This is genuinely high-tier rage bait if I've ever seen it.
Relegating the term "design" or "designers" to only product designers who are going to be allegedly replaced by design systems is just blatantly ignorant.
AI design tools are only as good as the person using them, and most tools need someone at the helm directing the operation to produce the best possible results in the direction they want.
A design system is the output of design thinking, not a replacement for it. Someone has to decide what the system should be, why those decisions serve the product, and when to break it because the product evolved. PMs feeding tokens into claude code aren't doing design, they're doing assembly. The moment the product needs to do something the system didnt anticipate, you need a designer again.
And "refreshed annually by the same consultant" is how you get dead brands. Ask anyone who's actually built one.
There are a myriad of designers out there that utilize AI ie: brand designers, graphic designers, product designers, etc., without losing their clients or their jobs, I wonder why...
If you want to talk about AI casualties, talk about software, not design.
Don't be fooled by shit like this. I got baited so you don't have to.
DESIGN: THE FIRST AI CASUALTY
I'm increasingly sure that 2026 signals the end of product design as a full-fledged stand-alone function within companies. If so, it will be the first role / function to be eliminated by AI on a go-forward basis.
Instead of hiring FT designers, startups are hiring / will hire design consultants to create a design system that the founder likes (this takes a few weeks max). Once the design system is finalized, PM/Eng feed it into their AI tool of choice to generate prototypes. The design system is refreshed annually by the same consultant.
Larger companies will likely not backfill design roles and will do some targeted attrition to reduce the design department to 20% the size it is today.
If you're a designer, I think you have two choices:
1. Become an entrepreneur: Start a design agency and become the go-to resource for design systems for startups and even larger companies. This can be a good recurring revenue business.
2. Become a builder: Add PM/Eng responsibilities to become a product builder.
Would suggest you embrace this proactively vs waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I'm really sorry about this - some of my best friends and the people I admire most and have learnt the most from are designers - but it seems inevitable.