If you ever feel like the world has stopped making sense, you're not alone. Here's the latest thing to baffle my brain. The very AI companies that seem to be hell-bent on putting human designers out of work also keep hiring human designers to create their brand identities.
In 2026, my inbox has been full of PR emails about these kind of developments. How&How rebranding AI image generator Ideogram. Lazarev crafting the identity for AI video app Elva. Together giving AI audit firm Clusia a four-petal mark. Meta asking lettering artist Jessica Hische to draw the new logo for its new AI platform, Muse.
So why do the companies who seem most invested in machine-made creativity keep reaching for the human kind? And should creatives whose livelihoods AI threatens be helping them? The more I think about these conundrums, the more confused I seem to get.
What branding does
The first question is, if we accept that AI can make nice looking images, why wouldn't AI companies want to use them for their own branding? It's a simple question, and actually there's a simple answer too. Branding has never been about making things look nice. It’s about making people believe you.
As I noted in my recent article about attempts to rebrand AI slop, it's pretty clear that AI companies have a credibility problem right now. Not just with designers, but with the general public too.
I've lost track of how many times I've heard people without a creative bone in their body calling out AI images, whether they're on Facebook, a dodgy gig poster hanging up in the pub, or the cover of their nephew’s self-published fantasy novel.
So it might seem like a paradox, yet it makes perfect sense that AI companies are putting humans front and centre when it comes to their own branding. But it's no surprise, too, that the backlash from some creatives has been noisy.
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Understandable anger
When Jessica announced her Muse work, for example, she was hammered on Threads, despite explaining that the $12,500 fee would help her keep two small shops and their staff afloat. Her critics argued, though, that we shouldn't be lending our craft and credibility to the thing that’s eroding demand for it.
I understand the logic and I understand the anger. But one has to wonder how much refusing such commissions would actually change anything.
Capitalists are investing literal billions of dollars in generative AI, and ultimately if Jessica had turned down the Muse job, it's not like they'd have turned on their heels and gone home. They'd just have found someone else. There are lot of capable designers out there, and even if they'd hired a bad one and the logo hadn't been any good, it hardly would have brought the AI juggernaut to halt.
On a more positive note, the very fact these companies are keen to hire humans is surely something we can hang on to. As Jessica said in an interview for Wired: “Isn’t this ultimately the future that we want? Large companies hiring independent artists to do things?”
In short, if AI companies want to pay humans to make them look human, surely it's best we take the money, do brilliant work and remind everyone why they asked in the first place?
Tom May is an award-winning journalist specialising in art, design, photography and technology. He is the author of the books The 50 Greatest Designers (Arcturus) and Great TED Talks: Creativity (Pavilion). Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.