Short abstract:

In this paper, we discuss how first year design students have been encouraged to question responsible AI innovation to ensure good practice whilst working with the public, merging traditional processes such as sketching, collage and storytelling with AI tools to aid creative thinking.

Long abstract:

Recent advances in machine learning, specifically “generative AI Art”, have produced a $48 billion industry, creating video, voice, text, and animation outputs. These image generators are reshaping design practices as designers leverage the technology to reimagine innovative spaces.

Despite capturing the public's imagination with products like Midjourney and DALL-E 2, many creatives have spoken about the challenges they have experienced due to the proliferation of large-scale image generators trained on image/text pairs from the internet. For instance, practitioners report their copyrighted work amongst the training data without consent or attribution, leading to artwork forgery and feedback loop biases (Kenthapadi et al 2023).IImage generators flood the internet with ‘acceptable’ imagery, supplanting the demand for creatives in practice and raising questions as to whether generative images fully express human creativity. However, despite the many challenges with generative AI technology in 2023, Zaha Hadid Architects embraced AI for early ideation, generating and testing numerous design concepts.

Whilst it is natural to be apprehensive towards AI, we need to address the developing landscape of digital creativity by challenging our understanding of creative processes and ensuring a relevant and responsible approach as creative industries adapt to these new tools and processes. Despite the many problems with generative AI, these tools are here to stay; surely, their goal should be to mitigate bias and enhance, not replace, human creativity.

As part of this combined format submission, we will facilitate a 45 minute workshop, exploring the future of spaces & places through the lens of AI.