It’s no secret that the biggest topic in just about every industry right now is the way that artificial intelligence can change – and in many cases, already is changing – the way work is done. There are positives and negatives to this AI boom for all fields, but in an industry like AEC where skilled worker shortages are having major negative effects, the positives are readily apparent. Even in the nascent stages of this trend, we’re already seeing the ways these tools are making an impact on the space, something that we’ve covered extensively here at Geo Week News over the last few months.
Below are a few examples of the ways we’ve seen that AI is already making an impact on the AEC industry. Included are a few new product launches from the last handful of months which heavily incorporate AI into workflows. Along with those product launches, we also have some examples of how AI has been talked about at industry events (including Geo Week 2024), and an opinion piece on the technology working in concert with other emerging trends.
Geo Week 2024’s opening keynote focuses on a changing AEC industry
This year’s edition of Geo Week in Denver, Colorado was kicked off with a day one keynote focused on the changing AEC industry, headlined by an opening presentation from POWER Engineer’s Claire Rutkowski, which was followed by a panel discussion on the same topic. This was a wide-ranging discussion looking at the myriad ways the industry is changing, but as one can imagine artificial intelligence was a big theme throughout. As with any industry, it’s nearly impossible to talk about all of the ways things will change without mentioning AI, and this discussion not only touched on the positives, but also some of the potential drawbacks of this approach.
Poliark introduces new generative AI-based design platform
While in the mainstream coverage of AI the generative tools (think ChatGPT, DALL-E, and the new Sora video tool) get the bulk of the attention, it’s generally other types of AI that make the biggest difference in AEC today. However, Poliark’s new design platform bucks that trend by heavily incorporating generative AI tools into the design workflow. Geo Week News spoke with founder and CEO Eda Arol about the motivations behind building this tool, the ways she sees it being used, and whether or not we should be worried about generative AI in design leading to a collection of very similar buildings all around us.
Four key takeaways from Autodesk University 2023
Towards the end of every year, AEC professionals come together for Autodesk University, always one of the largest industry events on the calendar. This year’s event was in Las Vegas, and hit on plenty of trending technologies that we see popping up in new products every day. To no one’s surprise, AI was perhaps the most prominent theme, with new products around AI being announced and the technology taking center stage during the opening keynote given by President and CEO Andrew Anagnost.
Graphisoft Introduces Archicad AI Visualizer
Here we have another new product that once again takes advantage of the advances in generative AI for design, albeit this time from a company that has been working in the AEC design and BIM space for a long time. Graphisoft’s Archicad AI Visualizer “creates detailed 3D visualizations during the early design stages thanks to a simple user interface optimized for architecture and interior design.”
Avvir announces product updates for more efficient construction workflows
Our last highlight on the new product side gets away from the design phase and moves into ways AI can be used and is being used through other parts of the construction lifecycle. Avvir’s latest platform updates included new features around clash detection, user generated inspect reports, and project metrics, all of which utilize artificial intelligence to make that work more efficient. As noted in this writeup, the generative AI gets most of the attention, but it’s these kinds of automated tools that will likely make the biggest impact in AEC, at least initially.
How the AI boom should serve to expand digital twin capabilities
Finally, we have an opinion piece centered around two of the biggest buzzwords you’ll hear today in the AEC industry: AI and digital twins. In the piece, we discuss how digital twins have in some ways fallen out of favor as a buzzword, with AI taking up a lot of this space. Much of this is necessary as companies, especially those on the smaller side, need to follow the latest trends for funding purposes, but the reality is that these two technologies complement each other extremely well.
