Artificial intelligence is definitely coming for all of us now. Even designers aren’t safe. However, the part that no one expected of us was that “artificial intelligence” would hit creators first. I am far from anything resembling a technical person. I will not pretend to understand how it all works or disrespect you, dear reader, by trying to explain it poorly. But now that we’ve flooded the internet with all that joy, pain, humor, suffering, anger, sadness, celebration, or whatever else we’ve learned through our shared experience of being alive, these AI programs (is that what they call it?) are stealing. It’s better and they give us the rest. Frank Stephenson – the famous McLaren, Ferrari and Maserati designer – has a sobering message for us.
Can artificial intelligence design cars?
It was Stephenson’s claim to fame that drove the design of the legendary McLaren P1. He also recently came up with the design language to take McLaren from racing cars to street cars. Now hosts where he brings up this issue of AI car design. As wisely noted in an article on the subject, “When Stephenson says AI will change the industry, it pays to listen.”
It makes my skin crawl to entertain the idea, but as we said from the jump, Wise was listening to Stevenson on the matter; I guess that means to me, too.
Shows some images of a “fixed” AI. His point is that AI could be a useful tool for modifying existing car designs. Obviously, this is an effective tool. It may come at the expense of human staff. Now, here’s a part of the YouTube video where he’s obviously making a little fun fun at BMW. He asked the AI to create images showing “the BMW grille is not hidden”. Although he was playing a little bit, the results were amazing. Granted, it doesn’t take a futuristic AI to see that the answer to BMW grills’ problem is simply to make them smaller, but I’m not a hater. Stevenson explains that AI’s ability to focus on detail is probably the most likely application.
Good or bad, do we really want AI to design our cars?
The main drawback of text-to-image software is that they rely on existing images to build their designs. As we said earlier, this prevents them from coming up with truly unique and innovative designs.
In the end, AI programs can certainly be useful tools in a real designer’s toolbox, but real design requires a human being with passions, memories, fears, hobbies, lovers, and all the other things poets wrote down.
