It's Not the AI. The threat to design roles isn't the model. It's a decade-old misunderstanding of what design actually is.

When leadership reduces design to screen production, it was always a matter of time before a faster tool made the role look replaceable. AI didn't cause that — it just made the gap visible.

The designers who aren't anxious right now aren't better at prompting. They're the ones who were never reducible to deliverables.

And leadership that still hasn't articulated why design matters — beyond velocity and output — is now actively failing their teams. Not accidentally. The window to get this right has been open for years.