César Bremer Pinheiro & Maurício Pinheiro

In the mood to do something different, a few days ago I decided to venture into the field of design. This arrangement had some obstacles such as lack of time and also my complete lack of drawing skills. I was looking for something seemingly simple that would be the design of a chair, for this I needed ideas and that they were really creative drawings that could serve as inspiration to develop a real project.

I have an excellent competence in CAD systems (Computer Aided Design) and once I have a sketch I can easily convert it into a real project. Due to my complete incompetence to design a chair that could really draw attention, I decided to go into Artificial Intelligence and see if I could get something that was really inspiring.

Given the “fever” that the Artificial Intelligence software “ChatGPT” is causing, I decided to investigate its website (https://openai.com/) and see if there was any tool that could help me with the task. And didn’t I discover DALL-E!? DALL-E is a tool that converts text to images. On its page (https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/) there is a small description of this tool. I signed up and was ready to find out if Artificial Intelligence would be able to help me with this design task. The first question I asked was: Draw a rocking chair. To my dismay I received the four suggestions below.

Not that they were bad, but way below my expectations.

One of the things that I got was the low quality of the drawings. I would have to order something with higher quality. I rephrased the question now: Draw a rocking chair in high quality and definition.

Even so, much less than expected. Where would the problem be, in the software or in the questions? I believed I would be in the questions and moved on.

As I wanted something unusual, I decided to explore a style for the chairs and chose the Niemeyer style. Oscar Niemeyer was a famous Brazilian architect and as far as I know, he didn’t venture into chair design. But my curiosity!… I thought, what will be suggested for a chair in the Niemeye style. How about asking: Draw a wooden rocking chair in the Niemeyer style.

The chairs above were generated from various interactions with the software, asking questions and refining them. Now the Design proposals have started to fill my eyes! Now I decided to do something really different, lol. In my interactions I mixed the Niemeyer Style with Salvador Dalí.

The vast majority of these suggestions are unfeasible from a practical point of view, either due to lack of ergonomics or even manufacturing difficulties, but they are certainly excellent inspirations to do something innovative.

The variations are countless and depend on the creativity of the questions to be asked. Below others…

Would you like to see swivel chairs?

I followed a series of drawings that can serve as inspiration for the development of a viable and innovative chair project.

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I showed the DALL-E to a friend, Silvania Coelho, who decided to explore its resources. She initially wanted to write about “Electronic Cigarette”. Below are some DALL-E drawings on the subject.

Afterwards, she wrote about the danger of children’s backpacks at school, as younger children want to copy older ones and exchange backpacks on wheels (more appropriate) for backpacks on the back. Below some images.

Also on the subject Backpacks, below image generated by DALL-E of scoliosis resulting from the use of backpacks.

Here’s the question: What professions will become obsolete by simply replacing labor with AI?

To answer this question I suggest Kai-Fu Lee (September 25, 2018). AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Boston, Mass.

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