003. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Interior Design-Part 2
Designing our homes in the future
Perhaps one day I will design the interior of my home like this:
I walk into a comfy room, guided by a friendly human. I attach a few biometric sensors to my body, don a virtual reality headset, and lie down on a chaise lounge. Then I relax and enjoy the aesthetic showcase that is launched in my virtual vision. I see a stream of colours, patterns, shapes, rooms, art work, and landscapes - each one more beautiful to me than the last. Then the images change to more practical items - tables, chairs, rugs, pillows, curtains, forks, beds, toilets, coat racks, and bookshelves.
After 30 minutes of images, the image stream ends. The friendly human removes the virtual reality headset. I have a drink of water and walk around a courtyard garden, feeling emotionally moved to a place deep inside. A place that feels too personal for this impersonal place. I close my eyes and try to meditate - trying both to fully experience the open line to a box deep inside me, while at the same time trying to keep my emotions steady to avoid crying.
The friendly human calls me back inside, reconnects the biometric sensors, and invites me to lie down again, close my eyes, and relax. This time we don’t use the virtual reality headset. Music starts to play, quietly but seeming to come from all points in the room at once. Seamlessly the tune morphs into a new one, then a new rhythm, then a new genre, one after the other - each more touching than the last. After 30 minutes I have laughed and cried my way through a hundred flashes of hitherto forgotten moments.
The friendly human asks me if I would like to take another break before the final 30 minute session. I decline, not ready to leave the lingering aura of nostalgia. The final session is a feast of scents, some bizarre and new, others sweet and familiar. One or two are scarily similar to previous homes and people from my personal history. I open my eyes just to be completely sure that my grandmother isn’t actually sitting right next to me. These scents plunge me into the past in a way that feels uncanny and unnatural, less enjoyable than the musical session, and a bit creepy. I open my eyes again to confirm that I’m not asleep, dreaming of lying in my childhood bedroom. My emotions are overloaded and I’m freaked out, anxious for the 30 minutes to end. I’m thankful for the minutes when my nose is given a break from smelling anything and grateful when the friendly human tells me we’re finished.
My husband and teenage son undergo similar experiences in adjoining rooms.
A week later, I return to the comfortable room. The same friendly human helps me put on the biometric sensors and virtual reality headset. This time I walk through our virtual home, as designed by a friendly computer, based on data from myself, my husband and our son - complete with scents and background music. It feels perfect for our family. My office, designed using only my data, is the most beautiful room I have ever seen. I hear the friendly human telling me that the biometric data from our three family members shows that the design has met the company’s advertised standards of biological satisfaction. However,they do offer one free iteration that we can walk through now. Curious, I take them up on the offer, but I prefer the first version.
We pay, wincing at the price, but take comfort in knowing that a few years ago the same service would have cost double the price for a far inferior product. We agree to a 2 week installation period, beginning in 1 month. We’ll stay with a friend.
A month and a half later, we walk into our newly designed home. I may never leave. Good thing I work from home now.
Naturally, interior designers and other wonderful artistic creatives will and should rail against this type of digital infringement of their wonderful domains. AI is trained on images from human designers and artists. AI programming is typed by human software engineers (though surely AI will eventually programme programmes, if it’s not happening already). AI builds on the world we humans continue to create.
As always, we have created technology that will evolve in ways that we cannot conceive. Evolution will almost always put negative pressure on some group of somethings. The somethings adapt, find a new niche, or go extinct. And I for one am fascinated (obviously) by the use of AI for interior design, and it has even spurred me to consider moving interior design from side obsession to side gig.
The future is always upon us.
How about this, I was navigating the internet thinking about transitioning to another job. it took me into an augmented office (space), virtual reality. Mind you, I had never seen anything like it before.
I entered this office space where an interior office design popped up -- now that I think about it, along with the driver’s toy NReal Air augmented reality glasses, both contribute to my curiosity.
Your article reminded me of an initial AI interior office design but at the moment I was unaware from where my initial interest and curiosity developed.
In recollection of a sentence of your reply,
“I was and continue to be astounded by the abilities of AI and its potential uses in the future - I think much of the world is joins us in this amazement.”
When I read this sentence from your reply, the fact you used the word astound offered such recollection and it ignited memory where it all had begun.
Such a mystery that the world would join us in this amazement continue to astonish me, but the mystery that the inward man, would not only direct, guide, lead me into the artificial intelligence design offer me the dichotomy of learning the new technology (AI) through hype interest and curiosity a vague consciousness of what it all meant to me.
In closing, keeping up with technology and the mystery of why it all occurs as such, reminds me that the mystery of an opportunity, if I continue to listen to the inward man, as you mentioned “the world is joins us in this amazement,” and continue to allow the inward man to astound me to the advancement of the latest intervention of artificial intelligence.
Thank you so much for being a part of my initial (AI) learning experience from the ignition of your article.
So nice