AI Is a New Tool, Not a New Standard - and the Difference Matters in Design

The fashion world had its moment this week.

Prada released a campaign - I, I, I, I AM… PRADA - created in collaboration with American artist Jordan Wolfson. Strange, unsettling images: human figures sharing the frame with giant, feathered bird-creatures and scaly humanoids. AI was involved, somewhere in the post-production process. The internet noticed. The debate that followed was loud, polarising, and entirely predictable.

Luxury brands, the argument goes, have no business using AI. AI is cheap. AI is fast. AI replaces human creativity. And luxury is supposed to be the opposite of all of those things.

It’s a compelling argument. It’s also the wrong frame.

We Have Been Here Before

When photography arrived, painters were told their craft was finished. When CAD came to architecture, hand-draughtsmen feared the same fate. When CGI entered the interiors world, photographers braced themselves. And when the synthesiser appeared in music, it was met with exactly the kind of suspicion now directed at AI.

Wolfson himself made this point, describing AI as an electronic synthesiser: a new instrument, not a replacement for the musician playing it. The synthesiser didn’t dilute music. It expanded what was possible.

The pattern is always the same. A new tool arrives. The creative industries panic. Then the most skilled practitioners absorb it, make it their own, and produce work that couldn’t have existed without it. The least skilled use it as a shortcut, and that shortcut shows.

The craft doesn’t die. The gap between those who can wield a new tool with intention and those who cannot gets wider.

Why This Matters More in Interiors Than in Fashion

This is where the parallel breaks down, and where design trade suppliers should be paying attention.

Fashion audiences, for all their discernment, encounter AI imagery on screens. They react to aesthetics, to feeling, to whether something looks off. Their judgement is real, but it’s essentially visual.

Interior designers and architects are trained to read material reality. They spend their careers understanding how light falls across a stone surface, how a fabric behaves at different scales, how a tile pattern resolves at the edge of a room. They are, arguably, the most perceptive audience in any luxury sector for detecting when an image doesn’t quite tell the truth.

AI-generated product imagery that gets the texture wrong does not just look slightly off. It actively undermines trust with the very specifiers you are trying to convert. A designer who spots that inconsistency will not mention it to you. They will simply move on.

That is a specific, serious risk. And it is not the only one.

The broader danger is that AI imagery, used carelessly and as a substitute for the real thing, signals something about how a brand values its own product. A fabric house with three generations of archive has something genuinely irreplaceable to show the world. Replacing the photography of that material with an AI approximation is not efficiency. It’s a quiet argument that the material itself doesn’t merit the effort of being properly documented.

The Question Is Never Whether. It’s How.

This is the line that matters most in the entire Prada debate, and it translates cleanly to interiors: it’s not whether a brand uses AI, but how, that matters.

Used thoughtlessly, AI is the visual equivalent of slop: generic, glossy, technically competent, emotionally empty. Designers can feel it, even when they can’t articulate why.

Used with intention, with a clear creative point of view directing it and actual product photography anchoring it, AI becomes a genuinely useful instrument. It can help brands produce more content. It can help visualise product in contexts that would otherwise require expensive shoots. It can help smaller teams stay consistently visible.

The key word is intention. AI amplifies what’s already there. If a brand’s creative direction is strong, AI can extend it. If a brand doesn’t have a clear visual identity or a coherent story about what it makes and why, AI will make that absence more obvious, not less.

What This Looks Like in Practice

For trade suppliers in the interior design sector, the practical question is not “should we be using AI?” Most are already using it somewhere. The real question is whether the AI-assisted parts of your marketing are working for your brand or against it.

Photography of your actual product, the weight, the texture, the honest colour, remains non-negotiable for specifiers. That cannot be approximated.

AI has a genuine role in supporting the content around that product: lifestyle context, mood, narrative, copy, the workflow behind consistent visibility. That is where the instrument plays well.

The synthesiser didn’t make musicians redundant. It made the musicians who understood it more powerful than those who didn’t.

The same is true now. The design brands that will navigate this well are the ones who treat AI as a skilled instrument in the hands of a clear creative strategy, not a shortcut away from having one.

If this is a conversation you’re having internally - about how AI fits into your brand’s marketing without undermining what makes it credible - it’s exactly the kind of conversation we have with clients.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should design trade suppliers use AI in their marketing?

Yes, but with intention. AI works well for content around your product: lifestyle context, mood, narrative, copy, and the workflow behind consistent visibility. What it cannot do is replace photography of the actual product - the weight, texture, and honest colour that specifiers need to make confident decisions.

Can AI replace product photography for interior design brands?

No. For trade suppliers selling to interior designers and architects, photography of the actual product remains non-negotiable. Specifiers are trained to read material reality. AI-generated imagery that misrepresents texture or colour does not just look slightly off - it actively undermines the trust you need to get specified.

How does AI affect luxury brand marketing in interior design?

AI amplifies what is already there. If a brand has strong creative direction, AI can extend it - helping produce more content, visualise product in context, and maintain consistent visibility. If a brand lacks a clear visual identity, AI makes that absence more obvious, not less.

What is the right way for design brands to use AI?

Use AI for the content around your product, not as a substitute for documenting the product itself. Lifestyle context, mood, narrative, and copy are areas where AI can play a useful supporting role. The brands that navigate this well treat AI as an instrument in the hands of a clear creative strategy, not a shortcut away from having one.