You could use ai for your branding, but should you?
I’ve felt quite compelled to write this after seeing small business groups absolutely flooded with posts about ‘Looking for a designer to recreate a logo I made in chatgpt’. Like they are EVERYWHERE.
It’s become quite clear to me there’s a lack of understanding around ai and it’s limitations, also there are many designers (and I say that very losely as they should know better) popping up to help these people without so much of a mention of the info I’m about to outline for you.
Poor form ‘designers’ poor form.
Let me cut right to it, just because ai can create things doesn’t mean you should use it for everything. Are you aware that no copyright exists for any graphics generated by ai. Nothing, zip, nadda, so any tom, dick or harry could rip your logo off and you’ve nothing to fall back on. For example if you’re using it to create a logo or brand elements that are meant to be distinctive to your business you are in all likelihood creating something that you cannot legally protect. Which doesn’t seem like a great way to start a business, maybe it won’t matter at the beginning but what about when you start to scale etc?
Now before you say ‘but I’ve had it recreated?‘ great, but just getting a designer to redraw it doesn’t copyright, it’s still derived from ai. A design requires substantial human creativity injected to have any copyright, which basically means you’d have to change it quite a bit from that ai output to have any copyright. That means you may well run into trouble when it comes to trademarking your logo etc, given that ai is trained on other designers work and creates graphics which replicate existing designs 18-20% of the time it’s something to be very cautious of.
Many people use ai to visualise their ideas and there’s nothing wrong with that but it shouldn’t be the final destination, lots of my clients send me their ideas they’ve made and I use them as a guide as to the style they’re looking for but I would absolutely never use it as the benchmark because what it does produce lacks character, distinctiveness and has that weird vibe to it. Ai also doesn’t understand scale, hierarchy, balance and symmetry like we do, it’s a robot remember. It’s a rinse and repeat type situation.
When I’ve pointed out on these group posts about the copyright issue around this ai stuff 100% of those people posting have had no idea at all, that’s what concerns me the most (right next to the designers who should know, that say nothing and offer to help instead).
If you’re going to use ai just ensure you’re using it the right way and not setting yourself up for a cease and desist, create a brand you can protect from day one. It only takes a quick google to see the court cases from the use of ai with trademark and copyright infringements rising rapidly by the day.
Couple things to do if you are going to go down this road:
Check the small print of the platform you are using
Do your legal due diligence, do not take ai’s word for it
Use ai as a base, not a final destination.
