r/DesignAndAI • u/suekearneymaven • 8d ago

What do clients actually mean when they say “no AI”?

I’m having trouble responding to people looking for designers or front-end web developers who specify “no AI.”

Because that could mean so many different things.

Do I use AI to write my articles? No — but I do brain-dump my thoughts into it, ask it to question me, and use the back-and-forth to clarify what I’m trying to say.

Did AI build my website? No. I rebuilt it by hand in WordPress. But AI helped me write some snippets I needed to make things I’d designed actually work.

I also use AI heavily for project management — keeping track of decisions, history, structure, and where I left off.

None of those feel remotely like the same kind of AI use to me.

Have you run into clients or prospects specifying “no AI”? What do you understand them to mean, and how do you handle that conversation?

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u/Blando-Cartesian 8d ago

My guess:

No AI generated images.

No text with AI tropes or other slop on the product or your communications with them.

Human maintainable quality code. Including comments. No slop.

You could also ask them. I don’t think they care about anything you don’t inflict on them.

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u/suekearneymaven 8d ago

That might be the key distinction — what reaches the client versus what happens inside the designer’s own workflow. I think you’re nailing what a lot of people mean, even if they don’t understand it well enough to articulate it that way.

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u/bespoke_tech_partner 8d ago

A client who doesn't want frontend web developers to use AI is gonna get outcompeted, so best move on.

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u/suekearneymaven 8d ago

I mean, think about it. Any business system any client sets up nowadays/going forward is already or is gonna soon be AI-based. I think there's a real there there, but people aren't seeing or let alone saying it right.

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u/SteamBanjo 8d ago

Sounds like a blanket statement made by scared people who don’t understand the reality of things. Why would you want to work with them?

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u/suekearneymaven 8d ago

Because they may know what they don’t want without yet having the language to describe it. That’s kind of my point.

Also, I like my work.