GenAI storming

GenAI is all out in design education at the start of the new 2026/27 academic year, and across disciplines and year-levels. GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT and  Midjourney, have become ubiquitous both in and out of studio settings. Typically, GenAI tools can help students to overcome creative blocks, expand conceptual horizons or facilitate novel solutions while spending less time on repetitive tasks like drafting, organising and summarising research data or checking design presentations before studio critique. But GenAI models, which uses a top-down predictive approach with no true domain understanding, raises as many questions as they answer. For example, while GenAI can offer students lots of creative "solutions" at speed, outputs may feel "thought through" or appear brilliant at first sight yet fail in critical tests such as material knowledge or scaling. Also, GenAI facilitates copying or plagiarism without critical verification as copyrighted material is being used to train AI models without permission. Moreover, from a learning perspective, when face-to-face tutorial time is reduced, students are getting generic feedback from tutors using GenAI for progress tracking raising concerns about student-tutor trust and "value-for-money" education. This highlights assessment ethicality and level of tutor AI training. How, then, to assess a GenAI-assisted design process in project reviews when portfolios may appear genuine and authentic? Indeed what exactly are students learning when using GenAI? How do tutors assess accurately student competency versus tool competency? That is, in academic jargon assessing the learner's procedural knowledge ("knowing how"), conditional knowledge ("knowing when, where and why") rather than declarative knowledge ("knowing that"). Moreover, what proof that the student not only can prompt effectively, edit, and direct outputs, but also use GenAI critically understanding its limitations? In short, GenAI in teaching and learning design reveals new relationships between the student, as service recipient, the tutor, as delivery partner, and faculty, as delivery organisation. The relationship dynamics in design education, then, is changing. But in an increasingly corporate-driven educational environment influenced by high stakes social media, where does knowledge and authenticity reside, and what is being evaluated and valued?