19. AI Architect
Could Midjourney design my kitchen better than me?
First, what is Midjourney?
Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program that creates images based on written descriptions.
The program got a lot of press when art created by Midjourney started winning art competitions; see the winner of a fine art competition from 2022 Théâtre D'opéra Spatial created by Jason Matthew Allen using a prompt in Midjourney.
Wow. Impressive, and a little scary. Is my professional as an Architect going to be replaced by AI? Maybe, one day. For now, I want to figure out if and how it could help my workflow.
How it works
Midjourney is able to turn words into an image. You describe something in a prompt, and the program spits out four images.
Here was my prompt:
/imagine prompt:interior editorial photograph of modern scandinavian kitchen with muted oak lower cabinets and white upper cabinets, light gray quarts countertops, white subway tile with white grout, white walls, oak floors, white ceiling with slatted oak fins
Here are the four images that Midjourney spit out - it did not capture everything in my prompt, but it was pretty close.
I upscaled the image that I liked most:
Then I asked it to do four “strong variations” of the latest image. Here is what i got:
Then, I went back to the original image and tried “subtle variation”
The speed of the iterations blew me away. It took 6 minutes from when I wrote my initial prompt to get to this point. Incredible.
Blending my own images
I also tried the /blend prompt, which allows you to merge two of your own images. Here are real photos of a real kitchen that I designed (photos courtesy of Space Theory):
And here are Midjourney’s results:
After playing around in Midjourney, I landed on this image:
That is when things got a bit creepy. Up to this point, I was just having fun, but this image hit a bit too close to home. Here is my Revit sketch for the kitchen design in my house. Look familiar?
At a gut level, I think I like Midjourney’s version better. What do you think?
My next step is to keep learning about this latest generation of AI tools and find out how they can help me as an architect.