The race to develop Artificial intelligence (AI) is well and truly on. Tech giants, such as Google (leaders by some margin according to Web of Science), Facebook and Microsoft are keen to profit from the AI gold rush.

Hundreds of smaller companies are following in their wake, all looking for a slice of the action.

Just so we’re all on the same page, here’s a quick definition of AI: Artificial intelligence is an intelligent agent that perceives its environment and takes action that maximizes its chances of success at a goal.

Fair enough. But, self-driving cars aside, does this kind of technology represent a threat or an opportunity to the average web designer?

Let’s start by getting an idea of how far AI has come.

What can AI do right now?

Google currently offers their Cloud Machine Learning Services claimed to be “fast, large scale and easy to use”.

Their Mainstream Machine Learning consists of pre-trained models and a service that allows you to generate your own models. Their deep learning system promises a better training performance and increased accuracy compared to other systems.

Google offers cloud APIs (application programming interfaces) in job search, speech recognition, text analysis & translation.

Google also offers APIs in video and image analysis.

Their image analysis, for example, allows you to understand the content of images using machine learning models. It “reads” an image and allocates it to one of thousands of categories. But it goes further. It looks for individual objects (including faces) and finds and reads printed words.

Using technology and tools available from Google, you could be building your very own AI design application right now!

So, who’s making use of AI technology in web design already?

Who’s leading the pack in implementing AI in web design?

There are quite a few early adapters of AI in the web design world. Here are a couple of examples from an online search:

Logojoy is an online, do-it-yourself, logo design service that lets small businesses create their own logo.

Logojoy uses artificial intelligence and advanced learning algorithms. The service is aimed at SMEs either starting a blog or re-branding. At the time of writing, more than 3 million logos had been produced on their platform.

Another design related product that has been using AI for years is Bannersnack. Their banner score algorithm determines how good your banner is and how likely it is to attract sales.

It’s not hard to see the attraction of such a service to a small business just starting up and working to a tight budget, but that was never the target audience of most established web designers in any case. There just isn’t enough money to be made with that kind of client.

What about taking online web design using AI a step further? What about a website that makes itself? Welcome to the grid.

The Grid

The grid claims that you add content and “Molly” (your new AI Web Designer) takes care of the rest. Giving AI a face and personality is a clever move, and something we’ve seen before with the likes of Siri, the voice of the Apple IPhone’s personal assistant.

The Grid goes on to say that in three months she will have “searched through more design decisions than stars in our galaxy”. Powerful marketing indeed.

Some perspective on AI in web design

Google is shifting its focus from Search to AI, and that’s significant.

But, to think of AI as all doom and gloom, lost jobs and lost opportunities is short-sighted and not very helpful

While it’s true, designing for the web conforms to a set of design principles that suits AI, that’s far from being the whole story.

The opportunity to get a logo or a website quickly, and cost effectively, can work well for small and medium businesses. But beware. That suggests selling web design services as a commodity. As a flesh and blood web designer, if you’re doing that, you already have a problem.

Conclusion

So, is AI a threat or opportunity for web designers?

As early as 1975 there were predictions of the paperless office. It never happened. There were predictions of a computer on every desk. That did.

How far will AI impact on professional web design? It’s hard to say.

But remember, a web designer’s role isn’t limited to providing a logo or even a website. Larger clients are looking for expertise, ideas, professional input, feedback and hand-holding.

Maybe, even that “human touch”.

However, as with all emerging technologies, it does no harm to keep a watching brief on developments.

Recently, it was announced that with the latest update to the, Chrome 50, the web browser will be shifting to Material Design. However, Google does not seem to be stopping at just the web browser — Chrome OS too is moving towards Material Design, and these principles will soon be implemented in the operating system. 

Considering the fact that Google wants Material Design to become a standard design concept on the internet and Chrome OS itself is heavily focused on the internet, it makes sense to bring Material Design to Chrome OS.

As of now, the plan is that Chromebooks should now have a hybrid layout, and the overall design should add more room between buttons and icons.

However, there will have to be certain changes, because not all devices running Chrome OS come with a touchscreen, and many users tend to prefer using the mouse to navigate in and within the operating system. That said, the basic principles and concepts of Material Design on the OS are expected to be same as those on Android and elsewhere.

To learn more about this development, check out the blog post authored by Google’s Senior Designer Sebastian Gabriel.

Google has recently announced that it will soon allow and offer podcasts in Google Play Music, grouped by the nature of the content of the podcasts. Currently expected to be available only in US and Canada, podcasts will soon be rolled out for Android and Google Play users all around the world. 

To quote the official Android blog:

People love podcasts. In fact, these days, there are so many podcasts to choose from, it can be hard to pick which one to listen to at any given time. That’s where Google Play Music comes in. Google Play Music already gives you the right kind of music for the right moment—whether you want to have fun at work, prepare for a dance party, or just need to focus—and now, that includes podcasts.

Starting today on the web and rolling out on Android in the U.S. and Canada, we’ll connect you with podcasts based on what you’re doing, how you’re feeling and what you’re interested in. Similar to our contextual playlists for music, we want to make it easy to find the right podcast—whether you’re a podcast aficionado or listening for the first time.

This development has been long due and much awaited. iTunes has been offering podcasts for years now, and even Spotify and other services are not lagging behind. As such, Google Play Music is surely late in joining the trend.

What do you think of this move by Google? Share your views in the comments below!

In its bid to offer better search experience to its users, Google has been trying to implement Safe Browsing features in its offerings. We have Safe Browsing features that protect users from social engineering attacks, and carrying on with the trends, Google has now introduced a new one — henceforth, Google will now be blocking deceptive content and ads that lure users into clicking by disguising themselves as something else.

For example, the Download buttons that are actually advertisements, or something similar — soon to be blocked by Google!

Well, not really “blocked”, but you will receive a warning if you head towards such as a site. Something that looks like this:

And to define what comes under the jurisdiction of such warnings, here is what Google had to state:

Embedded content (like ads) on a web page will be considered social engineering when they either:

• Pretend to act, or look and feel, like a trusted entity — like your own device or browser, or the website itself.

• Try to trick you into doing something you’d only do for a trusted entity — like sharing a password or calling tech support.

You can learn more about this feature on this page, as well as see samples of such deceptive content. Also, if your website is affected by these changes, it might be the best time to act early and fix the deceptive content and ads, lest your page rank might suffer badly.

Google has been known for redesigning its apps and paying great attention to detail. As such, when it comes to icon design, Google will not cut any corners, obviously. Recently, Google has released a new look for the Google Play family of icons for Android devices such as smartphones, watches and tablets. 

The new icons pertain to apps and services such as Play Store in itself, Play Music, Play Games, Play Books, and other related applications. Here is how Google describes the changes:

Since launching Google Play four years ago, we’ve always had dedicated apps in addition to the Google Play store. Today, all our icons are getting an update to provide a consistent look across the entire family of Play apps.

You’ll start to see the new Google Play icons across devices and online in the coming weeks. We hope you’ll continue enjoying the Play family of products—now with a new look.

And this is a quick look of the new icons, that we shall soon see on our devices:

To learn more about this update, check out the official Android blog.

What do you think of the new icon design for Google Play family of apps? Share your views in the comments below!

Ever since 2014, Material Design has been Google’s preferred design language, with the company encouraging its use in different applications and design projects. Many designers have been quick to adopt Material Design, especially in terms of Android apps and occasional web design projects.

However, Google itself has not shown much favor to Material Design so far, with virtually none of its offerings being designed in Material Design. 

All of that seems to be changing, as Google is planning to redesign Google Chrome using Material Design.

Yes, the latest version of Google Chrome is expected to feature some design elements from Material Design — there will not be any monumental design changes, but some minor elements will be introduced, as a form of transition towards Material Design for desktop users of Google Chrome.

The most obvious changes, clearly, will be made on the Downloads, Extensions, Settings and History pages of the web browser. As such, you can expect Google Chrome to get even more minimal and feature more flat design elements in its layout and appearance.

It will also be interesting to see how Google will approach the development of Google Chrome vis a vis Material Design, especially with desktop user base of the browser already being outnumbered by the mobile users. So far, Google has already been using Material Design principles on Google Chrome for Android and iOS devices, and now that the news is out, you can expect to see Material Design in practice on Google Chrome for desktop devices as well.

Read more about this development here.

What do you think of the introduction of Material Design in future versions of Google Chrome? Share your views in the comments below!

Recently, Google announced that it has started considering HTTPS as a metric when deciding the pagerank of a given website. Thus, all other elements being equal, HTTPS websites get preference over HTTP ones.

However, Google has also decided to go a step further: pretty soon, it will mark HTTP websites as “unsafe”, and warn users about websites that are not using HTTPS. 

An upcoming change proposed to the Google Chrome web browser will ensure that when a user visits a non-secure website, a red X mark will be displayed in the address bar: as of now, Google Chrome uses this mark when the SSL certificate of a website is incorrectly configured, thereby warning user that there is a problem with the SSL certificate of the active website.

However, after the new change is in effect, even otherwise safe websites that have no malware, say your photoblog or a casual blog, will be marked as “unsafe” in Google Chrome.

This change, though being promoted as something to safeguard the web, is being viewed as more of a monopolistic move by Google. By “forcing” webmasters to use HTTPS, Google may or may not make a safer internet, but it surely is making life difficult for the average user who just wishes to have a generic blog or website.

You can find related details on the Encrypt All The Things campaign site as well.

What do you think of this development? Have you started using HTTPS on all your websites? Share your views in the comments below.