AI and Automotive Design Modeling

What if car designers of the past had access to artificial intelligence?

For all its gee-whiz, when it comes to accurately reproducing images of cars, AI can fail spectacularly. Which is puzzling, because there are plenty of captioned car photos floating around cyberspace for its hive-mind to draw upon. Type in “1970 Pontiac GTO” or “1971 Alfa Romeo Spider” to Midjourney, and you may get something completely wrong but nonetheless compelling. Which makes us wonder how the creative process could have been affected – or will be in the future – in vehicle design. Would our classics look the same if automakers had AI input and a tool for rapid modeling?

Mind of its own: The blue car is a real 1970 Pontiac GTO, along with four generated image options conjured by the Midjourney bot in illustration format. What’s notable is the seamless incorporation of existing elements cribbed from other muscle cars, which make for an interesting design study. The Chevy Chevelle was the only GM A-body of that era to feature single headlamps, but the bot clearly seems to favor them for the Poncho.

There’s lots of Buick GS and Pontiac Firebird mixed in there, and dare we say some 1970 AMC Javelin? Looks like a duckbill-style rear spoiler, which was actually used on some GM prototypes. Interesting design choices made by this program, and not all unpleasant.

Not quite right, not quite wrong: One of Italian design house Pininfarina’s most enduring creations is the 1970’s Alfa Romeo Spider, but Midjourney had some interesting variations on the theme rendered in hyper-realistic format. Without mentioning Pininfarina in the commands, AI cribbed design cues from the coachbuilder’s other cars, including Fiat’s 124 Spider and Dino Spider, along with some other bold choices. An asymmetrical hood crease detail is something only an avant-garde Italian coachbuilder would embrace in 1971.

What was it thinking? Giving AI a longer instruction led to these extremely inventive yet somehow plausible takes on a 1974 Alfa Romeo Berlina. Though its renderings are absolutely incoherent from the Alfa, they intuitively capture the ethos of the earlyMalaise Era cars like the AMC Pacer and Ford Pinto with a decidedly European twist. While very forward looking, there’s nothing in these designs that couldn’t have been produced using 1970’s materials and methods. AI was really free-thinking on this one, suggesting design possibilities in a completely different direction.

MICHAEL TOWERS, Chairman