They don't even need our source files anymore

Notes from Playground Sessions #01: AI vs. Creative Contracts

We recently watched a 15k project shrink by a third because a client used Claude AI to build a "good enough" website straight from our pitch deck screenshots. They completely bypassed the rollout phase and our ultimate financial leverage: holding the final deliverables until the invoice is paid.

It was a blind spot we had never even considered until it happened to us.

Historically, your biggest protection as a designer was that the client only got the source files once the money hit the account. Now, that gatekeeper moment is gone. A client can take a high-fidelity presentation, feed it to an AI, and launch a usable piece of execution without ever asking for your final approval.

This opens up massive, practical questions for creative businesses. How do we adapt our contracts? How do we reprice our minds? And how do we even build our portfolios if live rollouts turn into distorted, AI-deformed versions of our original concepts?

We didn’t want to just debate this behind closed doors, so we decided to open up the studio.

Sitting on the floor to rewrite the rules

On June 18th, we hosted the very first Playground Sessions: AI vs. Creative Contracts at Studio Merge. We threw out the formal panels and boring lectures, tossed big pillows on the floor, got our friends from SUJO  to pour specialty coffee, and packed the room with local studio owners, founders, and project leads.

Because we had an international crowd, the room bounced between English and Portuguese, but everyone was speaking the exact same language when it came to the stress of losing control over our deliverables.

We didn't look away from the anxiety, but as optimists, we all agreed on one thing: AI isn’t killing the creative industry. The value is simply shifting away from pure execution and heavily into conceptualisation. Our minds and our ideas are becoming more precious than ever.

If clients are going to use these tools for faster production, it needs to happen under our direct supervision so the core design stays intact. We have to learn how to work with, protect, and ideally even monetize these new AI workflows ourselves rather than get eaten by them.

What happens next?

This loophole is real, but a broken playbook just means it is time to write a better one. We are already looking at how we structure our upcoming contracts and file-sharing phases at Studio Merge to protect our creative integrity from day one.

This was just the first of many conversations at the Playground. We are navigating the deep end together, and we are not planning to slow down.