Open AI in the Design Process To what extent can text-to-image-Software support future architects in the early design process? Ines Werker, Kinza Beneich Cologne University of Applied Sciences ines_viviane.werker@smail.th-koeln.de, kinza.beneich@smail.th-koeln.de The laborious creation of digital images could soon be a thing of the past. Text-to-image software generates images from text descriptions through artificial intelligence, the AI can map entirely new concepts and create images in a variety of artistic styles. Existing text-to-image software is already publicly available, but does it live up to its promise, and can it be more useful to architects in their search for inspiration than previous software that uses visual search to display images?In this paper, we address the opportunities and problems of text-to-image software. To answer our question, we use a key study, this is divided into two user groups. The subjects of group A are to use DALL·E 2 to search for inspiration for a design whose task is: Design a museum with a boat dock. The same design task is also given to the subjects of group B, with the difference that they are to use Pinterest to find inspiration.We will then contrast the results of these surveys. We will document the differences of the user experience and the output of DALL·E 2 to Pinterest as well as about advantages and disadvantages of DALL·E 2 and possible future developments, and application areas of text-to-image software. Keywords: text-to-image, DALL·E 2, Pinterest, early design process, picture generating, inspirational searching, AI
INTRODUCTION The constant development of technology has also changed the teaching of architecture. What was drawn on paper a few years ago - whether the most elaborate construction details or entire designs now takes place in computational tools. Gathering inspiration has also changed. Today's generation of architecture students is relying less and less on newspapers or books. It is one of the most widely used source of inspiration these days is social media. Pinterest is well suited for collecting inspiration. Using pinboards, any images or videos can be sorted
into categories and held on to. In addition to architecture posts, Pinterest is also used to share posts about animals, tattoos, art of all kinds, beauty and much more (Rodríguez Barros, D. & Mandagarán, M., 2012). These and other applications of this kind entice users to stay for a long time, especially due to their sophisticated algorithms. These show the user an almost endless sequence of image-related or content-related posts. Especially in the context of architecture, image-based search can be optimally used to sift through similar design ideas. A relatively