has never been about making things look nice. It\u2019s about making people believe you.<\/p>\n

As I noted in my recent article about attempts to rebrand AI slop<\/a>, it’s pretty clear that AI companies have a credibility problem right now. Not just with designers, but with the general public too.<\/p>\n

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\"Two\n<\/p>\n

Lazarev\u2019s brand system for Elva aims to give the AI video editor a friendly personality users will want to talk to. (Image credit: Lazarev\/Elva)<\/p>\n

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard people without a creative bone in their body calling out AI images, whether they’re on Facebook, a dodgy gig poster hanging up in the pub, or the cover of their nephew\u2019s self-published fantasy novel.<\/p>\n

So it might seem like a paradox, yet it makes perfect sense that AI companies are putting humans front and centre when it comes to their own branding. But it’s no surprise, too, that the backlash from some creatives has been noisy.<\/p>\n

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Understandable anger<\/p>\n

When Jessica announced her Muse work, for example, she was hammered on Threads, despite explaining that the $12,500 fee would help her keep two small shops and their staff afloat. Her critics argued, though, that we shouldn’t be lending our craft and credibility to the thing that\u2019s eroding demand for it.<\/p>\n

I understand the logic and I understand the anger. But one has to wonder how much refusing such commissions would actually change anything.<\/p>\n

Capitalists are investing literal billions of dollars in generative AI, and ultimately if Jessica had turned down the Muse job, it’s not like they’d have turned on their heels and gone home. They’d just have found someone else. There are lot of capable designers out there, and even if they’d hired a bad one and the logo hadn’t been any good, it hardly would have brought the AI juggernaut to halt.<\/p>\n

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\"A\n<\/p>\n

Together\u2019s identity for Clusia pairs Die Grotesk with italic Vitruv Text, and uses 3D illustrations made of tiny versions of the petal-shaped logo (Image credit: Together\/Clusia)<\/p>\n

On a more positive note, the very fact these companies are keen to hire humans is surely something we can hang on to. As Jessica said in an interview for Wired<\/a>: \u201cIsn\u2019t this ultimately the future that we want? Large companies hiring independent artists to do things?\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, if AI companies want to pay humans to make them look human, surely it’s best we take the money, do brilliant work and remind everyone why they asked in the first place?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter If you ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-640941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}