Shush! Russia’s leading design studio used AI ‘employee’ for making customer logos for months… and NOBODY noticed

Why make something yourself when you can get a bot to do it? A Russian art design studio has been using an AI neural network to create logos for more than a year – all the while keeping its customers in the dark.

In 2018, the Artemy Lebedev Studio unveiled a cheap service for small brands – a logo for just 100,000 rubles ($1,432). “Express Design” turned out to be a popular option for small-budget businesses and even two well-known Russian bloggers, Ruslan Usachev and Yuri Khovansky.

Unknown to the clients, the Express Design service was actually a futuristic experiment: the studio had developed “artificial design intelligence” to create unique logos and was trying it out in practice. A fake designer persona dubbed Nikolay Ironov was created, supplied with a portfolio page.

“All clients were unaware that their designs were being created by a machine. All of Nikolay Ironov’s work was approved by clients and then released to huge audiences,” a statement on the studio website has revealed.

Several examples of logos created by the artificial design intelligence Nikolay Ironov and approved by clients © artlebedev.com

Today, Ironov’s work can be seen in businesses throughout Russia, on branded products, and in endless YouTube clips.

Artemy Lebedev is Russia’s arguably most well-known, if at times controversial, graphic designer. In recent years, his studio created the Russian Premier League logo and the Moscow Metro map. Those were created by living, breathing humans as far as we know.

How long till government agencies start sporting logos created by robots? If 2020 is any indication, we shouldn’t be too surprised if it’s already in the works.

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