Bing, Artificial Intelligence, and Interior Design
Art and design students become familiar with many negative adages early on in their schooling process and most of the time in their careers. One thinks of the common phrase “starving artist.” When originally considering if the interior design profession or major was the correct choice for me, I had no idea that choosing this field may help guard my career against becoming obsolete.
Ultra-modern design results from Stable Diffusion
Marking fifteen years after my choice to become an interior designer and Microsoft Bing’s recent soft release of their AI search engine, made me question how artificial intelligence developments like this will affect interior design. Most of the technological improvements in my field only made it easier and faster to do design work. Design technology has gone from hours of rendering by hand to allow us to instantly visualize a piece of furniture or art in a space with augmented reality. Generally, technology has supported and improved interior design as a whole.
After examining the capabilities of Bing’s new search engine, using ChatGPT developed by Open Ai, as well as some other Ai design services, I questioned whether the technology would stop supporting and start undermining the interior design profession.
In 2019, a Fast Company article provided statistics that “Researchers have projected that automation may claim 800 million jobs around the world by 2030. Others suggest that as many as half of American jobs may be under threat from automation.” (article here) Maybe you have seen automation in other interior design scenarios such as ordering kiosks at fast food restaurants or contactless check-in kiosks at medical centers. These design features only perpetuate the lack of human connection and understanding.
Design Ai services like Planner5D and InteriorAi are helpful tools to clients, designers, and real estate agents looking to quickly virtually design their spaces. Sometimes these tools seem to have a hard time analyzing the client’s input. Other sites, such as (DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney) that are mentioned in Elle Decor’s (article here), simply create images out of written text and provide amazing results but are not tailored to the client or occupant of the space. The caveat here is that you may have to have the design vocabulary and knowledge to communicate effectively with these Ai services to get your expected results. These services seem to work better for generating design ideas.
DALL-E results to the sentence “ japandi living room in colorado with natural light and expensive furniture”
When typing in a relatively new human-generated style called Japandi, which is a mix of Japanese and Scandinavian design, into DALL-E, the images that came up were nowhere close in style. This calls into question if Ai design tools can imagine something that is new or maybe something that has already been done but there is not much information on the internet or it to draw from.
Google image results to the sentence “japandi living room in colorado with natural light and expensive furniture”
Then I decided to search for a new sofa on Bing’s current (not updated) search engine, it assumed that the value of a new sofa is affordability and provided only affordable sofa results.
“These artificial intelligence services and search engines are only great simulators of creativity ”
These artificial intelligence services and search engines are only great simulators of creativity. Interior design has infinite possible solutions to design needs, wants, and problems. The unlimited possibilities are what makes interior design difficult and so interesting. To all of those art and design students out there, creativity is a skill that only humans can possess and that should be encouragement enough to take the leap into a creative profession.
Sources: NYTimes, Elle Decor, Fast Company
Bing - OpenAi - ChatGPT - Ai - Artificial Intelligence - Planner5D - Interior Ai - DALL-E - Stable Diffusion - Midjourney - Tech - Computer Aided Design - CAD -Technology
Interior Design - Design - Interior Design Career - Creativity - Creative Career
Is interior design a good career - Is interior design a good job - Why interior design as a career - Why interior design is a good career - Will interior design be in demand in the future - Which interior design software is best - How interior design changed over time - Can interior design be done online
