ooooIYKYK, ISSUE #oo22
Back in the day when my original Audi website Fourtitude.com was hitting its stride, I earned a backhanded compliment – a nickname from a good friend from Audi public relations in Europe. To my friend, I became known as “The man knows too much.”
Was that a good thing? I guess it depends on who’s speaking.
Early on, before I’d risen to enough prominence where I’d get my own face time with Audi AG board members and ask them my own questions, I’d come to rely on staying informed. Read a lot, pay a lot of attention, learn to qualify sources and you start to hear the rhythm. You know who has access to those at the top, and you can start to guess where even their earliest information might be premature considerations and not locked-in product set to come out… but no less important so long as you manage expectations when you share it.
When I learned Audi planned a supercharged V6 for the B8 S4, my friend at Autoblog with whom I’d shared that information said “no way”. At that point, Audi hadn’t produced an engine with a supercharger since the pre-war Silver Arrow era. When I heard Audi would relaunch the 5-cylinder in the Mk2 TT RS, there was similar skepticism. Knowing that early helped me build a reputation that had major magazines and websites regularly using Fourtitude as a source when working up some Audi intel.
I’d been making photoshop renderings for years by then as well, and, at the time, Audi’s consistent and formulaic approach to styling cues or wheel fitment also resulted in predictability. When I learned box flares would expand to the B8 RS models following their return on the C6 RS 6, it wasn’t hard to take an A5 Coupé image and project what the RS 5 would look like – box flares, front fascia, peelers and all. The rendering in this story was created in 2008, well before the actual car dropped and at an accuracy level that surprised even me.
Having those images and that information ahead of time was soul food for enthusiasts, but probably not that desirable for those in charge of messaging Audi’s product cadence. It’s in that context my European friend hit me with the “Man Who Knows Too Much” moniker. We were good friends, but we also knew what that meant. Board members and engineers liked to chat with me because I was a fan of the marque and sincerely appreciated what they were doing. To me, they were celebrities. However, when you get that consistent at predicting, perhaps in some sense you become a liability.
That brings me to this week. I’d been photoshopping literally for decades by the time I started playing with Midjourney’s A.I. image tools three years ago. I’ve watched the rendering game grow considerably in that time. And though rendering hadn’t been able to project where design would go like Audi’s game-changing design of the Concept C, it’s already able to animate those renderings and show them rolling down the street or rotating to be seen from different angles.
Even since Concept C dropped just a few weeks ago, new tools and capabilities have come online for those of us using them. The pace is so fast now that it was just days before the first imaginings of more Audi models featuring that design hit the internet. I’ve created and published a few myself.
This week, Autocar published several images of their own – an A4 e-tron and a G-Wagen-like SUV to illustrate an intel story they’d wanted to run. Those images have circulated heavily, fooling many in the know into thinking these were actual finalized Audi designs.
Then, this week, I started playing with a new tool that’s even more impressive. No, it’s not perfect, but what we’re able to do now with rendering tools and at such a pace is remarkable. Autocar is just one example of how I am far from the only one who’s begun to imagine out a range of Audi models since the Concept C’s design dropped just weeks ago.
This week, I found myself in a discussion over those Autocar renderings of an A4 e-tron and G-Wagen-like SUV, questioning whether Audi released them themselves. Audi hadn’t, but the pace and quality of the images has caused many to question whether we were actually looking at new Audi models.
We aren’t… at least not yet. But I can see where more people working at car companies might be alarmed by this pace… especially designers.
In my opinion, there’s no replacement for talented designers. Seeing a paradigm shift design such as Concept C is something AI can’t do… at least not yet. However, it is capable enough nowadays that I do wonder if executives who don’t appreciate the art of design, working at brands that don’t demand such originality or prioritize profits over salaries might simply lean on AI as a stand-in. I hope that doesn’t happen, yet at the same time the reality is that some lesser or more profit-driven companies will do it anyway.
So where does all this go? I wish I knew too much here, but I fear I know too little. I find the destination is unknown even if the pace is quickening. For me at least, I plan to support companies like Audi who are intentional about leading with design and technology that includes imaginative talent leading that strategy. These tools are amazing, and ignoring tools simply because they are intimidating will only come at a cost for those who aren’t willing to embrace the future or help steer where this all goes. However, we need leaders to guide and Audi design has been just this sort of leader for as long as I can remember.
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