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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Architecture Insights newsletter. Artificial intelligence for architects, landscape architects, and designers.

AI integration in architecture and landscape architecture has transformative potential as we have seen. However, as AI capabilities expand, deepfakes, data theft, copyright infringement, and other malpractices will continue to threaten the integrity of design professions.

This Week In AI

Google Gemini 1.5

You can now access Google Gemini 1.5 for free at the Deepmind website. At the onset, it appears that version 1.5 can handle larger files, including PDFs and videos. There are several use cases for benefiting from the increased file capacity, including extensive document summarization.

OpenAI Sora (Text-to-Video)

OpenAI released its first impressions to videos created by users who had early access to Sora, the new text-to-video AI.

CoPilot on Teams

Microsoft Teams is getting copilot AI. Be prepared for more AI features, such as video transcriptions. This could potentially eliminate the need for spending time on meeting summaries.

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The Negatives Of Artificial Intelligence In Design Professions

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized design industries by offering unprecedented efficiency and innovative capabilities. However, this technological advancement is not without its drawbacks.

Among the most pressing concerns are the issues of deep fakes and copyright infringement, which pose significant ethical, legal, and creative challenges.

Deep Fakes

Deepfake technology, which allows for the creation of hyper-realistic video and audio, poses a unique challenge to architects and landscape architects.

Design professionals still receive a significant amount of media exposure and high-profile opportunities, depending on the projects they are involved in, relative to political figures and celebrities which are the main targets in most deep fake attacks.

Scenarios can exist where a project is undermined by a counterfeit video that misrepresents the design's impact on the environment or community.

Deep fake videos could be used to spread misinformation about architectural or landscape design projects, influencing public opinion and potentially causing protests, delays, or cancellations of legitimate projects.

Deep Fakes Outside The World Of Design

A business executive in China was deceived into transferring 20 million dollars to a scammer through a manipulated video call with AI-generated colleagues.

Copyright (Intentional/Unintentional)

The integration of AI in our design process has also brought up issues related to copyright infringement. Today, an AI can churn out variations of your designs faster than you can say "intellectual property rights." AI-generated designs often draw from vast databases of existing works, which can lead to unintentional or intentional copying.

One of the most significant challenges is determining the ownership of AI-generated designs.

As AI tools generate designs based on pre-existing data, it becomes difficult to ascertain who holds the copyright—the designer, the AI tool, or the original creators of the data used by the AI.

Models like Midjourney are known to sometimes replicate existing images, even including watermarks from sources like Getty Images.

Ethical and Legal Implications

The ethical and legal implications of AI in our field go beyond deep fakes and copyright issues. We also need to address concerns such as potential job displacement, loss of human creativity, and the homogenization of design.

The automation of routine tasks through AI can lead to job losses in our industry. While AI can enhance efficiency, it also threatens to replace roles that rely on human expertise and creativity.

Over-reliance on AI tools can lead to a lack of diverse architectural styles and result in globally uniform building designs, lacking the unique touch of human creativity.

Determining accountability for AI-generated designs is another ethical dilemma. If an AI-generated design has flaws or causes issues in the future, it is unclear who should be held responsible—the designer, the AI developer, or the firm that used the AI tool.

Current Developments Designers Should Know

In a recent update to its terms of service, Midjourney announced it would not be responsible if you or your business got sued for attempted misuse or copying of designs generated by Midjourney itself.

While other platforms like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion have more protective terms and will protect their users from copyrgiht claims on their platforms.

Why should all of this matter to you?

Because your creativity is your currency.

In a world where AI can replicate and influence on an unprecedented scale, protecting your designs isn't just about legal rights – it's about preserving the essence of your work and others.

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.