A little less than two years ago, the thing that was on my wish list was whether we can, in a photorealistic way, render a nighttime image without using Photoshop, without using any 3D program, and that wishful thinking is a reality. Now we are looking forward to this journey where AI is our co-pilot, where works with us, hand in hand, assists us. Basically, we are creative people and the thought process that we have, if we manage to make AI understand what we want, it is of great benefit to us. It is of great importance, I would say, now that I'm seeing the full potential of it.

My name is Martin Klaassen and welcome to Light Talk. I'm excited to announce that I'm embarking on a new series of interviews and this time it will be into a sort of an unknown the world of artificial intelligence. It might be alien to some, it might be exciting to others, but it's sure that it's no longer a buzzword. It's really here already and it's already creeping into our daily lives. So to understand more about the world of AI and how it will impact our professional lighting design, I'll be interviewing trailblazers and early adopters to sort of get into their minds and find out how they use and why they use AI, how it improves their workflows, maybe, which kind of AI tools they're using, how they approach the integration of AI into their teams or in their company. But I will also be asking them questions about any concerns that they may have about intellectual properties and about privacy and potentially also the need for standardization into the industry of lighting when it comes to the use and integration of AI. So I'm really excited about this and I hope these chats will give you also some insights and some meaningful understanding of what AI has to offer for us as lighting designers in the future. Us as lighting designers in the future.

Enjoy this next interview with lighting designer Faraz Izzar Faraz. Welcome to Light Talk, Thank you, and for the benefit of our audience, I think it's probably good if we can start with a little bit of context. Where are you from? What are you doing in your daily life, so people understand who I'm talking with?

Sure? Hi everyone. My name is Faraz Azhar and I'm an architectural lighting designer based in Dubai. I've been in the industry now for almost 20 years, I think. Yes, next year will be my 20-year anniversary, and mostly I've been in the region, In fact, anniversary and mostly I've been in the region. In fact, I've been in the UAE ever since I started my career. I am a trained architect, but I decided to have. My interest was always lighting design, so I decided to take that leap of faith and, yes, that proved to be quite a fantastic decision for myself, and I'm a part of a multidisciplinary company called AE7 in Dubai and we do all sorts of from architectural to landscape disciplines, to ID and master planning. We have all under one roof, and two years back, I started the specialist lighting division over here and I'm leading it at the moment. So, yeah, that's in a nutshell.

Okay. Was there a specific trigger when you were doing architectural design that said oh, lighting is actually much more interesting than architecture. Was there something specific that just triggered you to move to lighting?

Yes, martin, I actually, when I landed up here in Dubai back in 2002, I would say I was fascinated by the city, of course, and the last part of that fascination was how the buildings appeared in the night and at that time it was all starting. I mean, it was already there, people were conscious, but there were a few buildings which stood out Burj Al Arab, for that matter. During that time it stood very uniquely. It still stands uniquely now, but even at that time it was having those color-changing scenarios and the architecture of it is, you know, it's so beautiful. And then when you play with light on such kind of a structure, such kind of a monument, it kind of changes the whole perception. So that's what triggered me to foray a little bit more into this domain and discipline and after two years of my career as a pure design architect, I got a chance to switch over in 2005. And, yeah, it's been a great journey, absolutely, absolutely.

Now we're here to talk about AI specifically and the impact of that on the future of lighting and lighting design. Just as a starter, how do you feel about AI, what is your feeling about it and what do you think just off the bat right now what it will do to our profession?

I would say, martin, that we know that there is a lot of noise right now when it comes to AI. A lot of people are saying a lot of things but like, in fact, you said it, it's already here. It's not that it's going to come or we have to wait for something. It's already here and there is no choice but to adapt. And, having said that, I started my experiments with AI back in 2022. It's not that long anyway, and it's developing so fast. So when I started it, I realized that this has a great potential and very soon at that point in time, I thought that, okay, this has a potential of getting into our workflows. At that time, it was still in the initial stages and we couldn't use it, of course, for the profession as such, but then, because of the rapid advancement and rapid development, I never realized when the time came, when I was incorporating everything in my workflows, when I started first, and then I trained my team to start on it. And now I'm happy to say that we have happily adapted to those workflows and we are looking forward to this journey where AI is our co-pilot, where it works with us hand-in-hand, assists us and it kind of makes our narratives, the thing that we have in our mind to build. Basically, we are creative people and the thought process that we have. If we manage to make AI understand what we want, it is of great benefit to us.

It is of great importance, I would say, now that I'm seeing the full potential of it and it's there. There's no denying the fact that it is going to get more, deeper and deeper into our workflows. Right now, we have a limitation of using it mostly during the early concepts and in the early narratives, but the day is not far when it finds its way into the production workflows. It's starting to do that actually, and I think it's just a matter of maybe, if not six months, then maximum a year. Then I think we would be doing BIM production drawings with the help of AI. We would be doing all kinds of working drawings. We'd be doing, I would say, all the project documentation with the help of AI. So it's here and I am actually on the bandwagon at the moment and I love it.

We'll unpack that a bit further down. I want to go one step back because there must be a moment. Just like you were certainly caught by lighting and lighting design, was there something specific that caught your attention in terms of AI? Because, I mean, for myself, it's just the noise in the social media and what you read about it that triggered it for me. Not that I got really confronted with AI specifically, but you see people using it, people like yourself who are online and promoting that also at events. What was it for you? Because you are sort of an early trailblazer in this.

There must be something, maybe different, that triggered you to dive into AI uh, yes, martin, I would say that it was.

Uh, see, the first thing that caught my attention was, of course, the quality of the visuals, and at that time it was not doing very good with respect to lighting design, but as generic visuals I was. I used to think that if it is doing such things with the architecture, such kind of artistic interpretation of what I'm saying, what I'm writing as a prompt, if it is doing such good things with with a generic language, with just a cognitive language, sort of recognition, imagine what it would do with lighting. So, and the second thing was that I started SlowMart and, though I am using it for a very long time, at that time also, there was a lot of noise, but I decided to filter myself out, just concentrate on a couple of tools which I thought would be great in the future, in the days to come. And the first tool that piqued my interest was Midjourney, of course, and it is still my favorite tool, by far the most powerful of them all, I would say, at the moment. And once I started with it, I realized that, you know, this thing is going to work great with lighting design once it understands, and back, I think, during, most probably in 2023,.

I did an interview where Ray Maloney asked me that, faraz, do you think that AI might be able to do the architectural lighting renderings for us? For example, if you got a daytime perspective, can AI turn it into a nighttime? So during that time I said that yes, it is very much possible. At that point in time it was just a wishful thinking. Yes, it was about 2023 or end of 2022, I suppose At that point in time it was just a wishful thinking, but I told him that yes, it is very much possible and it is probably something that I'm looking forward to, to see that how it reacts.

And I'm surprised to see this, martin, that with the very latest update that ChatGPT got, you are doing those things. It's amazing. I mean, I've just started experimenting with it just about two, three days ago, because it's a very latest update. I think it's just about a week or eight days old. It's doing that. Basically, what you're doing is you are feeding it the JPEG image or high-resolution image that you got from the architects or interior designers. You are in a very straightforward language. It's not even limited to complex prompting anymore, the way it started early on. Right now, like we are speaking, you just converse with your AI and you have the option to use the headset as well. You just speak your thoughts, thoughts, and then it's churning out, it's turning those images into, you know, night time.

So you don't talk, but you can actually use the voice control to achieve this.

Absolutely, absolutely, and I don't know whether I can share the screen on this in this particular situation, but I would have loved to show this and it's it's here existing sitting on my system as well, but it's, it's, it's a great tool with this addition uh, I mean the thing that was just a visual thinking just about two, less than two years ago.

Maybe it's, it's possible now, out of so many other things, obviously are you the only one doing that in your company, or do you have a bigger team, because you seem to be the driver? But you also need people with like-minded ideas.

Absolutely, right now, martin, the whole team is doing it. Absolutely, no, no, no, right now, martin, the whole team is doing it. Because the good thing is, Martin, that at AE7, their own vision is to promote these tools. So it sits very well with the company vision the use of AI tools and the use of the AI, whether it's a production tool, whether it's a visual tool. So the company kind of promotes it in a way that we get future ready and we move ahead with time, we evolve with time.

So right now, just and I'm talking about it basically right now but this has happened just in the last two, three days ago, I gave my whole team a quick demonstration of what can be done and what can be achieved, and they are amazed. And now, since the last three days, everybody is experimenting with mid-journey chat, gpt, image generation and even the BIM workflows. If my BIM guys get stuck somewhere, stuck somewhere, with the help of visual aids, with the help of screenshots, they are asking AI to resolve their queries, to resolve their problems, and they are getting the solutions hands-on. You don't have to go to the IT support, you don't have to contact the Revit guys or BIM support or Autodesk. You're getting the live solutions right in front of your screen and so it's a very inspiring thing, right A lot of.

I don't think there's an age barrier. I mean, I look at myself I'm 70, and I'm diving headfirst into it, even though I started my career with no computer. So you can imagine how that has changed my life. But I always say never a dull moment in lighting and lighting design, the evolution of technology and all that. But I can imagine that there may be some people that have some apprehension and they say, oh, but I guess if you, as the leader, show the way and you can even demonstrate what kind of inspiring things can be done, you get probably a very enthusiastic team following you.

Absolutely. And I'm lucky in that respect, martin, because when I explained, when I started explaining things to them, I was apprehensive because, like you said, that not everybody takes it, you know, in a good way. Some people perceive it to be a threat, some people are still uncomfortable, Some people think that it will replace us in a way. It can never happen. The humans will always drive it. It will, it's it's. It is an assistant to now, it will be assistant, an assistant tomorrow and it will be an assistant forever. It will, it will always be the co-pilot mode which will drive the things forward. Ai cannot do anything by itself, so it's the humans that are driving it. So I'm lucky that the team understood and they are right now. Even right now, as I speak, I'm getting whatsapp from my team members. Let's see, this is what I produced. This is, this is a render that I did right now.

So you feel the younger generation is more adept to it than the older generation, or does that doesn't?

matter. It doesn't matter, martin, it doesn't matter, Martin, it doesn't matter. It's basically, it's the personal, I would say the. You know, person to person the perception varies. It does not. I don't see anything with respect to generation. There is nothing related to the generation in it.

You mentioned. Bim and digital twins and things like that. Yes, what is the connection between what you currently feel can be done as lighting design and your lighting design process and the actual, you know, the whole digital world that is being created in terms of, I think, the whole building process and maybe even commissioning?

Yeah, you see, it's still very early to say, but then we can always speculate, and we can always the way that things are moving at the moment. Uh, just some days ago, just less, a little less than two years ago, uh, the thing that that was on my wish list was whether we can, in a photorealistic way, render a nighttime image without using Photoshop, without using any 3D program, and that wishful thinking is a reality now. So, similar to that. I think there are a couple of things which would be happening in the future with respect to the production workflows as well. Right now, mostly things that I'm talking about, and the things that I talk about are related to the early stages of the projects, thus the early narratives, the conceptual storyboarding.

But, having said that, the way things are progressing at the moment, I am seeing that very soon, I foresee that there will be some kind of integration with the BIM and the CAD workflows.

Maybe there will be AI run scripts which will automate the processes very fast, and Adobe is already doing it to some extent. Doing it to some extent, it's already bringing in all the machine learning tools within the Photoshop interface and its other softwares as well, and there might be an integration with the lighting simulation softwares as well, where you just I mean, see, okay, you, you would be doing the fine tuning later. But if to for, for a quick start, if you can tell dialects or relux that this is the space, this is the property of this space, these would be the finishes based on your thinking, do a basic lighting layout and it should be this kind of a narrative. It should, it should work, this feeling, it would, it should work this emotion and dialects does it, should evoke this feeling. It should evoke this emotion and Dialects does it for you, it calculates and it generates the output. So I think that it's all possible now, martin, it's going to happen, I'm sure it is.

I'm sure it is. It sounds overwhelming to me, to be honest, and I even think that maybe it needs some retraining from some people in terms of how to prompt and how to do things. But overall, I think it's very exciting what the outcomes can be and how we can facilitate our workflow, as you mentioned, do you?

think there are some applications more suited to this than others, or does it really not matter? In terms of lighting and light design, martin, there are so many tools right now and I still kind of try to stay away from the noise, so I have got some of my own favorites. I know that there are hundreds of tools out there right now, but, having said that that there are hundreds of tools out there right now, but but there are. Having said that, there are some favorites which I use for, I would say, the visuals, which I use for videos and, of course, uh, some some of the people in my company, because because, uh, I, I have got a very young person join in very recently. He used to do stage and theater lighting back in Amsterdam and I have taken him on board now and he's a very bright, very brilliant chap in just a few weeks of his days in A7.

Martin, he built AI agents to generate the luminary schedules, to generate the preliminary, what you call the cost optimization agents, to generate dark sky compliances, and all was done via chat, gpt, the pro version not the pro version, sorry the plus version and it works so very well.

It works in such a good way. The first thing is that of course you have to perform your own checks, definitely, but I would say that it has reduced our time of filling in the data ourselves. Filling in the data from our side, you know, drastically, I would say, 60 to 70% of our time is, you know, totally cancelled now. And it is, and he's still experimenting, he's still, you know, learning on how further he can automate these processes to further reduce these times, to further produce more tools which are not visual but documentation, more of project documentation and compliance checks. So these two tools that I'm talking about in particular work very well. One is the Dark Sky Compliance Checker and the other is the Luminaire Schedule Extractor. And also the next target is that he is kind of writing, he's starting to train an agent to kind of generate adaptive specification suggestions. So we just feed it some kind of information that this is the project and it starts telling us that where to zero, in which manufacturers to go to.

Okay, that's interesting because let's dive a little bit into this workflow thing, because obviously what we want AI to do, I guess for most of us is to take away all the boring stuff and the time-consuming stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

In the end we work with billable hours, right. So, even though our knowledge is what it's all about, but in the end it's all about time. So is it possible right now to ask ChatGPT or whatever other AI tool to actually select the light fixture? What sort of prompts would you have to use? Would you have to really specify all the performance specifications and then say, well, find me the light fitting that does this?

Yeah, I mean it can do that technically and that's what he's trying to beta test at the moment.

So what he's doing is, at this point in time, he's just feeding information to see. Chatgpt has an option where you can train your GPT models and to perform some specific tasks, so that's where he's working at. So he started on this new model where he's trying to feed as much information as he can from various data sheets, from the manufacturer's websites, writing a couple of things from his site, writing a couple of things which are specific to the region, and so all of that basically serves as the database for the customized AI agent and from within that database, it also has the possibility to expand and search further, to expand whatever information is available on the web. So it starts from within that database and once it zeroes into a particular thing, then it starts looking into more details. So it's right now. We are doing a little beta test of sorts at the moment, but I think it will be possible very soon, martin, it should be Right. So yeah, because obviously that's the.

You know how we always search catalogs I mean online nowadays, or you know and sometimes we have our preferred suppliers as well, but I can imagine that with all these AI tools, there's a whole new world opening, because it's impossible for us to know all the light fixtures that are available in the world, let alone what they can do, and certainly also new innovations and things like that. So I can imagine the enormous potential there, plus that you can then also feed in the locality, the geographical position of your project, and which are nearby suppliers, potentially, maybe options in terms of you know, we always struggle with value engineering, so I would imagine that can come in as well. And then, yeah, we just push the button and then our co-pilot, our design assistant, is going to do that.

Definitely, Martin, and I don't think that today is far, Martin. I don't think that is too far. It's just a matter of either somebody else would come up with some kind of a preset tool, or these agents which exist right now. They would become so advanced that we give them the information, the basic information, and then they basically search everything for us. They kind of fund out everything that we need and they just give it us on the platter without us researching. Definitely, we have to cross-check everything, but here we are talking about reduction of the time.

So now this is obviously production work. Let's step back to the creative part, because we, as I mentioned before, we want to remain the creators-in-chief. We don't want to be a sort of a sub-consultant to the AI tool. We have to remain in control for the creative outcome and manage what the AI tool does for us. So let's just step back to that. There's obviously a need to develop some sort of narrative first, some sort of conceptual story to which we can develop our conceptual lighting design. Are there specific tools that you use for that? Or is that also because mid-journey would be more typically in terms of image creation? But before you arrive there, you probably need to have some good brief, some good narrative to sort of prompt the image creation.

I use Midjourney for that narrative as well, Martin.

So I'll tell you.

I'll tell you very typically how I start my conceptual process. I'll give you an example here. Conceptual process I'll give you an example here. So there is this project that we recently finished submitting the schematic design. It's a hotel somewhere in Saudi and in a desert surrounding. The architecture was inspired by the sand dunes, of course, because of the surroundings and the place, and it's all about hospitality.

So what I do is typically I start some, some kind of a metaphor comes into my mind and that's where I start and that's where I start generating the imagery. Again, admit, journey, and it's it's not related to the project, it's related to the metaphor. So, for this hotel, what came in my mind was a lantern in the desert, a desert lantern inviting the travelers to come in. Yeah, exactly, I created totally, absolutely artistic imagery first, just to elaborate more on the narrative, with the help of the images and with the help of total artistic intent. There was nothing architectural or lighting was not talked till here and then the next step is that from that metaphor I connect it to, of course, because that's my inspiration and how I take it from the metaphor to the project, again, I start generating a series of images which sit somewhere between the, I would say, the mood imagery and the artistic impressions, and then from the next step is from the artistic impressions, you go to the exact mood imagery which is close to your, similar to something. It is similar to your own Pinterest, basically your customized Pinterest. So you generate images of the vision that you are trying to achieve on the hotel, on the building itself, and again, that is happening in Mid-Journey. And ultimately, once you generate your actual lighting render for the project, of course that's not a Mid-Journey generation. That is done in all 3D softwares and it's mostly in our company it's on 3D Max with our inputs for lighting. But then the imagery that I had generated from the metaphor till the mood images from a journey that also help our 3D team to build further on the architectural lighting part when they are generating their 3D renders of the actual project.

So it's a whole process and it's so far, so good. It's working well. The clients understand it better. The clients appreciate the fact that you have that artistic component right at the beginning uh, a lantern. And then there was a project uh, it's an upcoming boutique mall in dubai where, where I started, uh, as uh I, what what came to my mind was a shimmering jewel and from that shimmering jewel I developed, developed it further to the facade, doing transitions and there are facets on the facade. It's quite a dynamic facade. So that shimmer I translated into the dynamic architectural lighting. So yeah, it's working well. So far, so good.

It feels a bit like the creation of music, where sometimes you come with with a melody first and then you add in the text. Sometimes maybe you have a text and then you create the melody to it.

It seems like you create the melody first and then you add the text to it. You can say that quite Quite interesting, yeah. Now, obviously I wanted to ask you also about the copyrights of all this, because, technically speaking, ai tools are public domain, right, if I'm not mistaken. So whatever you design is somewhere out there. People can maybe access it or use it. Is there any way to protect that, to keep that within your community, your own design team, without being out there? And I check out all the various and I can find your designs and I can I don't know.

I'm just wondering how we can protect our intellectual copyright, if I mean, is it our copyright anyhow, if you know if it has been created by AI? This is a very interesting question. I think yes absolutely.

And, martin, basically what's happening is that most of these tech companies, like MidJourney, even ChatGPT and some others, what they say is that as long as you're on the pro account, as long as you're not on a free account, it is your own property, you can use it.

And and it's not just my journey, it's the video creator tools who are saying it, it's even the music creation tools who say as had, who have the similar kind of a I mean it's, it's written in their terms and conditions and those kind of documentation. So, yeah, that's from their side. From our side, what we can do is that, yes, some people will find it debatable that AI is getting the information from somewhere which belongs to someone, but then, martin, everybody, even the human artists, they are inspired by some art form which already exists, so they are also getting inspiration from somewhere. The only difference is that AI is kind of, you know, just computing it to another level and at a very advanced pace, at a very speedy pace, but basically the process is the same. It's not stealing, I would say. It's basically getting inspiration from the data that exists.

Well, there are people that still feel it's a compliment if you take their idea and you use it sometimes. Yeah, absolutely so. Sometimes we are dealing with NDAs right Non-disclosure agreements in projects, which make this potentially a bit more dicey if we are using AI to develop potentially confidential information. Have you come across that and how do you deal with that if that's relevant to you?

Yes, it is relevant, but then basically, when we are using these platforms, first thing is that you are not specifying the project name. On these platforms you are generating imagery, maybe for a project that is confidential, more generic, yeah, but basically you're not feeding AI any information about the project itself, that who's the client and what kind of project it is. Okay, you might feed what kind of a project it is, but then again it's a generic information.

Yeah, you might feed an image that is potentially confidential or, I don't know, an architectural creation that has been given to you as a reference. I mean, there might be a number of things that are confidential with you. I'm just wondering how to deal with that in this sort of public debate.

My thing is, martin, that I am using most of the tools that I use. I do not use it on a kind of a public mode. Everything that I generate is basically stealth mode. I use the mid-journey version, which does not. My images don't go public. They stay as my images. They don't get even published. It's one of the top tiers, martin Midjourney's pro version, so it has a stealth. It's called stealth mode, by the way.

Okay that explains it. Okay, that's clear. That option is there because I think, certainly if you're a highly Okay, that explains it. Okay, that's clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So that option is there because I think any company, certainly if you're a highly professional practice, you know which insurances and all kinds of things and we have to develop. You know we were being relied upon by a client to act professionally. These kind of things are important to take into consideration. And that brings me also to the transparency issue, because I feel personally that if you do use AI in the process of conceptualizing, we probably need to tell the client or somewhere, let them know that we have used AI tools to achieve that. Is that something that you also support?

Always, I always do that, martin. I always tell them Because, see, when I'm creating those narratives that's where I start that these narratives have been created in AI to guide through the whole journey of our design thinking, of our design narrative, and till the last mood images that are produced from Midjourney, mostly from Midjourney. We always specify that this is done with AI and this is just to aid the project design thinking, the design thought process, and this is where we are getting the inspiration from. It's not an actual project. We are not getting any buildable sort of an information from here. It's basically just the conceptual thing and then once, once the concepts are approved, then we go to the actual you know and those things. But yeah, in my projects, I always, in fact, in bold underline, I always say there's two ways to do that.

You can make an actual bold statement, or you can do like in your companies, in the small letters. Somewhere it's there, but you need to look for it.

Mine is always bold, always bold, martin, and the clients appreciate it, martin, because they also understand that, okay, you are using this particular tool to come up with these narratives which align with their thinking as well. So they appreciate it, and mostly I mean touch wood. So far, so good. I have done about four or five concepts, very successful concepts at that, with these, uh, with this kind of a you know approach, and the clients were very happy, and the good thing was that we were, yeah, and the good thing was, martin, that we were able to uh, create, uh, we were able to take that thought process further into the project stages, the development stages, the design development and the whole narrative which we started with. When the project advanced into the further stages, that narrative remained. We did not deviate from it. So it it's so far, so good, martin, is that?

something that obviously, once you have created your concept and your design, do you use AI also to put that into a presentation? Is that a helpful tool to create I don't know very compelling presentations that the client you know? Obviously we can do 3Ds, we can do video walkthrough, a lot of things. I would imagine that it goes much further than just the creation. It is also how do you woo the client, how do you present it? Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, for me it's always a presentation. It's a document which basically documents the whole thing, from the early narratives to the in the early stages of the projects. It's from the early metaphor narrative to the actual project renders, and that whole course of it is documented either in an InDesign format or maybe a PowerPoint format. I mean, we are not using any other AI tools to make the presentation themselves. That's what we are doing ourselves, of course, but the contents of that presentation are, of course, the contents within that presentation are from these AI tools.

I would think that Chet GPT is quite good. Also in structuring presentations it does so. Can I say that you're mostly using ChatGPT, the pro version and the mid-journey. Are these the two main tools that you're using at the moment? These are the two ones absolutely that's true, but there's many more out there.

There's many more out there. But there's many more out there. Yeah, there's many more out there. See, I also sometimes produce these small animations without the use of, you know, any external 3DS Max or any animation tool, any proper animation tool. So for that also I use a couple of tools like Runway Clink, but mainly I can say that yes, it's mainly Midjourney and ChatGPT.

So for someone who's starting out here in lighting and lighting design and is interested in AI, I can imagine it's quite overwhelming to see all those AI tools. You see what's the expression the wood through the forest in AI? I can imagine it's quite overwhelming to see all those AI tools. You see what's the expression you would through the forest, or how do you understand or how do you know which one would be suitable you happen to? I mean, we kind of hear about mid-journey, but we also hear about other tools, but I can imagine it's not that easy. Is it just a matter of trial and error, just getting onto it and trying and see, or what's your opinion about?

it. I would say that first the person has to be clear in the mind and the sense of relevance and purpose that what is that the person is actually requiring from these AI tools, whether it's just the visuals or whether it's structuring of reports or whether it's some documentation. So I would say, first step is to be solid on the relevance and purpose part of it, and then I would advise whoever is listening to this webinar or podcast, I would advise that don't go with the trends. Do your own research, talk to people and see what the trailblazers have been doing. Just don't get blown away with all these so much of noise that is being created all around. So I would say choose the tools, not the trend. That's what I would say.

So once you know what best matches your workflows, once you know what best matches what your process is, then that's it, and then you don't have to go dive right in with all the tools. You can always start small and then scale wisely. So for me as well, I started with Midjourney. I did not know what Runway was, I did not know what ChatGPT was. So for me it was first Midjourney, then came in ChatGPT and then these video tools and then a lot of other tools which I use occasionally. Sometimes I use music tools as well.

Not sometimes I use them quite a lot, but that's mainly for my personal you know, yeah, but I guess the experience that you build up with big journey or chat, gpt is transferable to other tools, I would imagine yeah once you know how you work with one, you would basically more or less know how to work with all.

And yeah, yeah, one thing that obviously is part of the whole learning curve is the prompting, and I know that there's quite a number of people out there that create those so-called cheat sheets with all kinds of prompts. If you want this, this is what you need to ask. I would imagine you have also a whole library of prompt sheets.

I do have, Martin For me. I mean, I haven't created a library as such, I just store everything. All my prompts are within the mid-journey interface itself and I've just bookmarked them, so I know where to look at when I need to do something similar. But having said that, Martin, I would say that it will all be very irrelevant. The prompting in the days to come would be as easy as me and you talking right here, and it's already as easy as me and you talking ChatGPT has with this latest update. It's crazy.

It appears. If you want, I spoke to someone yesterday who shared with me a cheat sheet for photographic images, and you can even tell what kind of camera, what kind of exposure you want, what kind of angle, what kind of light to create images. I mean, that's amazing.

Absolutely, and I've been doing that and that was a very standard cheat code kind of a thing for which it's existed in Mixer and Midjourney since it's I think, since it's V4 days. Right now it's at version 7. But these cameras and all these exposure settings, lens settings, everything matters. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Lens settings, everything matters. If you yeah, yeah, exactly, even at times, the photographer style, you can, you can actually refer to any famous photographer, and that's what I don't want to do. Technically, for me, cameras and lenses are fine, but people do refer to, you know, the good photographers names, people who have been known to create good portraits, to create good photographers' names, people who have been known to create good portraits, to create good National Geographic-style photos, and it matters.

Even with the type of camera and the type of lens Absolutely Amazing, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get back to something else Now. Looking into the future, do you think we will need to get some sort of regulations in place, Because this is, of course, now a free-for-all? Whatever you do, there's no regulation, but sooner or later I'm sure somebody will come up with ideas about standards and regulations. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, and it's important to do that, martin, definitely there should be some kind of regulations, because, from what I can see, this is just still a start and it will develop very fast, very soon, and it's necessary to have some kind of controls in place. And when I say controls, I'm particularly talking about the design houses, the corporations, the architectural practices, lighting design practices. So just like they have their own BIM standards, they have CAD standards. I think it's high time to draft AI standards as well.

It's a lot of people thinking, right, yeah, absolutely, so that you stay ethical, you don't deviate too much into the zones which are sort of kind of controversial, and, apart from that, you develop your own standards of prompts, you develop your own project references which you can, you know, always, uh, you put on each and every project so that it it gives you a certain kind of a flair as a company, a certain kind of a trade, a trademark sort of a thing. So I I think it's high time to develop those kind of things and it should be there, those regulations should be there.

We will go hand in hand with our professional indemnity insurances. All that because, if we start using AI, insurance companies may also think well, hold on, you know who is responsible. You're just too good. Well, of course, as a company, you would still be responsible, but I think internally we might need to think as a practice how that impacts our insurers cover and things like that. There's many angles to all this. Do you think there will be? Well? I guess if you would be hiring you could nowadays hire somebody with AI experience. Is that not going to be an official job description?

It will be, and already people are doing that actually, martin. They have started saying that knowledge of AI prompting is an advantage, mostly in the creative fields. They have started including that in their job description sort of thing, and right now they say that it's an advantage. I think the day is not far when they say that it is needed. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Like programmers in the age of when computers came, and all that Now, before we leave, I wanted to ask you also something about the luxury theorem.

You know that, as the virtual line design community, we have been collaborating with the Durong Awards in China to create this Lux Futurum, and this year you have been invited as a very prominent judge, also with your futuristic ideas and how to do this in lighting design. I just wanted to ask you, also in light of AI how do you see AI influencing the future, specifically, I think, in lighting design, and how also to relate that with the what I would say, innovative manufacturing that takes place in China, because obviously, with Lufo, we try to bridge East and West. 90% of our lighting manufacturing takes place in China. There's a lot of innovation taking place in China, what many people may not even realize, and so our AI development in the lighting design practice, the Western philosophies and the Eastern philosophies is something that we're trying to bring together. Now that you are officially a judge for the edition 2025, I would like to have your views on that and how you think AI and innovation in lighting design will be important for the future.

It goes hand in hand, martin. I think the innovation now going forward from this point onwards, wherever the word innovation comes, ai comes in by default. And when we are talking about the AI in lighting, it will be not just about the visuals, it will be not just about the AI in lighting, it will be not just about the visuals, it will be not just about the production, it will also be about the smart controls, and it's already starting. You have AI-empowered lighting controls, you have AI-enabled sensors and these are the end users who are benefiting from the AI tools which exist in devices. Devices are talking to each other based on those AI protocols. So, whatever innovation is going to happen, it would have some sort of artificially intelligent component built into it by default going forward.

And yeah, I think there is no way out of it in my opinion, and yeah, for now we are just talking about the imagery and all these kind of things. But then also in the manufacturing process, martin, you can have right now, automation is always, of course, china is leading in all these automation processes. Come in when they bring in some sort of particular. I would say I am not sure on how it goes on manufacturing terms, but I think there could be more intelligent manufacturing as well, where factories and all these machines know how much to produce based on the project and the product outcomes, how and when to produce. They can start making the things, ordering the things by themselves, something like that. So I think I'm not very much familiar with how it works in manufacturing, but I think I think it's it's already there with all these integration of automation it is for sure, and you can imagine that in the same way you create a lighting design, you conceptualize a lighting design with AI.

There's, of course, the same way and same process to develop lighting products. Right, absolutely, it's basically exactly the same process, only it's not a project, but it's a product.

Ah, yes, of course People have started using that. Oh, I thought that you were particularly asking about the manufacturing, but yeah, the luminaire design. Yes, this also specifically.

Luminaire design. Yes, this also specifically, I think, will be part of it.

Yeah, People are already starting to do that, Martin. They are using these AI programs to generate smart luminaire, smart designs. I know a couple of people have started that, but for them also it's quite early to say whether they are succeeding or not. But yeah, I think eventually everyone would be doing it, even the big firms.

There's no doubt about it. How does Farah see the future in terms of you as a lighting designer, or us as lighting designers, remaining the chief creator, the creator in chief? Because obviously there is a danger that AI is going to overpower what we are doing, and I think one of the key things that I always have felt is that we always need to check what comes out of the AI tools. As we know, ai hallucinates. Sometimes it comes up with some weird things that we need to uncover and make sure that it doesn't see the daylight in a way. So how do we stay in control of all this? How do we remain the creators-in-chief for the future and how does this maybe ideal AI world look for you?

Martin, I would say that AI may advance as much as it wants to, which is good for us, of course, but in the end, the intuition and sensitivity is something which will remain core human values. Intuition is what will guide us and what will basically enable us to be at the forefront, and I would say that again, ai, no matter how much it advances, it, is going to be an assistant, it is going to work in a co-pilot mode, but basically it's us who are designing the experiences. Basically, it's us who are coming up with the narratives as creatives, and those narratives, those experiences, will always be in the front. Ai will come, of course. Ai will come from the side, it will assist us, it will work with us to develop those narratives. But I have started saying this thing a lot because I keep getting asked this question quite a lot, and so I have this common line that I have developed that it is our own light that will always guide the way it won't be AI in that matter.

It is our own light that will always guide the way. It won't be AI in that matter. It is our own creativity, it will be our own sensitivities, it is our own intuitions that will enable us to be at the forefront, to not let AI overpower us in any way, and it can never do that because it does not have the capacity to do so, no matter. Do that because, because it does not have the capacity to do so, no matter what people say, it does not have the capacity to do so for us.

Thank you so much for your inspirational uh explanations on ai and how you see ai working on uh in our world of lighting design. Thank you so much and I hope it will motivate a lot of people and also inspire a lot of people that have been listening to this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much and I hope it will motivate a lot of people and also inspire a lot of people that have been listening to this. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, martin. It was a pleasure to be here and lovely talking to you.