During Clerkenwell Design Week, we attended an insightful talk by EGGER on the future of AI. The focus was on the trajectory of Generative AI, and how interior designers, architects and other industry professionals can leverage tools to streamline their work and necessitate greater creativity.
Understanding Concerns
In the UK, AI adoption is cautious. Just 1 in 10 people use AI daily, with concerns around ethics and transparency; with deep fakes, copyright infringement and automation of jobs emerging as key pitfalls. Other areas of the world are more open to utilising these tools, with over 33% of the UAE workforce using AI daily.
For creative industries, where human perspectives are vital in generating and executing ideas, many professionals feel threatened by AI. Interior designers fear losing control over their design processes, extras in the film industry are suddenly expendable as AI-generated actors take hold, and those in the Marketing and PR sectors risk characterless interactions and negligent campaigns ridden with copyright issues.
The Discussion
Generative AI should be considered a real-time collaborator, assisting rather than limiting human creativity. Latest developments in AI technology include the newly released version of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, now featuring vision and speech capabilities to make collaboration faster and more efficient than ever. Midjourney was also highlighted as a powerful tool for exploring creative concepts through imagery.
From a PR perspective, GPT-4o can be useful in streamlining research on behalf of our clients, enabling us to share information quickly and succinctly. For our clients’ creative campaigns, Midjourney allows us to experiment with different ideas and visualise them in real time, exploring possibilities and how they would come to life.
What’s next?
Microsoft is developing a tool that uses text prompts to produce videos. Once fully available for public use, it could revolutionise the creation of music videos, adverts and even films. Naturally, those in the film, TV, and marketing industries, whose work centres around video and advert development, may consider this tool a threat to their creative processes. It is also worth noting that Microsoft is currently working through ethical and transparency issues, with the project all the more hindered by a recent surge in deep fakes. It will be interesting to see how they mitigate improper use of its tool, to gain creatives’ trust and showcase its capabilities and benefits as a real-time collaborator.
Additionally, real time camera data capture and analysis will soon be possible. For interiors designers and architects, this can simplify layout visualisation, enabling them to map out placements, understand space constraints, and anticipate design issues early. Again, the tool is supportive, with designers remaining at the heart of development, Colour palettes, space dimensions and product imagery need to be provided to create accurate mock ups. From here, augmentations are entirely in the hands of the designers, since true innovation can only be achieved from human ideas and perspectives.
AI can be our friend…
To many, the idea of AI still seems daunting, especially regarding its impact on jobs. However, we strongly believe AI is our friend. It offers numerous benefits to creative industries when used in a supportive capacity. AI is a great assistant in facilitating idea development and providing new perspectives, allowing us to explore routes we might never have considered or knew existed. With more rapid advancements in AI coming soon, we believe these innovations will further support creatives and designers in mapping out, ideating and visualising exciting concepts.
And if you’re wondering how it impacts PR and your needs for a PR agency, it’s important to remember that authentic communication remains non-negotiable – made possible only by human interactions. We are still at the centre of communication, ideation and visualisation, and we are excited to explore how AI can support us in becoming more efficient and brilliant, without compromising our voice.
Author: Hannah Bradley
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