Design and Create lab: how AI is changing creative tasks

Key facts

• In the ILO's 2025 index, graphic and multimedia designers score 0.49 out of 1 for exposure to generative AI, and advertising professionals and writers 0.55. Architects and interior designers score 0.37.^[1]
• Employers in the WEF's 2025 survey expected UI and UX designers to be among the fastest-growing jobs to 2030, and graphic designers among the largest declining ones.^[2]
• 57% of those employers counted creative thinking as a core skill for their workforce.^[2]
• Malaysia's National Guidelines on AI Governance and Ethics (MOSTI, September 2024) are voluntary and include transparency, accountability, and privacy and data security among seven principles.^[3]

In Design and Create you make things people see, use or live in: a poster, an app screen, a video, a room layout, a game level. This brief looks at creative jobs as bundles of tasks, and at how generative AI (tools that produce text, images, sound or video from a prompt) is changing some of those tasks. Nobody knows exactly how this will play out, so treat every forward-looking line here as one organisation's estimate, not a promise.

How to read the evidence

• ILO exposure scores. In May 2025 the International Labour Organization published an index that scores how much of each occupation's current tasks generative AI could potentially do, from 0 to 1.^[1] It is built from a Polish task list, a survey of workers, expert review and an AI model, so it is a global estimate, not a Malaysian one.^[1] The ILO expects most jobs to be transformed rather than made redundant.^[4]
• WEF projections. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 asked over 1,000 employers what they expect by 2030.^[2] These are employers' expectations, not measurements.
• Anthropic Economic Index. Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI assistant, matched about a million anonymised Claude conversations to task lists from O*NET, the US occupational database.^[5] It shows real use, but of one product only.

Example tasks and how AI is changing them

"Exposed" does not mean "doomed"

A high score means a large share of today's tasks could be done with AI. The ILO stresses that this does not mean a whole occupation is automated: that depends on whether employers adopt the tools and whether workers get the chance to learn them.^[1] It also notes that highly digital occupations tend to develop new tasks as tools change.^[1] In early 2025, 57% of the Claude conversations Anthropic studied were people working with AI and 43% were handing a task over.^[5] That data left out image generation, so creative work is under-counted.^[5]

Costing, pitching and using AI honestly

• Costing. If AI makes a draft faster, clients may expect a lower price. Price the parts AI cannot do well (understanding the brief, checking, revisions) plus any tool subscriptions. Rates vary, so ask a practitioner what they charge rather than trusting a number an AI gives you.
• Pitching. Say what you made, what AI made and what you checked.
• Telling people what AI made. Malaysia's AI guidelines are voluntary, but transparency and accountability are two of their seven principles.^[3] In practice: tell clients when you used AI, keep your drafts, and check every word an AI wrote against the facts the client gave you. AI copy can add a promise the client never made.
• Rights. Check you have the right to use any image, font or music. If in doubt, draw it or describe it.
• Consent and privacy. Ask before you record a user interview, photograph someone, or upload their face or voice to an AI tool. Privacy and data security is another of the guidelines' principles.^[3]

In the taster

In the Design and Create taster you make a poster that must work in five seconds, use AI for headline ideas, and check every word it wrote against the fact sheet. Then you test your poster on two people who have not seen it. That is how designers work with AI: draft fast, check hard, test on real people.

For facilitators

• Use the table as a starting list for the Job X-ray and ask the practitioner to correct it first. The game designer and UX rows suit technology learners; the video editor, copywriter and social media rows suit media learners.
• Anthropic's Econ Scenario Explorer (September 2026) shows how different assumptions change a modelled US economy in 2030. It calls itself a stark simplification, so use it to show that assumptions matter, not as a Malaysian forecast.^[7]
• The Stanford Digital Economy Lab (August 2026) found employment of US workers aged 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed occupations about 19% below its comparison level, mostly through fewer hires. The authors say this is descriptive, not proof that AI caused it.^[8] Use it to discuss entry-level tasks, not to predict Malaysia.

What this means for you

• First drafts are getting cheap; judgement is not. Knowing what the client needs, what the audience understands and what is true is the part to get good at.
• Drafting tasks score high. Copywriting and layout variations are among the most exposed tasks in this lab, so build a portfolio that shows your thinking and your checks, not only polished images.
• Honesty is a skill. Saying what AI made, and having the rights to what you use, protects you and your client.
• Employers expect people-facing design to grow. User research and testing need you in the room, and UX roles are among the WEF's fastest-growing projections.

Your next step

1. On Day 2, ask the practitioner: "Which part of your week has AI changed most, and which part not at all?" Add the answer to "The people" in your Future Map.
2. Read how AI may change your career area: media and creative, technology and AI or business and enterprise. Then X-ray one creative job with the Tasks, not job titles method.