Nikolay Ironov had been working as a graphic designer for more than a year before he revealed his secret. Lebedev Studio -- Russia's largest design company -- Ironov had already worked on more than 20 commercial projects, creating everything from beer bottle labels to startup logos. But Ironov was not the person he claimed to be. In fact, the designer was not a person at all. Lebedev Studio revealed the truth to its clients: their logos had been created by an AI system.

But there was a catch. He was an AI system designed by the firm. A machine trained on hand-drawn vector images, Ironov learned to generate brand design with a human touch, much like AIs that have studied so many images they can generate realistic people from scratch. And when clients finally learned the truth behind Ironov, apparently they were amused rather than angry. It helps that the system is a bit more sophisticated than a random logo generator, though.