If you want to get a reaction out of someone in design school, bring up AI. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone draws the line at different places.

I teach interactive media design and development in two colleges, and I have observed that AI has taken us on a fascinating trip over the past few years. Three years ago, students proposed projects about how to spot the telltale signs of AI art. Two years ago, we were drafting guidelines for when and where these tools can be used. Back then, AI was a crutch—something to be avoided for any sort of academic or creative work.

Today, I see students fire up ChatGPT the same way that their counterparts a decade ago would use Google Image Search or Wikipedia. The faculty now has its own subscription, and our training includes AI-driven curriculum design.

A double standard?

It’s natural to be cautious. While multimedia production is focused primarily on the output, learning it places significant weight on the process. We assess the journey that a student takes through any project, from ideation and research to the final execution or proposal. AI can take a huge chunk of those decisions away from the learner, whether it’s in developing the messaging, writing the copy, or writing the very code that the project itself will run on.

This leads to a difficult question: if we teachers impose limits on students’ AI use, should we apply the same standards to ourselves?

I can’t deny how convenient it is to have AI design a bunch of programming-related problems for a seatwork activity, for example, or how it can find just the right words to explain a relatively complex concept in simpler terms. Would it be hypocritical to reject AI-aided student work after delivering a lecture supported by AI-written notes?

I don’t find it hard to justify the teacher’s perspective in this situation: the teacher isn’t the one being trained. We use AI to prepare materials, not to replace learning. After all, it’s okay to use a calculator when the lesson isn’t about arithmetic.

I’m curious about how the students would view this situation—doubly so for design students who learn to take pride in their creative and communication skills in addition to the academic integrity that they develop in school.

Use your powers for good

It feels like a cop-out to declare that AI is neither good nor bad, but that’s really where we are today. Some educators don’t even want to entertain the thought of AI entering the field of academia, but we also have to accept that it’s here to stay.

I don’t teach philosophy or ethics, but every teacher deals with them eventually. Our mandate doesn’t stop at teaching kids how to make mockups on Figma: we also teach them how to learn, how to question, and how to be intellectually honest.

That, I think, is the one constant in this whole debate. Ultimately, our goal as teachers should not simply be to pour knowledge and skills into the heads of our students, but to mold them into the kind of people that we would trust as collaborators: people who are creative, ethical, and self-aware.

When I teach web design, I always remind my students to use their powers for good, not evil. It’s half a joke, but also half a rule of life. If there’s anything that I want them to remember long after the course is over, it’s that message: the tools will change and the trends will shift, but integrity should never be optional.