"Design fairs need to adopt an AI policy, and need to do it now"

This year’s Milan design week was a watershed moment for the use of AI and it is time for the industry to take action, writes Rima Sabina Aouf.

For as long as it’s been a force on the creative landscape, artificial intelligence has had a presence at Milan design week. This year, the artist Marco Nereo Rotelli used generative AI to explore human-centred AI development through the interactive installation Infinity. In 2025, studio Blond pitted human against AI in the design of a grooming gadget. In 2024, designer Francesca Müller applied it to inspire her textile practice in Artisan Intelligence.

A controversial departure from emerging norms around AI use

But this year brought something else – presentations that were only maybe, possibly, if-you-look-hard-enough designed with AI. Artificial intelligence not as subject or feature, but as unremarked-upon generative tool, elucidated only upon questioning.

It marks a controversial departure from emerging norms around AI use and disclosure in creative spaces, and signals a turning point for the design industry.

If we want to be able to walk around future fairs and festivals and know whether what we are looking at is human- or AI-created, design fairs like Salone del Mobile need to adopt an AI policy, and they need to do it now before substantial precedent is set.

This first became apparent to me in the halls of Salone, where one major furniture manufacturer went big on AI adoption, displaying its products against thematically matched AI-generated paintings, printed on large-scale canvases, without any signage to indicate the expressive works were not human-made.

I don’t believe the brand was trying to deceive anyone. When questioned, representatives were open that AI was used to create the paintings from prompts and spoke enthusiastically about their approach to the technology. They simply didn’t think it warranted an upfront mention.

A Fuorisalone event reinforced the importance of disclosure standards

But is this what we’ve come to? That AI-produced images are unremarkable at the design industry’s pre-eminent showcase? That it is not critical to the audience to know how or why AI is used, when it could be replacing the work of a human collaborator?

Across town, at a monastery in Brera, a Fuorisalone event reinforced the importance of disclosure standards. Gucci’s Memoria exhibition interpreted the history of the brand across 12 elaborate tapestries in the Renaissance style of Botticelli. Lavish and witty, it was one of the talks of Milan design week, but rumours swirled that the highly polished images were AI generated then woven.

When questioned by Dezeen over a two-week period Gucci declined to comment on the use of AI. The brand referred Dezeen to its press release that made no mention of whether AI was used in the project. However, the figure in one tapestry has an extra finger, leaving people to draw their own conclusions.

If AI wasn’t used, the lack of standards around labelling hasn’t helped the brand, merely serving to fuel speculation. However, what is clear is that there is a huge amount of confusion, not only from visitors but also exhibitors over both people’s expectations and what is the right thing to do.

AI policies mandating disclosure have become critical for all of our sanities. We deserve to be able to move through the world without having to question the reality of literally everything we see.

That level of alertness is not only exhausting, it creates real harm, as others have pointed out, fostering a culture of destructive cynicism where human artists have their lives ruined by false accusations of AI use while reality is dismissed as fake news. Creative industry events, in particular, are places where we should feel safe to assume it is human creativity that is the default.

It may not be possible for a decentralised festival like Fuorisalone, but for curated and centrally organised events like Salone and many other design weeks, the time to establish rules or best practices around generative AI has come.

This shift is well underway online

By making expectations clear to exhibitors under their banner, they help to build a wider culture where companies are disincentivised from mindless AI use, openness around process is defended and human labour ever so slightly protected.

This shift is well underway online, where AI labelling has emerged on platforms including Instagram, YouTube and Spotify in the last few months, enabled partly by the Content Credentials standard that has seen apps embed AI labels at the point of creation. (Reputable news sites like Dezeen have had policies of disclosure for far longer, of course.)

Real life is the next frontier, with events such as art fairs and film festivals starting to explore AI policies after controversies of their own. The European Commission’s upcoming Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content is also set to bring the practice into the physical world, requiring disclosure around AI generation or AI assistance – with a distinction between the two – although there the focus is primarily on regulating deepfakes and political communication rather than art and design.

These policies exist not to be pro- or anti-AI, but to recognise that the technology is like no digital tool before it in its capacity to create with minimal human input, and that audiences often feel deceived when it is used without their knowledge. In the creative sphere, this knowledge is also essential to decoding the meaning and value of a work.

As a fan of creative technology, I have enjoyed seeing AI co-creation efforts such as Ross Lovegrove Studio’s chair with Google DeepMind or Philippe Starck’s A.I. Chair, and I’ve adored the more outré contributions from design schools and other non-commercial contexts, exploring terrain such as “slow AI” and absurdist pottery.

I admire AI use that’s interesting, considered and represents a tool for exploration rather than a shortcut to a finished product. But if I think the technology has done nothing but replace some probably unnamed and unfamous artist or designer that a brand would have otherwise had to collaborate with, I’m probably going to count that as a black mark.

Guidelines composed by creatives, for creatives – my favourite is the exuberant Hollywood’s 8 Rules for AI – show opinion is coalescing around principles like these that are seen as strengthening rather than eroding human ingenuity. At an industry level, it’s imperative that these kinds of granular, bottom-up conversations take place.

But at an event level, all that’s needed to meet this moment is signage – wall text and labels that empower audiences to judge work on its merits and cement explanation over elusiveness. The design world has always said that how things are made matters. Now is the time to embrace that more than ever.

Rima Sabina Aouf is a freelance design and technology journalist and a Dezeen contributing editor. Follow her on Instagram @rimasabina.

The main photo is by Giulia Copercini.

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