Andrew Tipp does a deep dive into academic research to see how AI is actually being used in UX. He finds that practitioners are primarily using AI for testing and discovery: predicting UX, finding issues, and shaping user insights.

The highest usage of AI in UX design is in the testing phase, suggests one of our 2025 systematic reviews. According to this paper, 58% of studied AI usage in UX is in either the testing or discovery stage. This maybe shouldn’t be surprising, considering generative AI for visual ideation and UI prototyping has lagged behind text generation.

But, in his conclusion, Tipp echoes Dr. Maya Ackerman’s notion of wielding AI as a tool to augment our work:

However, there are potential drawbacks if AI usage in UX design is over-relied on, and used mindlessly. Without sufficient critical thinking, we can easily end up with generic, biased designs that don’t actually solve user problems. In some cases, we might even spend too much time on prompting and vibing with AI when we could have simply sketched or prototyped something ourselves — creating more sense of ownership in the process.