Unless you live under a rock, you — like most of us — must also be in awe of how AI-driven design tools are taking the creative landscape by storm.
In 2024 alone, the global market for AI design tools grew by an estimated 34%, with platforms like Adobe Firefly leading the race. These tools allow marketers who also double as designers to craft stunning designs without formal design training.
For do-it-yourself (DIY) designers, the appeal to use AI design tools is irresistible. They simplify complex tasks like color matching, typography selection and layout optimization, letting marketers focus on storytelling instead of nitpicking on design discrepancies.
Yet, as AI tools democratize design, they also bring new challenges. For instance, automation often leads to content and design that feels generic, vanilla and easily forgettable.
This blog explores how AI-driven design tools are reshaping content creation and the hurdles they present for maintaining authenticity.
By the end of this post, you will learn practical strategies to use these tools effectively while ensuring your design stands out, stays genuine to your brand and resonates with your audience.
Click to jump ahead:
- Why authenticity is crucial for marketing content
- How AI tools can impact your design strategy in 2025
- Make the most of AI, but with human touch
- How to maintain authenticity in your AI-driven design process
- Use data to guide your AI-based design choices
- 5 AI-powered tools to help you stay authentic
Why authenticity is crucial for marketing content
Sure, AI and automation are taking over faster than ever. But authentic content has never been irreplaceable, more so now because AI and automation are reshaping the marketing landscape.
Today, consumers are bombarded with automated messages and mass-produced designs from all directions. They crave something real — something they can connect with on a personal level.
A recent survey found that over 90% of consumers say they are more likely to support brands that feel genuine, rather than those that rely on generic, cookie-cutter marketing.
From a branding perspective, staying true to your brand values helps differentiate you in a crowded marketplace. Take Patagonia, for example — its marketing campaigns revolve around sustainability. They don’t talk about sustainability as a selling point, but as a core value, which has earned the brand a cult-like loyal following.
On the other hand, abandoning your brand’s authenticity for efficiency can backfire.
Just look at Chegg, which struggled after relying too heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT. Its overuse of AI led it to lose touch with its core value of providing human-driven academic support.
When content feels hollow or inauthentic, consumers notice and it can erode trust. There’s no denying that AI-driven designs are efficient and scalable. But you can’t use them to replace — or replicate — the emotional depth and connection that truly authentic content brings to the table.
As we look ahead to 2025, AI tools continue to evolve, bringing both opportunities and challenges to your design strategy. In the next section, let’s discuss how they can help — or hurt — your goal of creating authentic marketing content.
How AI tools can impact your design strategy in 2025
AI tools are changing how marketing teams approach design by simplifying repetitive tasks and speeding up workflows.
AI-powered design platforms come with powerful features like auto-generating templates, resizing visuals for multiple platforms and suggesting design elements. These features save busy marketers hours of manual pedantic work.
For marketers juggling multiple roles, this efficiency is a game-changer. For instance, many blog posts, e-commerce product pages and social media ads now use AI-generated visuals to maintain consistency and cut costs.
As a side effect of this, a growing number of websites such as Flair.ai, VanceAI, and DeepAgency offer niche services to e-commerce and consumer brands to create generative AI images to scale their processes and cut costs.
Similarly, tools like Venngage Muse help lean marketing teams quickly create branded infographics, reports and presentations with customizable templates and an AI-powered design assistant.
You can either enter a manual prompt, like I did below or try one of the readily available prompts in Venngage Muse to create the design you want:
Here’s how my design came out. You can use AI to customize the design further, regenerate it if you aren’t satisfied or download it from Venngage’s design editor:
AI design tools enable efficiency and scale. And if you can make nuanced tweaks to infuse a human touch and incorporate your brand’s identity, the tools will help you personalize visuals for different audiences quickly.
But scaling shouldn’t come at the cost of your brand’s unique voice. Without careful oversight, even the most personalized AI-generated campaigns can feel robotic and disconnected.
Relying too heavily on AI is risky. AI-generated designs can lack originality, making your content blend into a sea of similar-looking, uninspired creations. This is especially dangerous in 2025 since most people these days are really good at spotting — and rejecting — generic content.
At Venngage, we recently surveyed 292 marketers and found that while most of them love AI for simplifying their design and content workflows, they worry about AI producing unoriginal content and designs that fail to stand out.
To read the full survey findings, check out our blog and infographics.
Make the most of AI, but with human touch
AI tools are not here to replace human creativity, but to force us to rethink novel ways to approach content creation.
If your goal is to crank out generic, cookie-cutter designs and copy, then AI can certainly do the job. But if you are after something truly compelling, engaging and human — AI alone will fall short.
AI, at its best, simplifies repetitive tasks and helps us save time. But it’s always the human touch that gives content its soul.
Consider Aztek Web, which uses AI in design and content processes. The brand uses AI to generate content ideas, create website layouts and even improve client interactions. However, the agency acknowledges the importance of maintaining human creativity.
AI is good at getting you close to something that might work faster, but it should never be used “as is.” AI doesn’t know the “why” behind what it makes, your motivation or whether it’s even good code or not. You still need a talented designer and/or developer to provide that oversight.
Aztek Web team
Pro-Tip: Rather than relying on AI to handle the entire design or content creation process, use AI tools to automate the initial drafts or templates. But then, let your creative team breathe life into those drafts — adding small but essential details like color tone and brand personality that make the content feel authentic. Think of AI as an assistant, but not the star of the show.
At Venngage, we follow a similar process. A lot of times, we use AI to come up with the first draft of design ideas, but our human designers take over from there. The design team also involves other stakeholders, such as content marketers, in the review process to refine the design concept.
We know that the real magic happens when we apply a thoughtful, human touch to refine and enhance the AI’s output. By blending AI’s efficiency with human creativity, we ensure our designs stay relevant, impactful and — most importantly — authentic.
I always, always proofread and edit as the human touch is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it’s just bland and generic content that you get. You need to add your voice and personal touch.
We’re seeing so much more content being created and shared. Most of it is, to be blunt, bad because it’s early days. But I still think that quality will always win over quantity. Content creators who maintain integrity while embracing the opportunities that a partnership with AI can offer, will be the ones who set the bar for the next phase.
Claire Williams, Marketing Consultant, AI Content Strategist
Accessibility is another area where AI isn’t quite there yet. Most AI-powered design tools are still catching up when it comes to accessibility. In fact, most design tools lack accessibility features.
That’s where Venngage’s accessibility checker tool comes in. It lets humans review designs to ensure that they are visually appealing as well as accessibility-friendly. Prioritizing accessibility shows that your brand cares about inclusivity, improving its reputation as an authentic brand.
How to maintain authenticity in your AI-driven design process
The thing is — most brands are now using AI in their creative workflows. If you completely rely on AI for content and design, you are competing against a growing pool of identical content and designs.
And if you don’t have a manual review as part of your creative process, your designs could end up looking like everyone else’s — predictable and forgettable. But if everyone’s using AI to create, how can you make your content stand out and still feel like you?
Here are some practical tips on how you can preserve your brand identity while still taking advantage of AI’s efficiency:
Leverage AI for repetitive tasks
This is what AI tools excel at — automating repetitive, labor-intensive tasks that would otherwise drain time and resources. This can include tasks such as resizing images, creating basic layouts or generating content drafts.
Use AI tools to free up your time to focus on higher-value tasks, such as developing a content strategy, ideating a design, improving brand positioning or identifying ways to personalize content at scale.
With AI handling the heavy lifting, you can produce more content in less time. Besides efficiency, AI can also help you produce consistent outputs, such as by applying your brand elements, reducing human errors and maintaining uniformity across content.
Integrate personalized design elements
A brand kit is a collection of elements like your brand’s color palette, fonts, logos and other visual assets that define your identity. It ensures that all your designs stay consistent, regardless of the platform or team member working on them.
Zapier is an excellent example of a brand that has a really well-organized and accessible brand kit. The kit has logos, color palettes and typography that the brand uses — and prefers others outside the company to use when they are referring to Zapier.
If you want a similar place to organize all your brand assets in one place, check out Venngage’s Brand Kit. It allows you to store and access all your designs under the same roof.
This helps you ensure that every visual element aligns with your brand’s style and applies the same consistency to visuals across your marketing materials.
Talking about maintaining consistency…
Ensure brand consistency
While your designs should stand out from the competition, they shouldn’t be so radically different from each other that your audience struggles to recognize them as your brand.
The designs should carry the same voice, messaging and visual elements across websites, social media and external media. Consistency in brand design builds familiarity, which over time builds recall and emotional connection.
Here’s a quirky example to drive this point home:
A couple of years ago, an X user from India pointed out how a cookie’s pattern resembled Spotify’s logo. The post went viral, prompting Spotify to playfully replace its logo with the cookie’s image.
The lesson here? When your brand design is deeply ingrained in your audience, they will associate it with even the most random objects in the wild.
Spotify’s playful social media banter is a perfect example of how brands can stay authentic and likable while maintaining their brand personality.
Pro-Tip: Keep a log of your AI-generated content sources and editing process. This can help you ensure that your designs have variety and you are not overusing one template over others.
Use data to guide your AI-based design choices
Data can play a key role in guiding AI-driven design choices. But you have to be careful about not losing sight of creativity and brand identity.
Here are four actionable tips on how you can include performance insights and audience preferences to make informed design decisions that align with your goals:
1. Use data to make informed design choices
Use customer insights, user behavior and content performance metrics to drive design decisions. This ensures your AI-generated designs resonate with the right audience, while still maintaining your creative voice.
Since you’re likely already using a tool like Google Analytics, start there. Track how well a blog with an AI-generated design is performing. For example, if you notice that articles with AI-generated infographics are getting more page views, you can repeat this success by creating similar designs for future posts to improve engagement.
Analyzing data and user behavior helps you create a direct feedback loop with your target audience. The findings will help you fine-tune your design and content so that you can create designs that resonate with your audience and drive more engagement.
2. Use A/B testing for AI-generated content
A/B testing allows you to test variations of your content and design to determine what works best. For example, if you create multiple visual layouts using AI, you can test them with different user segments to see which design drives more eyeballs. The findings will allow you to refine your choices and identify patterns in your audience preferences.
You can run A/B tests on AI-generated designs using a tool like Hotjar. The tool lets you measure how visitors interact with the design. Track metrics like hover and click behavior on specific elements of the infographic.
3. Monitor design effectiveness
You can also track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, click-through rates and time-on-page to measure the success of AI-driven designs. Tracking this data lets you come up with visuals that your audience finds relatable.
Once you have a solid understanding of what’s working (or not) for your brand, you can feed the data into Venngage’s AI Design Tools. The tool automates your branding process by pulling styles directly from your website and ensures accessibility with features like Alt Text Generation and Compliance Checks.
If you need data visualized into graphics, just enter your chart data and Venngage creates detailed graphics tailored to your needs. This is a great way to align your designs with data while staying creative.
Here’s a simple data visualization I came up with in less than five seconds after I prompted Venngage’s AI to create a design for “Healthy diet breakdown.”
Impressive, right?
5 AI-powered tools to help you stay authentic
As AI tools become integral to design workflows, it’s essential to choose ones that enable efficiency without compromising authenticity. To achieve this, look for tools that simplify the process without compromising your creative voice.
As a rule of thumb, go for AI tools that are user-friendly, offer easy customization and powerful collaborative features. The tool should offer pre-designed templates so that you can save time and create consistent visuals that align with your brand guidelines.
With that in mind, here are five top AI-powered design tools that you can use to speed up your design process without losing sight of your brand’s unique identity.
1. Venngage AI
Venngage AI simplifies the design process by automating branding tasks. It can extract branding styles directly from your website URL, making it easier to maintain consistency across all design elements. Additionally, it generates accessible charts and visualizations, ensuring compliance with accessibility standards such as contrast ratios and alt text. This makes it an ideal tool for marketers seeking scalable yet authentic design solutions.
Pricing: Free plan available; premium plans start at $10/month.
2. Canva
Like Venngage, Canva offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface paired with an extensive library of templates. Its AI-powered tools, such as Magic Resize, allow users to repurpose designs effortlessly for different platforms.
The platform’s collaboration features make it an excellent choice for teams working on branding or social media campaigns. Canva lacks the customizability of advanced design tools, but its ease of use makes it perfect for small businesses.
Pricing: Free plan; Pro version starts at $100/month.
3. Figma
Figma is a collaborative design tool popular in the UI/UX circles. But several marketing teams use it for wireframes, prototypes and even branding projects.
Figma integrates AI plugins that help with prototyping, layout analysis and design iteration. Its browser-based nature ensures that team members can work together in real-time. The tool has a steep learning curve and offers limited offline functionality, but its capabilities in creating cohesive web and app designs are unmatched.
Pricing: Free basic plan; professional plans start at $15/user/month.
4. Adobe Firefly
Adobe Firefly draws on the expertise of other tools in the Adobe family, like Photoshop and Illustrator. It automates tasks like generating textures, resizing elements and removing backgrounds.
Compared to other tools in the list, Adobe also has a bit of a steeper learning curve. If you are a beginner in design, Adobe Firefly is probably a wrong choice. But its advanced features make it pretty handy for professionals who need high-quality creative outputs at speed.
Pricing: Priced at $4.99/month and comes with 100 monthly generative AI credits.
5. Hotpot.ai
Hotpot.ai is designed for marketers and freelancers looking for quick, effective visual solutions. It lets you create logos, icons, mockups and even content tailored to your brand’s needs.
Hotpot lacks the breadth of features seen in larger design platforms. However, its lightweight interface and specific focus make it ideal for small-scale design tasks or rapid prototyping.
Pricing: All Hotpot plans are based on monthly credits. Its plans start at $10/month for 1000 credits (per month).
Leverage AI, but let human creativity lead the way
As we head into 2025, we will see AI’s adoption in marketing and design grow further. Marketers who leverage AI tools will be more efficient in producing design and content. Their only challenge will be to strike a fine balance between AI tech and human creativity.
You can achieve this balance by using AI and data to inform your creative strategies, but prioritizing human oversight to infuse your brand’s personality. No matter how efficient AI is, nothing can replace the human touch that can help your brand be authentic and emotionally engaging.
Want to maintain a balance between AI and human creativity? Create your brand kit in Venngage and use its AI tools to create compelling visuals.
