AI, UX, and Marketing: Where We Are Now (and Where We’re Headed)

My name is Marcello Gortana, and I'm the co-founder of Tennis, a UX design and digital transformation firm. At Tennis, we design, strategize, and build websites, web applications, and software products for organizations ranging from mid-market companies (100–500 employees) to enterprise (500+ employees) and VC-backed startups.

We focus on helping organizations bridge the gap between design, strategy, and technology, always emphasizing how UX can drive measurable business impact.

Where Marketing Meets UX

In many of the projects we take on, marketing teams are the ones who initiate things. They're tasked with increasing visibility, generating leads, and delivering ROI, and they know that the website or product experience is often the biggest bottleneck.

That's why Tennis often works cross-functionally: while a project may start with marketing, it inevitably involves sales, operations, and product teams. UX design is at the center of it all.

What Mid-Market Companies Think About AI

Here's what we're seeing when it comes to AI adoption in mid-market organizations:

• Most aren't using it yet. Despite all the hype, very few mid-sized companies we work with are integrating even the simplest AI tools (like ChatGPT) into their workflows.
• The most significant opportunity is workflow efficiency. Marketing and content teams often struggle with content production at scale. AI can make workflows more efficient, freeing teams to focus on strategy rather than repetitive tasks.
• Confusion still reigns. Many leaders don't know where AI begins and ends. Clients have asked for "AI-powered" features that don't require AI. Education about what AI is (and isn't) is still needed.

Startups vs. Enterprise: Two Different Worlds

• Enterprise clients are cautious. Their compliance and security teams often halt AI experimentation until the risks are clearer.
• Startups are the opposite. Many are experimenting with AI daily — whether for content creation, prototyping, or customer support. But even then, it's often superficial, more about experimenting than building mission-critical systems.

Where AI Is Actually Useful in UX and Development

From our perspective, AI isn't yet at the point where it can replace human designers or developers, but it is helpful as a starting point:

• Wireframing & Design: AI tools can auto-generate layouts, giving teams a head start before refinement.
• Code Generation: AI can create basic code snippets, but developers still need to refine and integrate them.
• Persona Research: Tools like Synthetic Humans (from UX powerhouse Fantasy) allow companies to create AI-generated personas for early-stage user research. While still experimental, this approach offers a glimpse into how AI could transform product strategy.

The Good, the Bad, and the Scary

What Excites Us

• Education. AI could revolutionize learning by enabling personalized education paths. Imagine every student having their own AI tutor, adapting lessons to their learning style and pace.
• Accessibility. AI could help make digital experiences more inclusive, reducing the cost and complexity of user research and design for diverse needs.

What Concerns Us

• Privacy. Some experiments show AI being used to reconstruct physical spaces or even brain scans from data inputs — raising significant privacy risks.
• Regulation. Governments are still struggling to regulate social media; AI regulation lags far behind the technology's capabilities.
• Social Impact. AI combined with social media could amplify dependency, especially among younger users. We're already seeing platforms introduce AI "friends" into children's feeds.

How We Use AI at Tennis

Right now, Tennis doesn't use AI heavily in client-facing projects, but we are:

• Experimenting internally with tools like MidJourney (for visuals) and ChatGPT (for lesson plans, workflow planning, and research).
• Exploring how AI could help us streamline research and prototyping phases — often the first line item cut from project budgets and the most important for creating products that truly work.

Our process, Think → Prototype → Build, remains human-led — but AI is starting to provide some building blocks that help speed things up.

Wrapping It Up

AI in UX and marketing is still in its early stages. The best opportunities for mid-market and enterprise organizations aren't flashy "AI-powered" features — they're workflow efficiencies, more innovative content production, and better research tools.

At Tennis, we believe the future of AI in design isn't about replacing people — it's about giving teams more space to do their most strategic, impactful work.

👉 Want to explore how UX and AI can help your organization? Let's talk

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