With its ability to learn and simulate all sorts of aesthetic styles, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is arguably a powerful tool for imitation in design. The technology, however, is still in development and has often generated unexpected outcomes. These have ranged from extra fingers to distorted faces, although they have become increasingly less common. While such outputs are typically regarded as limitations of AI to be solved, architecture and AI professor Immanuel Koh argues they should instead be seen as artefacts of its generative logic. They represent the native expression of AI or what he calls Neural Tectonics.
Since 2020, Koh and his team at Artificial-Architecture have sought to theorise this by using AI to generate furniture designs. The latest being Neural Monobloc Black, which reinterprets the ubiquitous monobloc chair using a custom fine-tuned text-to-3D AI model. The results are eight warped and distorted chairs that sit awkwardly in our eyes and minds, raising the question of whether these are aberrations of AI or its very nature. Might designers be using AI all wrong? Such experiments highlight the issue and meaning of authenticity in the age of AI.
