Made with AI Is the New Made in China

June 24, 20261 Minutes

Twenty years ago, “Made in China” meant cheap, disposable, unsustainable, and low quality. Today, China is actively changing that perception, but the label still lingers in people’s minds.

Made with AI design is the new “Made in China” — and we mean that as a warning, not a trend report. We’ve spent twenty years watching what happens when cost becomes the only design criteria. The results are always the same: disposable work, eroded brand identity, and a market that eventually has to pay twice.

The same thing could happen with AI.

A lack of knowledge about how to use it, and a lack of judgment about what is good or bad, will quickly turn “Made with AI” into a stigma as well.

AI produces mountains of garbage—but so do humans. And AI is, in many ways, learning from us.

Nobody asks whether a movie was edited with Premiere, whether a book was written in Word, or whether a logo was designed in Illustrator. The tool disappears. The work remains.

This says more about people than it does about the technology. Because AI doesn’t replace taste. It exposes the lack of it.

Eager to know—will the label stay?



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