{"id":129569,"date":"2025-09-08T20:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T20:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/129569\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T20:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T20:26:08","slug":"99-of-ai-car-design-is-sh-says-mercedes-design-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/129569\/","title":{"rendered":"99% Of AI Car Design Is &#8216;Sh-,&#8217; Says Mercedes Design Boss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/intro-1757346556.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/1962073\/ai-car-design-not-good-mercedes-design\/\" data-post-id=\"1962073\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"99% Of AI Car Design Is 'Sh-,' Says Mercedes Design Boss: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Gorden Wagener\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    Jim Bennett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Just like me, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/lets-force-an-ai-to-design-us-some-cars-1849036473\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI renders of car designs<\/a> on social media over the past few years. Our feeds are just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/these-ai-generated-cars-will-melt-your-brain-1831176960\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">clogged with this slop<\/a>, and we&#8217;re not alone. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/lets-give-it-up-to-mercedes-benz-for-making-some-really-1847668550\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Gorden Wagener, Chief Design Officer at Mercedes-Benz<\/a>, faces the exact same issue, and he&#8217;s sick of it, not only because the renders he sees are uninspired, but also because they make his job that much harder.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/sensual-clarity-as-an-expression-of-modern-luxury-con-1284810531\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Wagener<\/a>, who has worked at Mercedes since 1997, spoke with me and a group of journalists at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/1960145\/2025-munich-auto-show-reader-question\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IAA Mobility show in Munich, Germany<\/a>, on a number of topics, but the conversation turned to artificial intelligence design when he was asked how he sets his own designs apart from what computers churn out. He admitted that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/1961052\/mercedes-amg-gt-xx-concept-megawatt-1000kw-fast-charging\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mercedes<\/a> has been working with AI for a few years now on design, but the automaker hasn&#8217;t really gotten anywhere worthwhile with the technology.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t create good results,&#8221; Wagener told us.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">He did admit that it&#8217;s helpful for building backgrounds for images so designers don&#8217;t need to create ones for themselves, but for now, that&#8217;s about it.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;It creates 99% of sh\u2013 solutions that are really ugly or weird or are not brand specific,&#8221; the designer said. &#8220;And yeah, 1% interesting stuff.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                The real problem<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/the-real-problem-1757346558.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/1962073\/ai-car-design-not-good-mercedes-design\/\" data-post-id=\"1962073\" data-slide-num=\"1\" data-slide-title=\"99% Of AI Car Design Is 'Sh-,' Says Mercedes Design Boss: The real problem\" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Chief Design Officer at Daimler AG, Gorden Wagener, poses with the Mercedes S-Class Cabriolet ahead of the launch of Mercedes-Benz and Cond\u00e9 Nast International: Sensual Purity - Gorden Wagener on Design at Vogue House on November 10, 2016 in London, England.\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    David M. Benett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Wagener then turned to what he considered to be the &#8220;real problem&#8221; with AI car renders: the idea we are all losing the &#8220;spectacular aspect&#8221; of show cars because the internet is full of AI cars that are &#8220;over-exaggerated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">He explained to us that it has become harder to create concept vehicles for auto shows that actually stick out and leave a lasting impression on people because we get so conditioned to seeing these fantastical cars on our social media pages \u2014 cars that couldn&#8217;t possibly exist in the real world, even as concepts.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I go through Insta, and it&#8217;s just&#8230; another one. You get bored, you know? You just see it,&#8221; Wagener said. &#8220;This AI stuff is getting really annoying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think things like this, that Mercedes is leaning on its heritage a bit more with design lately \u2014 especially with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/1960275\/2026-mercedes-benz-glc-ev-eq-technology-reveal-specs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">new grille on the electric GLC<\/a>. It&#8217;s certainly distinctive without being terribly exaggerated or outrageous. I&#8217;m fairly doubtful that AI will ever truly be able to style or produce a car design that is worth considering, simply because it cannot \u2014 by nature \u2014 come up with anything original. I think designers know that, and that&#8217;s why we have yet to see the technology make any sort of inroads in that sector of the automotive industry. I could be wrong, but I never have been before.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; Jim Bennett\/Getty Images Just like me, I&#8217;m sure&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-129569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}