Today, professionals across industries are thinking hard about how they can leverage the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to perform more effectively and efficiently in their job functions. For some job functions, it’s not very clear right now how to best leverage AI. But for instructional designers, it’s a different story. The work that they need to do every day is well matched to the capabilities of AI. AI can transform the way instructional designers work and the products they create.

Instructional designers are busy professionals. ATD’s latest research report, Instructional Design in Practice: The Essential Skills and Resources, found that they spend over half of their time developing content and materials and designing training programs. In their roles, instructional designers must be able to develop instructional materials, design graphics, and produce videos. Although 90 percent of them reported that they are good or excellent at developing instructional materials, less than half reported having a similar skill level in designing graphics and producing videos.

To augment their currently abilities, instructional designers can use AI. And, according to our study, we found that more than half of instructional designers are already using AI and 44 percent are using it for content creation.

In the January 2024 edition of TD at Work, Myra Roldan explains how instructional designers can use generative AI to create course content. She also emphasizes that AI can help customize content based on learners’ interests and knowledge gaps. Beyond content creation, it can even help an instructional designer conduct a sentiment analysis from survey data. Check out the full TD at Work guide for an in-depth look at how L&D functions, and especially instructional designers, can leverage AI.

As instructional designers continue to interact with AI and organizations begin to solidify workplace policies on AI use, it will become easier for instructional designers to leverage AI for their work. In our survey, 80 percent of instructional designers reported that they expect their use of AI to increase in the future. For more benchmarking data on the skills of instructional designers and their use of AI, check out Instructional Design in Practice: The Essential Skills and Resources.