As AI models become more powerful, I’ve heard speculation that AI will soon replace frontend web developers. I don’t think this will be the case.

Currently, I don’t use AI at all for development, and think it should be completely avoided for frontend development.  Humans have a fundamental advantage when it comes to understanding how to build a website that fits the preferences of user. This advantage wouldn’t go away, even if we could magically conjure up an AI model that cost nothing to train or run. 

When developing a website, you are making something that users will look at and interact with  People have a variety of preferences for their user experience that can’t be precisely encoded in data, while an AI model needs data. There might also be specific circumstances that affect use of a website such as a college student spending less time on an online game site during final exam week. 

A human developer can talk to likely users to get an understanding of their preferences and circumstances. The developer can then understand how those circumstances will affect someone’s usage of a site and then incorporate that understanding when working on a site.