As originally reported by TorqueCafe, General Motors, which is the parent for brands including Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Vauxhall and formerly Holden, has celebrated the technology and its ability to bolster efficiency.
While the company said AI is being used in the design process, General Motors said that it’s not about replacing human design but augmenting it.
“AI’s best use isn’t in taking over car design,” the company said, clarifying that it’s best used alongside “human creativity that’s so critical to the process of building great cars”.
General Motors director of design innovation and technology operations Bryan Styles said the company is looking at ways it can harness the technology, and design is one of them.
“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,” he 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.”
GM creative designer Daniel Shapiro said AI has reduced the time from a base design reaching its next steps, thanks to AI visualisation tools.
“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 visualisation 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.”
GM Virtual Integration Engineering director Rene Strauss said this technology makes a two-week process instant.
“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,” 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.”
That being said, Shapiro said that the way a car feels and looks is still a human decision, and sometimes AI can even be a barrier for that.
“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.”
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