AB Andy Budd Co-founded the UX agency Clearleft and has spent years advising design leaders and startups on how design teams grow and change.

“We are moving to a world of dark product teams where the product team is an AI that does all this for you.”

AI and Design · AI Builders · August 2026

Andy Budd was describing how design and product decisions could become fully automated, drawing a parallel to lights-out manufacturing plants where robots work without humans present. He argues design and product management are heading the same way.

AI and Design · 2026-08-18 Listen to the episode → More from Andy Budd → More AI Builders quotes →

Transcript

AI and Design Around 09:26 into the episode

Andy Budd

…your time while you're waiting for some AI HR bot to like review your portfolio. You're waiting for your AI bot to apply for the thing that the other AI bot is judging, you know, can just go and start playing and experimenting on the fringes. So yeah, I think it's an interesting brave new world.

Dan Saffer

…bull case and the bear case? What are those two things as we look ahead? And I'm guessing this is a short-term view, right? This is imagine this is going to all play out in the next year or so, right? I mean, this wasn't a long-term vision. This was probably something that's going to happen soon.

Andy Budd

…systems will just design themselves. And so, I really think in five to 10 years, maybe 15 years, a lot of the big sites will be self-automating in the same ways in the manufacturing world. We talk about dark warehouses or dark manufacturing plants where there are so many automated robots and so few humans that you can turn the lights off because the robots just work without any humans there. We are moving to a world of dark product teams where the product team is an AI that does all this for you. So, this is where I think we're heading. I think that will mean that a lot of people in large companies won't be needed to do the design product management role. I think there will always be smaller companies that need that. You know, if you are using a Shopify account, then it will probably do that for you, but there'll be these smaller midterm brands. And so, that's the future. But you're…

Dan Saffer

Is that where quote-unquote taste lives? Taste, the judgment lives in the design system.

Andy Budd

Fiend organized a meetup in San Francisco at the beginning of the year, and Lou Rosenfeld called me out in front of a room full of peers, like, Oh, Andy, you've got really strong views on taste. And I was like, Do I? I wasn't sure I did. Um, because I think taste is a hot topic button at the…

Dan Saffer

recognition. Yes, and

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