When I first entered the studio, I had not been exposed to how powerful AI could be. I knew that AI had been growing at an astronomical rate and was becoming a more mainstream idea, but I was yet to explore it myself. I had always believed that AI could be used as a tool to help kick-start the creative process because it could generate ideas quickly and accurately. One could use those AI-generated ideas to add to their overall project idea and aid the iterative process.

When starting our process, we used an AI image generator named Midjourney to get basic ideas on how we would tackle the project and how we would combine the two ideas of robotics and humans. Midjourney could give us interpretations of a human with a robot arm, but we then realized that that idea needed to be more complex for what we were going for in our project. We then started researching how robotics could help in the medical field, which ended up sparking a flame in our design process. After shifting our focus to medical robotics, we input a prompt into Midjourney to help kick-start our designs of medical-looking robot arms. After looking at what Midjourney had come up with when it came to medical robots, I started to design a robot arm of my own in rhino 3d. The main programs that Jake and I utilized in this project were Midjourney and chatgpt. They both helped maximize our time in the day by helping us do simple tasks like finding a name for the sculpture and giving us creative direction. When I first got onto chatgpt, I was astonished at how fast the program worked and with incredible accuracy. I felt the same way with Midjourney because the program seems impossible. AI tools should be an option in school to help kids save time and create better products.

AI has come a long way and has become a useful tool for people in the design space. I could definitely see myself using these tools in the future, not just at Nuvu but also at beaver when I need some inspiration or to help me dive into a project when I have no ideas flowing in my head. Being in a situation where you want to get started on an idea but are faced with some mental roadblocks is very aggravating, and these AI tools could help clear those. AI has become so powerful that I could not imagine not taking advantage of all it has to offer.