In Episode 9 of the Intentional AI series, Cole and Virgil take on one of the most common and misunderstood uses of AI today: image and graphic generation. From social media visuals to promotional graphics, AI images are fast, easy, and everywhere.

The conversation focuses on why images became the public on ramp to AI and why that familiarity creates risk. Visuals feel harmless, but the moment AI starts generating finished looking images, teams inherit decisions around ownership, ethics, and trust that they are often unprepared to make.

A central theme of the episode is responsibility escalation. As AI reduces the effort required to create images, the importance of human judgment increases. Treating AI generated visuals as final work can quickly introduce legal, ethical, and reputational problems.

Virgil shares a practical experiment where he used a simple prompt to generate three social media promotional graphics from an existing article and tested the results across three tools: Canva, Claude, and Artlist.

Canva produced the most generic and repetitive designs. Claude delivered cleaner structure and stronger messaging but struggled with fonts, formats, and variation. Artlist created the most visually interesting outputs, though it introduced workflow limitations and cost concerns.

The episode reinforces a consistent conclusion across the series. AI can help jumpstart visual work, but it cannot replace judgment, intent, or responsibility.

In this episode, they explore:

1. Why AI images are so tempting to use
2. Where AI generated graphics actually help
3. Why most AI visuals fall flat
4. Ethical and ownership risks teams overlook
5. A comparison of Canva, Claude, and Artlist

Previously in the Intentional AI series:

1. Episode 1: Intentional AI and the Content Lifecycle
2. Episode 2: Maximizing AI for Research and Analysis
3. Episode 3: Smarter Content Creation with AI
4. Episode 4: The role of AI in content management
5. Episode 5: How much can you trust AI for accessibility
6. Episode 6: You’re asking AI to solve the wrong problems for SEO, GEO, and AEO
7. Episode 7: Why AI can make your content personalization worse
8. Episode 8: The real value of AI wireframes is NOT the wireframes

New episodes every other Tuesday.

For more conversations about AI, design, and digital strategy, visit www.discussingstupid.com and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

(0:00) - Intro

(1:40) - You can’t escape AI imagery

(3:18) - Why AI images are risky

(4:40) - The legal and ethical line

(6:15) - Creativity vs time and cost

(9:28) - Every tool has hopped on the AI bandwagon

(13:20) - The slippery slope of AI visuals

(15:35) - We tested 3 tools for AI visuals

(17:30) - Testing Canva

(20:40) - Testing Claude...