As AI improves – Are Architects jobs at Risk?

AI has been revolutionising industries across the world, and this hasn’t stopped at changing the way architects conduct their work. With the continuous improvement of tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney architects are able to quickly sketch up designs, which can aid with the design process.

AI and Image Generation

And with the new, albeit primitive, AI video generator we could soon see entire 3D and virtual walkthrough videos working with renderings and actual project photos, saving the need for expensive film crews and camera equipment.

Fortunately for you, AI image and video generators are awful at generating good images that show off the intricacy and design of what an architect can produce. For example, when asking an AI image generator DALL-E 2 to create ‘a floor plan for a spacious bungalow with lots of natural light.’ It produces these.

It doesn’t take a trained architect to know that these are nonsense, rooms that have no entrance, windowless rooms, and unrealistic sized furniture. All of these combined with the general layout of these houses make It very obvious that these are not human generated.

This, however, is not what AI can be used for when creating designs. The intricate detailed jobs can be left to the trained humans, whereas quick design mock-ups and ideas can be fully aided by these bots.

For example, say you’ve been commissioned to design a modern high rise that incorporates nature and promotes biodiversity into its design. Just ask DALL-E to produce some mock-ups and go from there, you can even upload your own images and look at the changes the AI will make to your image. While these won’t always be realistic, they are a good starting point for a design process.

Where Could AI Challenge Architects?

Where the line between human and AI starts to blur is where writing comes into play. Programmes such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT are arguably the most advanced in their respective fields when compared to other AI bots.

This is the one area where we may see AI fully take over the human role as the bots continue to improve exponentially. Writing about a design to a client will become so much easier and quicker. In a video produced by Dami-Lee on YouTube titled ‘Architects Vs AI’ we saw the text win with 58% of voters preferring the AI written text to the human written text.

So, are architects doomed? The simple answer is no, not yet.

However, AI is rapidly changing and it might not be as long as we think before we start seeing grey areas between human renders and AI renders.

In the meantime, we know how important it is to have a great IT team behind your business, find out how we can help your firm save money on its IT, cut down on wasted hours and improve your security.

Genmar IT – IT Support | Bishops Stortford | Essex | Hertfordshire Genmar IT

Dami-Lee’s Video on AI vs Architects – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N709ZrxoIP0&pp=ygUQYXJjaGl0ZWN0cyB2cyBhaQ%3D%3D