AI Is Changing L&D — Here’s How to Keep Up (and Get Ahead)

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the number of AI-enhanced tools on the learning market has exploded. AI in the learning market is predicted to grow by 31% from 2025-2030, with the North American market share hitting 38% in 2024.

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of conflicting viewpoints on the use of AI in learning – especially from instructional designers (IDs). The two most common perspectives we’re hearing are:

• Curiosity – How can AI help me in my role? What is the potential of these tools? What’s next in AI for learning?
• Concern – What are all these AI tools? What if I can’t keep up? What if AI takes my job?

This guide aims to set out the current state of AI in learning, what IDs need to know about AI, and the must-know tools for IDs looking to get ahead through the smart use of AI. 

And don’t worry, we’re going way beyond ChatGPT – we’ll be exploring a wide range of tools and solutions to help make you a more strategic, efficient ID.

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What is AI, and what’s in it for instructional designers?

One of the most common concerns about AI is that it could eventually replace learning teams. While technology is evolving rapidly, a more realistic view today is that generative AI will change how and what we may do in our day-to-day jobs, and it will also serve as a powerful co-pilot, augmenting the world of L&D.

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It’s not an unfounded worry that AI tools might eventually make some roles obsolete, but more likely that roles will change and adjust with these changes in technology. In fact, it’s when IDs choose not to engage with AI, that they are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage. By learning to work with these technologies, IDs can enhance their creativity and strategic contributions while leveraging AI’s speed and efficiency.

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We’re increasingly seeing AI and IDs working in tandem to accelerate content creation, overcome the “blank page problem,” and iterate faster with more creative, impactful outcomes.

And it’s not just about helping IDs on the individual level. AI has the power to streamline processes, workflows, and efficiencies that affect entire L&D teams of all sizes.

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Potential challenges of using AI

One of the challenges of generative AI tools is that they can be prone to “hallucinations” – in other words, making things up. As good as these tools are, they don’t always get it right, meaning you can occasionally end up with inaccurate information.

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That’s why it’s crucial that you verify the information you get from these tools – especially when you’re creating learning content, where accuracy is key. Some tools, like Perplexity, will provide sources as standard, but be sure to do your own research, as some of the original sources may be outdated, biased, a misinterpretation of the source, or not available anymore.

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Generative AI content can also sound generic. While this can be overcome with the right prompts (for instance, building your required tone of voice or style into your AI requests), unedited, AI-generated content will often sound bland and unengaging. It’s best practice to avoid simply copy-and-pasting AI-generated content – instead, bring the human touch back in with a thorough edit, or consider uploading your brand’s tone of voice guidelines to help the AI tool create something more suitable right off the bat.

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What is the instructional designer’s role in an AI-powered future?

It’s important to be clear: ID as a role is not going away. There's no indication that organizations are aiming to replace their L&D teams with AI tools. In fact, 49% of IDs are currently using AI as part of their roles, suggesting that AI is being used as a supportive tool, not as a replacement.

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But what we are seeing is a shift in expectations and the use of AI is likely to change the way we work. In many ways, that’s a positive thing! AI can be used to speed up processes, assist with media development, edit tone of voice, act as QA, and much, much more. Instead of being expected to do everything from scratch yourself, virtually everyone on your team will be able to utilize AI as a handy assistant, helping them streamline tedious or time-consuming tasks, freeing each of you up to do more of what you love – the actual instructional design.

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Everyday AI use cases for instructional designers

If you’ve already experimented with AI for work or personal use, you’ll know it’s immensely powerful. From creating new songs to generating reports to analyzing entire spreadsheets, there’s a wealth of possibilities – and instructional designers are perfectly positioned to maximize the value that AI can bring. 

AI excels at research, content generation, editing, structuring, and analyzing, all of which make it an extremely helpful companion for IDs.

Some of the most popular ways AI is being used by instructional designers include:

• Brainstorming course ideas and learning objectives
• Researching specialized course content
• Writing and reformatting content for tone, audience, or structure
• Creating quizzes, scenarios, summaries, etc.
• Generating initial drafts of course outlines or storyboards
• Crafting graphics or videos for your courses
• Translating and localizing learning content
• Auto creating audio from text 
• Aligning content with models such as ADDIE, SAM, or Bloom’s Taxonomy

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AI-enhanced workflows for large teams

One of the best ways to use AI for instructional design is by enhancing time-consuming, complex workflows. From collaborating with colleagues to scaling content at speed, here are some of the best ways in which instructional designers can use AI to enhance their workflows.

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Faster SME collaboration

IDs are constantly liaising with SMEs to ensure the accuracy of their learning content. They may need to go back to an SME multiple times during the content creation process to make sure they have captured everything, which can take much longer than it needs to.

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With AI tools, IDs can enjoy much smoother, faster collaboration with SMEs, helping them create and validate content faster. For instance, tools like FigJam can streamline the brainstorming process or project kickoff, with an AI tool like ClickUp, you can automatically generate task descriptions, extract action items from comments, and suggest priorities based on your project data, keeping the content process moving.

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Automated content repurposing

Generative AI tools are fantastic for repurposing learning content. The ID works closely with SMEs and other collaborators to ensure the quality of the original content, and AI is used to do all the heavy lifting typically associated with repurposing the content.

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For example, an ID can utilize AI tools to help you plan your approach to repurposing a piece of “master content,” such as an eBook or eLearning course. It can help you come up with ideas for breaking the content down, suggesting activities or assessments, and reusing it across different formats and content types, as well as where you might want to use them. 

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You can then leverage dominKnow | ONE’s reuse and publish targets capability to streamline the implementation and reuse elements of your master course in multiple places. You can “modularize” your content directly in dominKnow for quick and easy repurposing, or enlist the help of an AI tool like Gamma to further increase your output with minimal extra effort.

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Improve handoffs between collaborators

Instructional design can sometimes feel a bit like a relay – the baton gets passed between the ID, SME, graphic designer, copywriter, reviewer, stakeholder and anyone else who needs to contribute, meaning there are many opportunities for the workflow to grind to a halt or run inefficiently.

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AI tools can help smooth out the inefficiencies in these handovers, keeping the content flowing seamlessly from colleague to colleague. For instance, AI can be used to immediately alert the next person in line when it’s their turn to contribute (using tools such as Slack GPT, which is built right into your company’s Slack account), and can automatically keep everyone updated about the status of the project. 

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Over time, AI-enhanced project management tools like Monday or Teamwork can also build up a picture of typical bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which can help IDs find solutions and keep content moving. 

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With dominKnow | ONE, your admin can automate email notifications to best take advantage of your AI automations and further streamline various processes, such as content reviews.

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Scaling content production

Whether it’s onboarding, compliance, just-in-time learning, or something else entirely, there will always be times when IDs are expected to scale their content production without an exponential increase in time and effort. That could mean translating courses into 20+ languages, breaking down eLearning courses into multiple performance support resources, or updating the entire course catalog to align with new company branding.

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AI is ideal for scaling learning content production, as it can automate time-consuming processes to cut content scaling from months to minutes. However, it’s worth remembering that it’s not the only approach. LCMS like dominKnow | ONE enables you to reuse content, update branding everywhere with a single action, and reformat materials with ease, and you can do it all natively within the tool for maximum speed and convenience.

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For example, instead of having to manually translate 30 courses into 20 languages, including replacing all the copy, updating the graphics, editing the descriptions and tags and reuploading them back to the LMS, tools like LILT or DeepL can do it all for instructional designers in moments – especially with paid versions handling multiple file formats including XLS and XML files for maximum speed and convenience.

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Alternatively you can take advantage of some free or inexpensive solutions such as Google Translate or the Sheets Translator for Excel plugin which can be easily paired with your authoring solution. The combination of AI translation and this plugin saves you a huge amount of time and effort, allowing you to focus your attention elsewhere. You can then use dominKnow’s many-to-one language functionality to bring all of your translations into a single instance of your course, making the whole process more efficient and easier to manage and update.

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How your team can get started with AI

This likely won’t be the first resource you’ve read on AI instructional design, and it certainly won’t be the last. AI is here to stay, and smart IDs are weaving it into their processes and workflows right now.

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It’s important to remember, however, that scalable AI for L&D teams is about much more than the AI tools themselves. The role of the human ID is just as crucial – perhaps even more so. 

AI can feel like a lot to take in, so we recommend focusing on these three areas before you dive in headfirst:

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1. Start small.
   Start with a small-scale pilot program in relatively low-risk, high-reward areas, such as writing and editing eLearning course content, creating images and diagrams for your courses, or using tools such as QuizGecko to generate additional quiz questions.
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2. Stay strategic.
   Whatever you do, don’t throw every single AI tool at your workflows! First, analyze your current workflows and identify any inefficiencies or bottlenecks, and look at how AI can help you get these areas moving more efficiently. That could mean streamlining the content translation process with AI, or helping reviewers collaborate more effectively – for instance, using Google Workspace’s Duet AI to track action points, suggest follow-ups, and summarize conversations. It’s also worth remembering that AI isn’t always the right solution for every problem – a platform like dominKnow | ONE can help you better manage your workflows with no need for AI, so don’t be tempted to use AI for the sake of it, as it may streamline an existing tedious process, but instead changing your overall approach and solution could likely be even more efficient.
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3. Evolve your role.
   As instructional designers, we dedicate our time to helping others learn new skills – now it’s time for us to develop our own abilities. Ignoring AI won’t make it go away, but it does mean you’ll fall behind the IDs already experimenting with it. The tools we’ve listed above are a good place to find out what AI can do for you and your L&D team.

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Interest piqued? Don’t worry, there’s more…

In our next blog, we’ll dive into some of the must-know tools for IDs looking to get started with AI, as well as sharing some of our top resources for leveraging AI to accelerate and improve your learning processes, content, and insights.

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