Exactly. No one is arguing that it is architecture. Saying an AI generated image of a building is a design is like saying “I’m the ideas guy” in a business behind the person who actually does the hard work of building the business. It is just an image of a concept.

What AI offers is inspiration. It lets you explore countless ideas you wouldn’t have the time to consider or visualize otherwise. Eventually, an architect will decide on a concept (whether they are assisted in their brainstorming by AI or not), and it is then, and only then, that the real design process begins. Whether or not AI plays a role in later phases is up to the architect, but as posts on PixelsToPlans point out, it can be a VERY useful tool throughout design if applied with ingenuity.

What we see here cannot be called architecture, because these aren’t building designs—they are pictures of buildings. Architecture benefits from sensitive adaptation to its surroundings and from imaginative form-making. But it is, and must be, much more than that. Just as Wright started with the plan, so must any architect worthy of the name. Our great architect always had exterior massing and articulation in mind, simultaneously designing from inside out and outside in. But he called the perspective view of a proposed building “the proof”—and he would never be satisfied simply to make a pretty picture.

Until AI can produce appropriate plans and their corresponding section drawings, it can never be credited with making architecture. At present it seems (based on what’s seen here) capable only of the “proof,” not the preceding proposition ?

Hi Shahin,

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Thank you for your kind words. It’s great to hear people are enjoying this post.

For the images I mainly used Midjourney but for a few where I needed more control over the output (specifically the brick mid rise apartments) I used Playground AI and refined the image it produced using Alpaca AI Rendering. One of my goals for this blog is to demonstrate how accessible these tools are to start learning, so Midjourney is the only paid service I use since it just produces such high quality images. Midjourney is definitely trying and succeeding at positioning itself as the Apple of AI image companies. However Playground and Alpaca have generous free tiers that can suit any beginner’s needs. They offer more control to the user but the result is sometimes lower quality and they are slightly less intuitive to use compared to Midjourney.

I have more information on these platforms and some of their competitors in the blog posts linked below:
Midjourney, Playground, and Others: https://pixelstoplans.com/the-best-ai-image-generators-for-architecture/
Alpaca: https://pixelstoplans.com/the-best-free-ai-tool-for-architecture-rendering/

Have fun creating and feel free to reach out with questions or suggestions.