My Job is Safe. For Now.
By this point I think most people are aware of ChatGPT and what it does even if they haven’t used it. I use it to write all these columns. Time saver! Don’t tell Editor Dan, okay? I’m actually fishing right now.
ChatGPT is one thing, but the latest AI platforms like Grok3 and others freely develop photo-realistic images of anything on demand. What if they can artificially derive yachts with prettier exterior styling than those of us who have been at it for thirty years?
The “meat ‘n’ potatoes” of what happens in a yacht design and naval architecture office is not the sexy stuff you might think of like the styling I just mentioned—flourishing brainstorming sessions with bikini-clad blondes hanging on our shoulders as we wave our arms and dream up underwater helicopter landing pads for our client’s next 300-footer. Rather, the bulk of the work in a yacht design office is fairly dry engineering, which adheres to the laws of physics and those of various international regulatory bodies.
But we do have to draw pretty and innovative boats in order to sufficiently compel a client to have said yacht engineered and birthed. And berthed. So an important part of my job is the sexy stuff; styling yachts to look better than what’s already out there. What if Grok can do for free what I charge handsomely for? Will I be kicked to the curb like so many accountants and attorneys over the next few years? “Would you like fries with that?” Sorry, just practicing.
I carved out some time recently to jump into AI image generation with both feet, asking different AI generators to create pictures of yachts of various types. And I can report that, so far, my job is safe. AI image generation is pretty good for corporate headshots and rendering four-bedroom craftsman-style homes in the woods, but it doesn’t truly know boats.
First I typed in “Create a photo-realistic image of a 200-foot superyacht with a blue hull and white superstructure.” I learned in 22 seconds that AI doesn’t know a 200-footer from a 50-footer. It was unable to hit the broad side of a Bertram with any sense of scale. I typed in “Make the boat longer.” It made the boat taller.
I instructed AI to add a yellow helicopter landing on the upper deck. What I got was a grotesque Siamese helicopter with two tails left and right, and weirdly two VHF antennae that have only survived the chopper’s rotating blades because all of this is … artificial.
I told AI to remove the yacht’s 10-foot-tall bow rails. Real world rules require 1-meter railings, but Grok3 isn’t connecting these dots yet. It did so by adding a proboscis monkey’s schnoz at the tip of the bow. AI is on drugs.
AI also doesn’t know sportfishing boats. I know 12-year-old boys who can do better with a pencil and paper. AI can’t seem to draw a sexy sheerline to save its artificial ass. So I’m still relevant, for now.
My friends in the car industry are a step ahead of me. Designers at the world’s largest automakers have been monkeying with AI awhile. They tell me 90 percent of what AI generates is crap, with a sliver of images revealing kernels of styling relevance here and there. But cars are still styled by people, insurance companies and government regulations.
What did “aye” learn from this? AI is capable of recreating vaguely Taiwanese-looking boats from a decade ago with occasionally unsettling deformities, but with no regard to essential hydrostatics. Acres of server farms have essentially taken the infinite monkey theorem, which states that a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite period of time will almost surely type the works of Shakespeare, and applied it to quadrillions of computer calculations to compress an “infinite period of time” into 22 seconds. Human faces and custom home images are easy for AI. There’s lots of both to reference online, after all. But specialized tangibles like custom yachts are rare and complex, so the results are goofier.
I guess I’ll find out how this column turns out after I land this king salmon. Time saver!
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
