Welcome to this edition of Architecture Insights, your newsletter for keeping up to date with the developments of AI in Architecture.

In this week’s issue:

As always, here is this week’s latest news in AI for architects and designers.

News & Updates

For Spotify podcast listeners, a new AI feature now lets you transcribe your podcasts into text.

Photoshop is now available to use directly on the web and is powered with all of its AI features. Read here.

Zoom announced it will offer a cheaper AI package than Microsoft 365 Copilot and Google Duet AI. Read here.

ChatGPT: Understanding The Basics

It's been almost a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT and awakened the use of artificial intelligence for many. However, most professionals, including architects, still struggle to harness its power.

Let’s run through some of the essential terms and unique use cases of ChatGPT for architects and designers.

What is Prompt Engineering?

The term “prompt” represents the task you ask the AI to complete. In most cases, this is just the text we input into the search. The importance of understanding the implications of each word on our outcomes cannot be overstated.

Giving the prompt as much detail as you can increases your likelihood of a desired outcome.

Preliminary design/concept stage

The prompt "Show me precedents around the world that represent Frank Gehry design philosophies" is too general and lacks detail.

A much better way to get more accurate results would be “Show me precedents around the world that resemble the design of Frank Gehry and incorporate a high level of synthetic glass and surround itself with Japanese style landscaping”. This is much more specific and gives the AI more guidelines.

Here is a prompt that may help me locate any building code information, municipality guidelines, and public as-built drawings.

A better prompt would be: "I'm currently working on the conceptual design for a project in Stanley Park, British Columbia. Can you please provide me with links to any relevant City of Vancouver documentation regarding design and planning guidelines for the site? Additionally, could you provide me with links to any publicly available as-built drawings within the site boundary? I would also appreciate links to information on the city's building code for public parks.”

Design development stage

As of September 2023, DALL-E, the AI image generating software is directly incorporated into ChatGPT (with a Plus subscription).

Looking to get design inspiration for a boardwalk design? Get specific with your prompt and ChatGPT may be one of your best starting points for getting design ideas. We have all spent hours on Pinterest or Google images in the past looking for inspiration, this is all changing with AI.

Construction stage

Project costing can be a complicated task and any inconsistencies can have massive implications on project pricing. Try asking ChatGPT to provide links to the most up-to-date material pricing websites.

For example: “I am working on a project in southern California which includes the supply and install of 60 palm trees on site, could you provide different links and resources to nurseries and/or landscape contractors for the pricing of supplying and installing these trees.”

Resources

Use ChatGPT to read and analyze PDF’s

A lot of valuable information is stored in PDF files. Architects spend hours reading proposals, change orders, RFI’s, and more tedious documents.

There are many ChatGP plugins that can work with PDFs, AskYourPDF is the one we will look as an example.

The plugin reads through a PDF to find the answers to your questions. Here is what you need to do:

Manually upload a PDF to AskYourPDF and follow these steps:

1. Go to AskYourPDF Upload Page.

2. Click on the "Upload Document" button.

3. Select the PDF file you want to upload from your device.

4. Once the upload is complete, you will receive a document ID (doc_id).

Paste the doc_id into your ChatGPT query and use it to extract information from the PDF.

Unlike most ChatGPT and plugins, it gives you exactly where the information comes from within the document.

ChatGPT Alternatives:

• Copy AI

• Jasper

• Perplexity AI 

• Claude

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.