AI Can Decorate. It Can’t Design.

I spent the first twenty-years of my career leading global innovation and AI strategy, most recently guiding conversational AI initiatives at LG Electronics. I’ve advised Fortune 100 companies and built tools that learn from human behavior.

Today, I run a multidisciplinary design studio called More Wow, where we craft spaces that reflect our clients’ identities, aspirations, and emotional needs. So when a recent Wall Street Journal article asked, “Can AI save me the cost of a design pro?”—I read it with deep interest. Not just as a designer, but as someone who knows exactly how generative AI systems work and what they can't replace.

This isn’t a dismissal of AI. It’s a reality check—and a call to understand what AI can help with, and what only humans can do.

What AI Can (and Probably Will) Replace

Let’s start with where AI is useful. Tools like RoomGPT or Midjourney can reimagine your living room in a "coastal" or "industrial" style. ChatGPT can summarize design principles or suggest layout ideas. These platforms help users generate concepts, define preferences, and explore aesthetics. For mass-market decorating and trend-driven looks, AI offers a decent baseline.

And just like in law or writing, that baseline will get better. We’ve already seen AI streamline contract drafting and co-author articles (this one included). In design, AI will likely replace some decorators—particularly those who rely heavily on pre-existing catalogs and formulaic styling. And to be clear: decorators are not the same as designers. Decorators often focus on surface-level aesthetics, while designers are trained to address structural, technical, and functional aspects of a space from concept through execution.

But the leap from inspiration to execution is where AI falters. It can generate ideas, but not judgment. It can remix styles, but not innovate from a blank page. And it certainly can’t navigate the friction between vision and reality.

What Designers Actually Do

Interior design isn’t just taste—it’s technical. Designers plan spatial flow, integrate systems, manage construction, and specify materials not just for looks, but for durability, sustainability, and performance.

Designers also bring a curatorial mind. We hold mental catalogs of historical styles, artists, techniques, and makers—and we know how to tell a story across time and material. But that knowledge doesn't exist in isolation. Design is also about relationships: we rely on conversations with other experts, artisans, dealers, and craftspeople to expand our understanding and access insights beyond our own experience. These human-to-human exchanges build on our mental catalogs and help us source the rare, the right, or the unexpected. Could AI catalog all of design history? Maybe. But could it tap into this living, relational web of knowledge to understand which imperfect urn, which overlooked textile, brings soul to a space? Not yet.

The Stakes Are Higher Than Style

Without human designers, we risk spaces that feel soulless. Algorithmic design may be coherent—but never personal. Great design doesn’t just work. It moves you. It reflects who you are.

Building With, Not Against AI

As we move forward, brands, designers, and curators alike need to think critically about how they want to participate in this AI revolution—and the responsibility we all have to one another. If brands and institutions offer up their catalogs and archives to AI systems without understanding the implications, they risk eroding the uniqueness and authorship that underpin their value. If designers don’t engage—don’t build, adapt, or collaborate—they may find themselves sidelined in industries they helped define.

This is a pivotal moment. The creative economy is built on originality, scarcity, and the ability to tell stories through materials, space, and brand identity. If AI systems are trained on everything—and everyone contributes their catalogs and aesthetic DNA without reflection—we risk turning industries rooted in distinction into engines of sameness. AI can be a tool for empowerment and expansion, or one that flattens creativity into algorithmic averages. The outcome depends on how we choose to participate.

At More Wow, we believe in partnering with technology—not competing against it. We’re actively developing tools that convert 2D sketches into intelligent 3D models—bridging concept and execution and enabling faster, more collaborative design work.

Tools like this will change how designers work. They’ll make us faster, clearer, more collaborative. But they won’t replace the need for vision, empathy, or taste. In fact, as AI improves, those human skills will become even more valuable.

Because AI might suggest a hundred options. But only a designer can tell you which one matters—and why.

Great design still begins with vision. And that starts with people.

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