Every era has its fetishes. What do we have? Instead of grand, unattainable ideas, we worship templates that someone has already defined.

“Creativity” has become almost a religious ritual in the design world. Everyone kneels, believing that yet another polished logo or campaign will make the world breathe a sigh of relief. Yet something is missing from this picture. What is meant to be creative often ends up as just a copy. The word “creativity” shines brightly, like plastic pearls—seemingly something more, but, in essence, empty.

AI enters this puzzle as yet another fetish. A new idol—a tool promising more, faster, cheaper. But does it really break patterns, or does it simply increase the pace of their repetition? Fetishism works only when we avoid asking questions, when everything within us cries out, “Yes, this makes sense.” AI is fetishized by some as a technological miracle, while for others, it’s a curse—a tainted tool that disrupts the authenticity and truth of the creative process. But perhaps, instead of striving for perfection, AI could become a catalyst for transgression—a step beyond known boundaries, beyond what we currently consider “design.”

Jean Baudrillard wrote about simulacra—a reality that has lost any reference to the real world. AI-generated products resemble these simulacra: generated images and graphics that look like works of art but lack any intention. Their form is flawless but hollow, becoming part of an exhibition of appearances where everything “looks like” something but says nothing real.

In visual design, in the era of fast media, aesthetics have long replaced content. Content has been displaced by spectacle. It’s the aesthetics of “wow”—designed to impress but not to linger in memory, like posters we pass on the street. Their sole function is to be forgotten.

But what if AI could be something more? What if, instead of copying, it started asking questions? Imagine artificial intelligence that not only generates images but also provokes discomfort. Forms that don’t fit, that don’t agree. Perhaps in such disorder lies true creativity—a chaos that transcends our current understanding of design. AI could become a tool for some kind of creative transgression. After all, what kind of creativity merely manages already existing patterns?

And then we recall what physicist Roger Penrose once said—perhaps unintentionally the initiator of this text: “Consciousness allows us to transcend rules.” Well, AI has no consciousness, does it? It doesn’t break rules or disrupt patterns. That’s why it should operate on the edge of chaos—because it’s there, in that unpredictable space, where true creativity can emerge. Today, AI is still just a capable tool for producing “pretty things,” not “strange things.”

In my opinion, AI holds tremendous potential to create something entirely new. Its integration into the design process could change the way we perceive creativity, allowing us to redefine the creative reality. But isn’t this potential dormant? Perhaps we don’t even want to awaken it because we choose the comfort of quick production. We prefer AI to speed up our work rather than truly help us create something we’ve never seen before.

Today, AI in design is a tool for accelerating processes, not experimenting. Instead of asking questions, it neatly solves those already posed. There’s no room for madness here—no space for AI to surprise us. And maybe that’s the problem. Instead of letting AI break our boundaries, we keep it confined within strictly defined limits.

So perhaps, instead of constantly chanting “creativity, innovation, design!” we should stop running for a moment. Maybe AI can be something more than just a fast generator. Maybe it can be a question that pulls us out of our well-worn patterns. A question that doesn’t offer easy answers. But this question must be asked. Perhaps this is what “breaking the pattern” truly means: a question that refuses to fit any answer, because in that chaos lies the future of design.

Do we have the courage to question the purpose of design? Perhaps it’s in chaos, in the unknown, in the lack of certainty, where the future of visual design lies. It’s time to ask ourselves: what would happen if we started creating differently?