I, Me and My Ideas

Does GenAI risk designers getting tangled up in ego and computer-mediated images? For example, the designer who practises ideation as a multi-sensory experience as opposed to merely generating and representing ideas using computer software. That is, for the designer to draw on their own knowledge, experience and emotion as a way to strip their ideation performance of artifice such as GenAI. But whatever the ideation process, analogue, digital or mixed, ideation is commonly driven by the desire to seek reward, or ward (recognition) in return for the effort to be unique or enhance creative reputation. The drive for uniqueness is reflected in how designers fall in love with their own ideas. The act of falling in love with one’s own creation is derived from Greek mythology, in which Pygmalion fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite that he had sculpted. Today, the use of generative models such as ChatGPT and Midjourney suggests that designers are falling in love with the capability of the machine as much as with their own creative capability blurring the identification, and authenticity of "I, Me and Myself" and "They".