Will AI Make Home Renovations Easier?
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With artificial intelligence, creating an ethical foundation isn't just the right thing to do, is crucial to success. Join IBM of the break to hear why from federal binet eris IBM consult into global leader for trustworthy ai.

How would you go about planning a home renovation look of dream homes on real estate websites? Maybe leave through the wall street journal's luxury home section? Whatever your inspiration, IT can be really stressful, even for the professionals .

beating my head against the world numerous times over and over again. Do I have the best option here? This doesn't make sense.

Kate over. Hoff is a contractor from the suburbs near grand rabbits, michigan. But for a recent project to renovate one of his own houses, he kept running into a mental block, so he turned to artificial intelligence for help.

I just thought to myself, there was something out there that could take these limitations that I have and explore all the options versus me doing three plus iterations. This one footprint, t IT, was saving me a ton of time after .

some searching on redit over hf found a tool that uses A I models to help come up with flow plans for home renovations. Though this being A I there were some corks along the way.

came up with five different generations, and then each of them had really interesting layouts that you go. I don't think I want my living room to be A Z shape, but he gave me a really nice bedroom off the back of the house.

Ultimately, he says that helped him settle on a final design IT.

Just give me another option to look at, even though I didn't make sense. For example, with that, Z, J. Living room created look for a Better man I never thought of and and SHE ended up using them some way on the main floor. IT was an exactly the way I designed, but IT defined where I want to go with the bathroom that super cool.

Artificial intelligence models are everywhere these days. And A I is increasingly becoming integrated into tools to help people with their home renovations.

A I tools can also help you visualize the possibilities, so you can present them to your architect or designer to help explain exactly what you want.

W, S, J, reporter Nancy kites covers real estate architecture and design.

In the past, homeowners attended to allow architects to kind of control the design process, but this gives the home on or the language to understand what the architect can tell me about, to show them what exactly they mean .

from the wall street journal. This is the future of everything. I'm danny Lewis. today. I'm sitting down with Nancy to talk about how A I tools are changing the relationship between nars and the people they hire to help make their dream homes a reality stick around.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator IBM consulting global leader for trust. The A I IT starts with .

asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we ultimately want to have with A I? The purpose of the I is not meant to display human beings that is meant to to augment intelligence. Students, you have a glimmer in your eye about how you're thinking you might want to use A I then asking the questions like what would be required in order to earn people's trust in such a model.

Nancy, working A I be applied .

to so many different industries and businesses right now, including home renovations and construction. Who are these new AI power tools for?

So some of the A I tools are aimed directly at homers, and those tend to be the most basic ones for refurnishing a room or choosing a new pen color. They are fully about aesthetics. So you upload a photo of an existing space, and the A I A gives you options for where things can go and how different materials, finishes and colors might look.

Other A I tools are aimed at the architects and designers are. They can pull from previous drinks and integrate site information, like where the latest and grave and client information, how lines plan to use the rooms to help come up with different plans. There are AI apps that measure spaces accurately for ordering purposes, as well as total planning tools, which let them create an integrated task management system that all of the subcontractors and sometimes even homeowners can access.

Okay, so say, I want to renovate the living room in my apartment, how my day I help me to do that.

If you're just changing the furniture or the pain or adding trap's, the air tools can help you visualize different options. So in the past, the designer would take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. They charged by the hour, and you can get crazy to provide that same service.

These a IOS come back with hundreds of possibilities in minutes. You can tweet them to make them more true to an existing room. So if there's already a window in a certain place or a closet, then the AI will work around that.

You maintain the location of that window or closet or you can go all out and change everything and and just sometimes the things that comes up a really fantastical like what? So there's a room in my house, just off the main bedroom that my husband have used of the gesture. But now that my kids had grown up and moved out, we can use their room.

So this room was sort of wasted space. As a reporter covering home design architecture for the wall street journal, l, you can imagine, I see a lot walk in closets, and I started to get really envious of that. So I decided to test some of the AI apps to see if they could help me visualize that room as a walk in closet.

The results were mixed. I was able to get an idea of the best place to put close rax and doors and the apps game. A good idea that different looks I could go for, for example, what I would need to use to make IT look more modern or maybe coastal.

But some of the results were completely ridiculous ous. They added windows or changed the outdoor scenery they put in a palm tree in one case, and I live in organ with one up, I had to specify that I didn't want to tailor to a male closet because the keep returning to results of spaces for, like men, suits. There are measurable tools I could have used, but the at makers and contractors I interviews that they aren't hundred percent after at which means i'd still have to hire some to actually measure the space to make sure that what I bought fit. But I didn't make me feel like I could go to ika and buy some closet staff and have IT installed LED or even installed at myself as long as the assurement for the correct in terms .

of some of the really complex parts of renovation, like reading blueprints or this can help communicate between the homeowner and the contractors and architects, everyone who they're working with. How do these new tools facilitate all that?

Some A I tools will let you click on products that matter, actually ve in some of them, you can figure out which material if you want, and then click and buy that material so that that sort of a streamline thing for the homonym.

If you're knocking down a wall or adding like a bar in your living room that needs plumbing, then the A I tools can also help you visualize the possibilities so you can present into your architect or designer to help explain exactly what you want. You still have to hire someone who knows which walls are structurally significant and wear to put the pipes. But many home hers I spoke with expressed frustration to me that they didn't speak the same language of architecture and design so that the AI generated images gave them more power in relationship.

For example, if you're looking at a staircase, uh, the architect will talk about the trees and the fanie ers and the home, or might not know exactly which part of the staircase they've referring to, but if they can show a photo of what they want, the steps to look, which is sort of a layman's term, then that can help. So they wanted to be cantal lever d, which means floating. You know, they can show that rather than having to know the word cantal liver .

floating just ahead. Could A I tools help home owners save some money on expensive home renovations? Or might those pesky hallucinations, like kid over hoops, z shaped living room get in the way that after the break?

Nani, you mention these apps coming up with some strange design choices that's like the hlubis ation that current generation A I models like open a ChatGPT and google german I are suspect ble to. Is that a concern with A I being used to plan homey models?

It's like any A I tls. Like you said, they all make mistakes. And so the key is knowing that when you're going in, so knowing they're not perfect and there might be errors. And I don't think this should be a big concern.

For example, if you know that a building code structural changes are going to be required, architect will have the experience and knowledge so that they can use as A I tools, knowing also what they've learned. And I think you have to rely on your knowledge of what you're doing to understand. So for example, we all know that chair, simple ceiling, and that's a really simplified example of that. But you can kind of .

played out and how many these tools change the relationship between toros and the professional renovators.

IT can help. And I can hurt architects and designers, a lot of them I spoke with. They dread the idea clients presenting them with A I generated plants and ideas they were, they won't make sense, have a lot of education and their trained in this field.

And it's of amateur hour. It's a little bit like how a doctor might feel someone comes in arms with information from the internet. You have to think about why are you hiring and architect? I mean, one of the reasons just for their atheling, their eyes, A I tos can really help communications tween contractors and subs and architects and homeowner like the whole process.

It's all in one place. And that eliminates that telephone game where one person said something and one person misinterprets IT. If it's all there, they're all in the same document.

And y're, are you looking at the same comment? IT completely lower the potential for this communication and for the blame and things aren't rate. What consult and selves said they see in the future is that these tools will be integrated. So there will be opposition consolidation. To the point work, you can use just one package that brings everyone into the process, and you just need one out.

Even simple renovations can be really expensive. A A project can cost tens of thousands of dollars, even millions, depending on the work being done in recent research by harvard universities, joint center for housing studies projects that american hoodlums could spend four hundred and sixty six billion dollars annually on renovations and repairs by twenty twenty five. Could I tools help bring some of those costs down?

The reason that renovations cost so much, there's two main factors, labor and materials, and those are determined by market forces and can't do anything really about that. But what A I can do is help owners understand what materials they want, what work they won't done, and help them understand that more clearly so that the process is more efficient.

A iops can also help architects and contractors streamline their process, which can mean less time spent on the projects of fewer labor costs. They can also help contractors reduce errors, which also reduces the cost. A I can change how much wood costs or steel costs, and they can change how much you have to pay your plummer, but they can help streamline the process so that news costs can be as long.

Nancy kids covers real estate architecture and design for the wall street trento.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This epsom was produced by me, danny Lewis mixing and sound designed by Michael level. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible, A I looks like in practice. Here's fator able energy from IBM consulting, again, on why that begins with data.

my favorite definition of the word, data. It's an architect of human experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us, but we have to be brave enough and introspective enough to look into the mirror.

And does this reflect actually alive to my organization values? If IT allies betrays parent about, why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't align that when you know you need to change .

your entire approach, learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM dot com splash consulting.