AI is definitely with us, from ordering online to hearing about how things are deep faked; it seems a world away from my childhood computers Spectrum and Commodore 64 where you waited hours for a cassette to load. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how AI can work in planning and I’ve been struggling to see how something like planning, that is generally quite subjective, such as whether a building looks good, or fits well into a space, could benefit from the logic AI brings. Could AI interpret planning policy? Can AI determine community needs and provide the best solution for meeting these? Will AI be able to manage developers expectations and planning officers questions? I’m sure that in the not so distant future the answer to all these questions will be yes, though it will still need planners to input the information and determine the right balance of land use. However, in the short term I think AI has a role in setting out the images of what developments could look like in several different scenarios and allowing people to pick the best design. A kind of render preference that’s available in seconds. No more waiting for complicated plans to be revealed to get an idea of what something will look like. I recently stumbled upon an app where you can upload an image of a room or a house elevation and then AI will take a few seconds to alter the image into a style of your choice. The photo above shows a 1950’s house I took a picture of this morning, and what it would look like in a contemporary style. The image took less than a few seconds to produce. I’m not sure about the water feature to the front, though we have had enough rain to allow this to occur naturally, but the uplighters, windows, and palette did get me thinking and more importantly visualizing what could be possible for the owners. If this is the start, and AI allows more people to visualize planning and how their environments can look, then I think that’s got to be welcomed.