AI is a very fast intern. It still needs a creative director.

The first time I asked an image generator for "an African woman smiling while holding her phone, warm light", I got a beautiful photo. Of a woman with six fingers, holding two phones. We've both improved since then.

AI is now part of my everyday work as a designer. It hasn't replaced me. Mostly, it has given me a tireless, very fast assistant who never asks for a raise, and whose work I still check line by line.

What it does well

• Exploring. At the start of a project, it helps me picture several directions in an hour instead of a day. I throw away 90% of the results, but the other 10% often open up an idea.
• Producing variations. Adapting a visual to five formats, testing three backgrounds, preparing versions for a campaign: the repetitive work goes much faster.
• Staging. For Hemma Collection, AI-made campaign visuals let us show the pieces in settings designed for the brand, without organising a shoot for every new arrival.
• Roughing out video. Transcripts, first-pass captions, audio clean-up: minutes handed back to the edit itself.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't know your brand. It doesn't know that your main customer is 45, lives in Lyon and sends money to her mother in Bouaké at the end of every month. It doesn't know that a Tabaski visual has to get its details right, or that your director's aunt can't stand purple (a real design criterion, trust me).

It doesn't keep things consistent over time either. A visual identity is a year of posts that look like they belong together, not one nice image. Above all, it takes no responsibility: when a visual misses, it isn't the one answering the client.

How I work with it

Brief first, AI second. I know what I'm looking for before I open the tool. Then I art-direct: framing, light, palette, intent. Then I check everything by hand: the hands (always the hands), the text, the faces, the cultural details. And I'm open with clients about what was made with AI and how it can be used.

If you're starting out

Learn the fundamentals before the shortcuts: composition, type, colour, hierarchy. AI speeds up what you already know how to do; it doesn't replace what you haven't learned yet. Everyone has access to the same tools. What sets you apart is your eye, your culture and your ability to say "no, not that one".

My intern is fast, available at 3 a.m. and never complains. But I'm the one who signs the work.