Welcome to this week’s edition of Architecture Insights. A weekly newsletter on artificial intelligence for architects, landscape architects, and designers.

AI Photo enhancers are a frequently used AI tool. Their potential benefits are available in more than just upgrading pictures of humans or animals, the best ones work with site photos and renderings from your projects.

This Week In AI

RIBA 2024 AI Report 

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) released a 2024 report on artificial intelligence highlighting some interesting stats:

Overall, how would you rate your personal knowledge about AI, in general?

• 9% No knowledge

• 51% Basic knowledge

• 32% Practical knowledge

• 6% Advanced knowledge

• 2% Recognized authority

Is AI a threat to the profession?

• 36% Agree

• 30% Neither

• 34% Disagree

Has AI led to staff reductions?

• 7% Agree

• 32% Neither

• 61% Disagree

ChatGPT 5.0 targeted for mid-late 2024

Nothing is official but a claim made by the CEO of OpenAI was that there will be a big release this year for ChatGPT.

Resources

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AI Photo Enhancers

AI image and photo enhancers or upscales are great for solving the issues below in site photos and renderings.

• Low resolution

• Poor lighting

• Noise (Grainy photos)

• Colour balance

• Unwanted objects

To test out the potential of these tools we used Lets Enhance. It was free to sign up and work on up to 10 photos.

If you would like to explore others, here are a few:

• Remini - AI Photo Enhancer

• Adobe Image Enhancer

• Picsart

Improving Image Resolution

Start with a low-quality photo.

Original:

Enhanced:

For resolution, our photo went from roughly a 3/10 to a 6/10 in terms of quality and clearness.

These tools are not perfect and they won’t turn a blurry photo into a 4k image but they can improve your photo quality up to 40%.

Google 3D View Images

Another example is using a Google Earth image. When you take a screenshot of a 3D view, the image often looks a bit blurry. Sometimes, due to location limits for our projects, this is the best option we have.

Here is an original photo of a screengrab from Google.

Upscaled Image:

Edit Features

AI photo enhancers have strong editing tools that let you quickly fix the tone and colour of pictures.

Original:

Enhanced (40% Tone, 60% Colour):

Although architects and landscape architects might not always directly need an AI upscale tool, they offer great benefits in the bigger picture of AI image technology.

By combining these tools with AI image generators like Midjourney and AI editing tools like Adobe Firefly, you can create an efficient design workflow.

AI Image of the week

Thank you for reading this week’s issue, check past issues here. Share this newsletter with colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in the combined world of architecture and artificial intelligence.

Until next Friday,

A.I.