AI didn’t threaten my work. It clarified it.

20 March 2026

Peter Goss:

As a designer who watched AI arrive early, this is what communication pros should be paying attention to.

When AI tools first started showing up in design, I did not panic.
I did not dismiss them either. I tried them. Hard.

They were fast. Shockingly fast. They helped me explore directions quicker, produce cleaner drafts, reduce friction in my studio, and move from idea to output at a pace that would have felt impossible a few years earlier. In many ways, they made the work better. Or at least easier.

So let’s get this out of the way early.

This is not an anti-AI piece.

AI has absolutely improved my workflow, my efficiency, and my creative range. Anyone pretending otherwise is either lying or not paying attention.

But something else happened alongside that acceleration.
As the tools got better, a line became clearer.

AI could generate.
It could remix.
It could suggest.
It could even surprise me now and then.

What it could not do was see.

It could not feel when something was off.
It could not sense when a direction was technically correct but politically impossible.
It could not recognize the quiet signals that come from having been burned before.

It had no memory of failed launches, bruised egos, half-buried decisions, or the invisible reasons certain things never work inside organizations.

And that realization did not make me defensive about my role.
It clarified it.

The more efficient the tools became, the more the center of gravity of my work shifted. Away from making things, and toward deciding things. Away from execution, and toward judgment.

I did not stop designing.
The work simply demanded something else from me.

Speed stopped being the differentiator.
Taste, context, and consequence took its place.

That shift is now knocking on the door of internal communications.

I work closely with internal comms teams. I listen to the conversations, follow the debates, and hear the anxiety beneath the surface. And lately, one theme keeps repeating itself.

AI as a content engine.

How to use it to draft faster.
How to integrate it into existing workflows.
How to maintain tone of voice.
How to keep up.

There is nothing wrong with those questions. They are practical. Necessary, even.

But if that is where the conversation stays, something important is being missed.

Because AI does not threaten comms by being smarter.
It threatens it by making execution cheap.

When writing, summarizing, structuring, and polishing messages becomes easy, the value of the function can no longer sit in production. Not because production is unimportant, but because it is no longer scarce.

And when a function defines itself by work that is no longer scarce, it slowly agrees to become optional.

This is the uncomfortable part.

If comms is primarily focused on which tools to add, which prompts to refine, which platforms to integrate, then it is positioning itself as a service layer. Helpful. Efficient. Responsive.

And very easy to bypass.

I have seen this movie before.

Design went through it first.

As tools became more powerful and accessible, the industry split quietly in two. Some designers doubled down on execution. Mastered the tools. Produced faster, cleaner, cheaper work. Others followed a different pull.

They started asking harder questions earlier.
What problem are we actually solving?
What decision is this design supporting?
What happens if this goes wrong?

Not louder questions. Earlier ones.

The designers who made that shift did not become less useful. They became less visible. They were no longer handed finished decisions to dress up. They were invited into the room while things were still messy.

Not because they asked for status.
But because their judgment reduced risk.

AI did not remove the need for experience.
It exposed where experience actually lives.

Comms is now standing at that same fork.

One path leads to better content at scale.
The other leads to better thinking before content exists.

One path optimizes the message.
The other shapes the moment the message is born.

And here is the hard truth, stated plainly.

If the role of internal comms remains centered on extracting decisions and translating them into language, then AI will eventually do that job faster and cheaper. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough.

But if internal comms claims the space of sense-making, consequence-mapping, and narrative judgment, then AI becomes something else entirely.

A lever.
A multiplier.
A way to clear time and energy for work that cannot be automated.

Because AI can help write the message.
It cannot decide whether the message should exist.

It cannot tell when a decision will collapse under pressure.
It cannot anticipate how different parts of the organization will hear the same words differently.
It cannot feel the accumulated fatigue, cynicism, or quiet distrust sitting in the room.

Those things live in patterns.
And patterns live in people.

This is not about becoming “more strategic” in title or ambition. It is about responding to reality.

When execution becomes easy, thinking becomes the work.

The shift I made was not heroic. It was unavoidable. The tools changed the shape of the problem, and the work moved with it. The same thing is now happening in internal comms.

AI is not asking comms to work faster.
It is asking it to work earlier.

Earlier in the decision process.
Earlier in framing trade-offs.
Earlier in naming what leaders are actually committing to.

Not as cheerleaders.
Not as translators.
As people who understand how meaning forms, breaks, and spreads inside organizations.

AI has no scars.
Organizations do.

The value of comms, like the value of experienced design, lives in those scars. In knowing which decisions look good on paper but fail in practice. In recognizing when language will soothe and when it will backfire. In understanding that clarity is not about reassurance, but about honesty paired with direction.

Comms can absolutely use AI to do more of what it already does.
Or it can use AI to free itself to do what only humans can.

One of those paths leads to relevance.
The other leads to efficiency without influence.

Comms is now being offered the same kind of clarity. What you choose to do with it will shape your relevance from here on.

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Peter Goss is a design strategist, advisor, and founder of maitai design.  With 25+ years across every facet of design, he helps complex organizations turn strategy into clear, usable visual narratives.