Co-designing with AI was an illuminating experience. A prompt can cover many attributes, including the subject, medium, environment, color, and even mood. A good prompt, I learned, needed to be specific because I wanted the design to serve a particular purpose. On the other hand, I wanted to be surprised by the results. I discovered that I needed to strike a balance between what I knew and wanted, and what I didn’t know or couldn’t imagine but might want. I learned that anything that isn’t specified in the prompt might be randomly assigned to the image by the AI platform. And so if you want to be surprised about an attribute, then you can leave it unsaid. But if you want something specific to be included in the result, then you have to include it in the prompt, and you must be clear about any context or details that are important to you. You can also include instructions about the composition of the image, which helps a lot if you’re designing an engineering product.

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After using image generators for several months and pushing them to their limits, I concluded that they can be useful for exploration, inspiration, and producing rapid illustrations to share with my colleagues in brainstorming sessions. Even when the images themselves weren’t realistic or feasible designs, they prompted us to imagine new directions we might not have otherwise considered. Even the images that didn’t accurately convey information flows still served a useful purpose in driving productive brainstorming.

I also learned that the process of co-creating with generative AI requires some perseverance and dedication. While it is rewarding to obtain good results quickly, these tools become difficult to manage if you have a specific agenda and seek a specific outcome. But human users have little control over AI-generated iterations, and the results are unpredictable. Of course, you can continue to iterate in hopes that you’ll get a better result. But at present, it’s nearly impossible to control where the iterations will end up. I wouldn’t say that the co-creation process is purely led by humans—or not this human, at any rate.

…Of course, the use of AI image generators raises serious ethical issues. They risk amplifying demographic and other biases in training data. Generated content can spread misinformation and violate privacy and intellectual property rights. There are many legitimate concerns about the impacts of AI generators on artists’ and writers’ livelihoods. Clearly, there is a need for transparency, oversight, and accountability regarding data sourcing, content generation, and downstream usage. I believe anyone who chooses to use generative AI must take such concerns seriously and use the generators ethically.

If we can ensure that generative AI is being used ethically, then I believe these tools have much to offer engineers.

Read more:

Broo, D. G. (2023, October 14). How generative AI helped me imagine a better robot. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-design