Three Ways Generative AI Is A Game Changer For Interior Design (And One Crucial Way It Isn’t) | Entrepreneur

So, this whole Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) thing is generating a lot of hoopla. In fact, Goldman Sachs says 300 million jobs will be affected.

And like most people, I just care one of those jobs: mine. I am an architect, interior designer and entrepreneur. Here are three ways I believe AI is a game changer in my field and one way gaming remains the same.

Gamechanger #1: Architects are more vulnerable than most

Goldman Sachs analyzed a whole range of papers to assess how much threat AI posed. The good news is that we are better off than the lawyers, but the bad news is that we are worse off than the rest.

To be specific, they evaluated what they call “current work tasks that could be automated by artificial intelligence.” For lawyers it is 44%; for architects. it is 37%. (The average across all jobs is 25%.)

One possible solution: We could go from designing buildings to getting our hands dirty and actually building things. You see, only 1% of construction and maintenance work could be automated, according to Goldman Sachs.

Gamechanger #2: Floor plans, goodbye…?

To find out which parts of our jobs fall into that 37% category, we asked ChatGPT, the generative AI manifesto. “AI can significantly improve design efficiency by automating repetitive tasks like creating floor plans, 3D models, and rendered images,” he told us.

Get a software like maket.ai. For US$30 a month, it promises to generate multiple floor plans and export them in a drawing exchange (.dxf) format. They talk about a good game about ‘revolution of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) too – of course, some of it is just hype; I doubt he would have done as good a job as Frank Gehry at the Guggenheim Bilbao, or Sean Killa’s Museum of the Future in Dubai. But there’s definitely something to it. Autodesk has an AI lab and is partnering with universities including Stanford and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It would take a brave designer to bet against these powers.

AI is also very good at boring but important things in fields like safety and sustainability. Whether it’s a new build or a retrofit, we can install a set of (relatively) inexpensive sensors and let the AI ​​do the rest. Generate fascinating insights into human issues like air quality and desk usage rates, to vital structural problems like cracks in concrete.

Turning point no. 3: Sales increase

As an entrepreneur, sales are a big part of my job. But not in the way you would think. Of course, I have to constantly focus on developing the business to generate the money to pay rent, taxes and salaries.

But more importantly, even after winning the contract, we consistently sell our ideas and designs to existing customers. I always remember a great quote from graphic designer Paula Scher on the Netflix documentary Abstract. He said he spends 10% of his time designing, but 90% of his time convincing clients that the designs are good. That’s probably a slight exaggeration, but the point is well made.

AI can and does help here. Like most interior design and architecture firms, we have a large team that does nothing but create 3D, static or fly-through images. They are time consuming and expensive. But we need it at every stage of the design process. To pitch, pre-concept, concept design, detail design, for client marketing campaign, the list is endless.

Open AI the guys from ChatGPT have launched a 3D generator called Point-E. It’s still in beta mode, but the potential is there. There is no doubt that AI will be extremely powerful in generating VR content.

But despite all this, the game remains -basically- the same

I was born in 1981, the year John Walker and 12 San Francisco programmers created AutoCAD. Computer aided design was touted at the time as the death of architecture. It turns out it wasn’t. Around the same time, calculators and spreadsheets were stirring up grim, grim headlines about the death of accounting as a profession. No.

Even the folks at maket.ai acknowledge that you still need humans: “We empower architects, designers, builders, contractors, and developers.” The keyword is to enhance, not replace.

Bottom line: As an entrepreneur, if I could fire my 30-person workforce tomorrow and replace them with an algorithm, my profit margin would skyrocket. But I can not. Nor can I send a computer to a client presentation or an on-site meeting with project managers and engineers for a difficult construction challenge. Generative AI will help us be more efficient and maybe even more creative, but it won’t replace us.

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