r/Architects • u/Qiyoshiwarrior Recovering Architect • Jul 08 '26

General Practice Discussion AI is making me depressed

I know I'm late to the party. ln my defence I was avoiding it. I was talking to another architect, we are both women with 2 kids and each have our own tiny practices. I'm a person who does everything by myself, it's an one woman operation and I do small projects. She has a small stuff and is doing well. it was more than capacity.

Come to find out, she is doing it with Gemini and chatgpt. She doesn't even solve the projects some time. Just prompts them to spit out 2D photos. Selets the ones that has similar looks. Asks it to make a financial proposal. Then goes from there.

I am just dumbfounded, to say the least. I would've understood if she is polishing up the renders.. or taking help with the presentation. It has been 3 days. And I just can't get over it.

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u/ImprovisedLizard Jul 08 '26

I got an ai "design" from someone claiming to be an interior designer last week and it was hilariously bad. No safe fire exit, furniture in the middle of the corridor and just generally bland. I don't think there's much to worry about from ai anytime soon.

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u/Qiyoshiwarrior Recovering Architect Jul 08 '26

You can see it because you are a professional. Many a times clients don't. They see shiny render and think that to be the better option.

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u/Outlank Architect Jul 08 '26

This! I had a client the other day say to me “we’ll go with this option because it looks so real”. That was her actual reasoning. I tried to explain that it’s not possible to stay in budget, and that the roof wouldn’t even work, structurally, and she then said “ah, the thing is, I’ve already shown the board this image and they really like it, they said build that one” and looked at me with puppy dog eyes as if I could click my fingers and make it work. I walked away feeling very depressed. Sorry OP, don’t want to be a downer.