Let's talk about AI and graphic recording

Lately every conference conversation includes AI.

Panels, keynote talks, casual hallway chats — the topic appears everywhere. In the past year it has become a side theme at almost every event I attend as a graphic recording professional.

And honestly, it would be strange not to talk about it when you work in graphic recording.

AI is already part of how people write, design, plan, and research. Ignoring it would feel a bit like ignoring the internet twenty years ago. But the way AI comes up in conversations at conferences often makes me think about something else entirely — the process behind ideas, which is exactly what graphic recording captures.

Watching Thinking Happen Through Graphic Recording

From where I sit, graphic recording has always been about the process happening in the room.

Not just the conclusions people arrive at.

During graphic recording, what appears on the board or tablet is the thinking while it is happening. Ideas forming. connections appearing between speakers, moments when someone in the room suddenly understands something in a new way.

A graphic recording grows together with the conversation.

That is also why people often gather around a graphic recording during breaks at conferences. They recognize their own thoughts in the drawing. They remember what someone said earlier. They see relationships between ideas that might have been harder to follow when everything was only spoken.

The value of graphic recording sits in that unfolding.

AI has also a process.

It just happens somewhere else.

In pixels and probabilities.

From the outside we mostly see the result. That invisibility is very different from graphic recording, where the process is visible to everyone in the room.

Many creative practices share this quality with graphic recording. When you watch a musician perform, you see how the music unfolds. When you watch a painter work, you see the brushstrokes appear.

Similarly, during graphic recording, the audience watches the visual structure of a conversation slowly take shape. The drawing grows together with the discussion.

A Familiar Story: Photography and Graphic Recording

In some ways the current moment is mirroring th exact moment when digital cameras became cheap and accessible.

People were genuinely worried that photographers would disappear. If everyone could take photos, why would anyone hire a professional?

And yes, the market changed.

Now everyone carries a camera in their pocket. Photos are taken constantly. Billions of them.

But photographers did not disappear — and neither will creative professions like graphic recording.

We still hire photographers for weddings, for events, for portraits, for family moments. In fact, when images became easy to produce, people began to appreciate the craft behind them even more.

Something similar happens with graphic recording, where the value lies not only in the final drawing but in the live interpretation of ideas.

Illustration, AI, and the Future of Graphic Recording

Watching the discussions around AI-generated images, I often feel we are entering a similar phase for illustration and therefore, graphic recording.

Images can now be generated extremely quickly. Concepts can be visualized in seconds. Entire visual styles can be produced with a few prompts.

This changes the landscape for visual communication, including graphic recording.

But it does not remove the human side of visual work. If anything, it highlights a different aspect of it — the part that happens together with people. Graphic recording lives exactly in that shared moment where conversations and processes turn into visuals.

Participants see their ideas reflected back at them in real time. A graphic recording can even influence how a conversation continues, because people respond to what they see appearing visually.

Graphic Recording Highlights the Process

Right now it feels like processes are becoming interesting again, and graphic recording naturally highlights those processes.

Showing How Ideas Form Through Graphic Recording

When people ask how AI might affect illustration or graphic recording, I often come back to the same thought.

The result is only one part of the story.

The process behind it — the thinking, the collaboration, the moment when an idea becomes clear — is where a lot of the real value lives. Graphic recording makes that invisible thinking visible.

And some processes are simply worth showing.

If you are organizing a conference, workshop, or event where ideas are forming in real time, graphic recording can capture those moments visually while they happen.