Using AI to Reimagine AUDI E Concept

Audi pushed the boundaries of its brand identity this week with a Chinese market expansion. What appears to be a sub-brand with AUDI spelled in all-caps, the AUDI E Concept drops the four ring logo at the front and even the long-used trademark singleframe grille for a much simpler face. It’s a controversial move in some respects that we’ll get to below, which seems to have polarized the Audi enthusiast base here in the west.

On one hand, the simplicity is refreshing in today’s modern design world where unnecessary flourishes and non-functional vents seem to create caricatures that scream for customers to look at them. Clean design in that atmosphere harks an era of simplicity like the TT Mk1, though can be risky in today’s louder design environment where it might get lost in the din.

That the car is also an EV, also uses the ubiquitous E (for EV) nomenclature and dodges the rings and the “e-tron” name is also an interesting move. The car is still an Audi. It says it literally on its nose, but it seems to shed most other brand identity for a newer simpler form applied to a newer simpler mobility form that does risk perhaps erring too hard on the clean and antiseptic side. Clean design it definitely is, but does it risk not appealing to the emotional side… and is that right or wrong for the Chinese market where Audi has partnered with SAIC to push a new line of products that this concept teases?

That’s a lot of questions for which we have no answers, but in the clean design sans details form of the E concept, we saw an opportunity. Over on the @4Rings.AI Instagram account where I imagine new models that never were while playing with and learning the latest AI tools, my primary image generator MidJourney is rolling out a new photo editing software. With it, you can take a photo, plug in a query and have it use the basic composition of the photograph or form of the subject and apply new imagery overtop that in order to change the photographic style or details of the form. While still learning the value and purpose of such a tool, it seemed like an interesting way to consider how the E Concept could have taken other forms.

The queries I subjected the photo to were largely focused on the same problem Audi designers faced. Taking the basic form, figure out a new look for Audi that is just the thing for such a brand expansion. I’m sharing a lot of the results here, more to challenge the way we think about the brand and where it’s going.

It’s also to consider where AI tools like Midjourney fit into the space. To me, the images created are either more traditionally Audi using the singleframe as a bases, or they’re simply randomly different. There doesn’t seem, at least not yet, to be a thoughtful evolution.

The challenge for designers is how this tool fits into the process without replacing human designers entirely. Like many creative industries, I have no doubt less artful or considerate brands may be tempted to simply let AI take the wheel. I believe that’s a mistake, because it’s in the actual E Concept where you see an artful evolution. That front-ecncompassing horizontal face seems to both embrace the idea of a singleframe, and also the long horizontal grille area of the pre-singleframe modern era (a look that is iconically seen on the ur quattro). In the case of the AUDI, it does this in a more modern way that is quite unique, albeit potentially challenging in its minimization of the design.

I’m not a designer. While I’m a fan of design, I’ll leave further analysis and commentary to those who are. Whatever the case, the AUDI E Concept represents a shifting to a new era in a lot of ways, be that AUDI design language, EV architectures or tools available in the design of automobiles. All of these things, as it turns out, are highly, highly debatable.