Andy Budd: AI removes designers' excuses, not just their constraints

Andy Budd's argument in Smashing Magazine is that AI removes the excuse designers have relied on for years: not enough engineering time, no roadmap slot, product already decided. If a designer can now prototype the fix, write the copy, and ship it themselves, the constraint that separated good designers from merely articulate ones disappears, and so does the cover it provided. His bear case is sharper than the bull one: product and engineering can now generate "plausible design" cheaply enough that design gets bypassed rather than empowered, with teams shrinking toward governance and cleanup work. He offers no evidence either way, just a framework worth testing against your own org's habits.