Barber Osgerby: AI “massive” impact on design

British design duo Barber Osgerby, which has created ranges for Axor and most recently Bette, believes the impact of AI on design will be "massive".

26 May, 23

Barber Osgerby, which has created ranges for Axor and most recently Bette, believes the impact of AI on design will be “massive”.

Barber Osgerby: AI may turn creators into editors 1

 

Speaking at the launch of the BetteSuno bathroom collection, at the Hansgrohe Water Studio during Clerkenwell Design Week, Jay Osgerby said: “I think AI’s impact on design is going to be massive.

“I suspect what is going to happen is that we will probably become editors rather than, necessarily, just creators.

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“I think AI is going to have the potential to generate so many new ideas – more than we can conceive – and really, really rapidly. It’s quite scary and quite daunting.”

However, he added: “But I think, creatively, we still have to be able to make choices whether something is right for now or not.”

Edward Barber said the technology was “incredible” and added: “Obviously, it can only produce new things based on what it has already seen before. So in a way it’s not innovating.

“But then, if it’s that smart and it can take the right bits from previous projects, then it can probably find a way to innovate.

“But I think in the current stage, from what I have understood, is that it is probably not going to come up with something like Axor One, yet, but it might do in the future.

“Whereas if you ask it to design a beautiful, luxury-looking faucet then, yes, it’s probably easy [for AI] to do that.”

The London-based industrial design team said they had tested AI and asked it to write a press release for one of its projects, which they hadn’t yet designed.

They said not only did it come up with a name for the product but described the environmental impact it would have and provided quotes from the duo.