Circa 1450, the creative community was jolted. The printing press had just been invented in Europe. Scribes, typically monks who had spent lifetimes perfecting the spiritual art of hand-copying manuscripts, saw their specialized skills suddenly rendered obsolete. Yet in short order, the disruptive innovation democratized knowledge, enabled the Renaissance, and created entirely new creative roles for editors, typesetters, printmakers, and illustrators.
More than five centuries later, Photoshop sparked similar concerns about devaluing traditional skills and compromising image integrity. Artists worried it would cheapen the craft. Instead, it became foundational to modern graphic design, opening new creative possibilities while making visual expression accessible to wider audiences.
New tools that initially seem threatening often become indispensable partners in creative work. People in creative fields are, by nature, creative. They tend to think beyond what currently exists and adopt emerging technologies to accelerate their process, embolden their output, and make their medium more accessible.
ENTER: AI
Artificial intelligence’s threats to the creative community are well documented. At the same time, we are also seeing myriad ways the technology can quickly deliver valuable information, patterns, and research that can liberate the creative community to spend more time actually creating.
When it comes to my area of expertise—empowering the design community to leverage the full emotional, narrative, and commercial power of color—AI can be a valuable partner in the creative process. Pantone just introduced a new tool, in fact, that employs conversational AI technology to help creatives expedite design’s research and inspiration phases. The tool helps users explore color palettes, leverage trend forecasting data, and generate design concepts.
But while AI can process data and identify patterns, the forward-looking trend insights themselves remain uniquely human, rooted in cultural analysis and nuanced insight, intuition, and imagination. A creative process that uses artificial intelligence also demands human intelligence. AI tools trained on human-identified trends help designers respond with greater speed, depth, and nuance, but the trends themselves must first be recognized by human experts attuned to cultural shifts.
REQUIRED: THE HUMAN IMAGINATION
When Pantone selected Mocha Mousse as Color of the Year 2025—an evocative brown leaning into our desire for everyday pleasures—no machine learning model could have sensed the burgeoning cultural ethos it spoke to. Human forecasters recognized a global appetite for thoughtful indulgence, harmonious comfort, and personal luxury, all expressed by this rich, deep brown.
Trend forecasting demands humans—people who sense subtle undercurrents of collective emotion before they surface, who understand when comfort becomes more important than adventure, when personal expression pushes back against homogenization , when nostalgia begins to feel fresh again. Color scientists track films in production, new artists, fashion movements, emerging lifestyles, socioeconomic shifts, evolving technologies and materials—building a comprehensive view of where culture is headed.
After all, humans are animals, and animals have always used color as a multifaceted and sentient signal system: attracting mates, establishing identity, communicating mood, warning of danger. Just as a vermilion flycatcher uses red feathers to attract females while a kingsnake’s bright red bands warn predators away, we use color to send messages about who we are and what we desire. These messages shift with our cultural moment in ways no algorithm or technology can anticipate. The insights require the unique ability to sense what’s emerging before it fully arrives.
From the printing press to Photoshop to AI, new technologies amplify what creatives can do. It makes processes swifter, bolder, more affordable, and more accessible. AI can help creatives tap into powerful color stories and trend insights. But the creative vision, the cultural fluency, and the ability to sense what will move people remains distinctly, irreplaceably human. AI is another powerful tool in the creative arsenal, most potent when it augments rather than attempts to replace human insight and imagination.
Sky Kelley is president of Pantone.
