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A closer look

Graphic designer

AI can make the variations. Someone still has to decide what the brand should look like.

AI could take a fair chunk of six of the ten tasks, led by making images and animations, forming concepts and preparing layouts. Haggling over designs with clients and overseeing production are furthest from its reach.

51 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 2

15 of the 20 jobs up close

Why this score?

The ILO rated each task in this job for how much of it AI could do. They average 49.3 out of 100, so the job holds up at 100 − 49.3 = 50.7.

ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

AI helps JSA 2025
64
Usually good news: more of the work gets quicker without the job going away.
AI takes over JSA 2025
49
This is what most people mean by “exposed”. We keep it apart from helping on purpose.
Hands-on O*NET 31.0
22.4
Software can't do hands-on work, but robots might one day. How far they've got isn't on this site, because nobody measures it well enough yet.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index O*NET 31.0 Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Graphic designer 51

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Producing variations, resizes and adaptations of an existing layout.
  • Stock imagery, background removal and retouching.
  • First-pass concepts against a clear brief.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Deciding what an organisation should look like, and defending it.
  • Knowing which rule to break and being able to say why.
  • Sitting with a client who does not yet know what they want.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Art-directing machine output at a volume no studio could previously produce.
  • Keeping a brand coherent when anyone in the company can generate assets.
  • Deciding what should not be automated, and being the person who says so.

Written by a human, from the task data. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

49 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 64 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

22 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 21 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

21 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

It isn't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. This is the closest thing we have: how much fiddly handwork and cramped, awkward work the job takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

The numbers come straight from the US job database's entry for Graphic Designers. Its wider group, Graphic and multimedia designers, lands in the same place.

finger skill 34 · hand skill 28.6 · cramped spaces 1.3 · hands-on 22.4 · caring 2.6 of 7 · rule: hands-on under 50

from the source O*NET 31.0 data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

70
30

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 1.07% of the conversations.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should graphic designers be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

The job is changing more than disappearing. Six of ten tasks rate Medium: resizes, retouching and first-pass concepts are now fast and cheap. The value is shifting to art direction, keeping a brand coherent when anyone can generate assets, and knowing what shouldn't be automated.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing. Bank tellers survived the cash machine. The job just got more chatty.

Where this job could lead

Fancy a rematch?

Put graphic designers up against another job, then send the result to someone who needs a little humbling.

Where this page's numbers come from