Architects are increasingly turning to generative AI tools for creative inspiration and time-saving automation, but the software raises technical and ethical concerns and, with creative jobs already under threat, could it signal the destruction of the profession?

Ideas for iconic buildings and gravity-defying structures have traditionally been the mainstay of architects, but recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have for the first time given machines the ‘creative’ power to hallucinate strange, hybrid and other-worldly architectures.

Instagram feeds are filled with highly realistic images of AI-generated buildings both striking and surreal: glass-bubble pods embedded in lush green hillsides; an exquisite interior cut from the inside of a geode rock; a façade draped in the architectural equivalent of linguine. The possibilities are intriguing, yet also hard to envision in the real world.

Trained on massive datasets of images and their descriptions, software such as DALL·E 2...