AI is no longer a completely dirty word, with car brands now openly admitting to not only trialling the technology, but actively using it.
General Motors – the American giant which owns Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick – is hailing the advent of AI as being a crucial tool to increase efficiency and reduce wait times.
The carmaker says that “AI’s best use isn’t in taking over car design” and that instead it’s best used to augment “the human creativity that’s so critical to the process of building great cars”, which extends from design to engineering.
“We’ve been super focused on how we can most effectively ride this coming wave of AI… our goal really is to pioneer the future of transportation with AI,” GM’s director of design innovation and technology operations, Bryan Styles said.
“We’re applying it in a way that enhances the skills that we’re already good at… We’re thinking about it from the perspective of augmenting and accelerating processes.”
For Daniel Shapiro, one of GM’s creative designers who has been experimenting with AI visualisation tools, the use of the technology has expedited the time it takes from a vehicle’s base design to reach its next steps.
“Our starting point here is design intention. Human creativity sets the vision, AI helps us see the outcomes of that vision sooner,” Shapiro said.
“Traditionally, going from design sketch to high‑quality animation would have taken multiple teams multiple months of work. Now this can be all done in less than a day by a single designer, and you don’t have to have extensive 3D visualization skills like you did before.
“Instead of just going down this one path, we can explore so much more, and you can be a bit less precious with the ideas. I don’t want to exaggerate here, but it’s changed the way we do our work on a daily basis.
“AI isn’t a one‑click solution. We’re working with it and we’re often working against it to get the result we want. This is where human taste and decision‑making really matter the most. We’re still the ones deciding what feels like a Buick, a GMC, a Cadillac, and in this case, a Chevy.”
In addition to design, GM says it’s employing AI in its vehicle engineering processes, extending to the likes of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations which can influence the next round of development.
“It used to take about two weeks for us to do a full cycle of this sort of design and engineering iteration. And now what we’re looking at is instant,” says GM Virtual Integration Engineering director Rene Strauss said.
“With just a few clicks, it reads the surface. Less than one minute later, now we’ve got the results… We could have made a decision about the roofline in about one minute, 18 seconds. It’s a game changer.”
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