TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 18—21 · POSITIONAL · HELD
The render that lies
Showing a generated image as the real site condition is misrepresentation.
The dilemma
Your context view is generated. It has quietly erased the neighbour's four-storey wall, flattened the slope, and added a heritage façade that is not there. It is the best image on the sheet. Do you show it as the site?
The choices
Show it as is and say nothing. Show it with a caption: speculative view; neighbouring building and slope not as existing. Or correct the image — restore the neighbour, the slope, the absence — and then show it.
The consequence
The first route makes a false claim about a real place to a client, a jury, or an approving authority, and the better the image, the bigger the lie. The second keeps the image and labels it honestly as speculation. The third costs an afternoon and produces a drawing that can be submitted anywhere. The first is the one that ends careers, slowly. A client who finds the neighbour's wall on site does not forget who hid it.
The case
A municipal submission in a hill town. The generated context view shows gentle ground and open sky to the north. The site falls three metres and the northern neighbour's house stands at the boundary. The authority's inspector has been to the site. The drawing is now a false statement to a public authority, and the architect signed it.
Our position
Showing a generated image as the real site condition is misrepresentation. It is not a style choice. Speculation is legitimate when it is labelled as speculation; a claim about what is on the ground is either true or false.
Why we hold it
Renders have always flattered: bluer skies, thinner people, no cars. But a flattering sky has never moved a neighbour's wall. Generated context invents conditions that decisions will be made on — setbacks, light, views, approvals. The architect's signature on a drawing is a claim about the world, and the profession is trusted because that claim is true.
The strongest objection
All renders lie, and always have. The profession has omitted the ugly neighbour, the overhead wires and the drain for decades and called it presentation. Singling out AI for a sin the discipline practised by hand is inconsistent — and a rule that every context view be as-existing would forbid most of the images the profession has ever shown.
What would make us revise it
If the profession adopts a labelling convention that makes an image's status explicit by default — content credentials on every file, a required speculative / as-existing tag on every sheet — the burden moves from the designer's sentence to the file, and this card is rewritten around reading the label rather than writing it. Reviewed every edition.
Prove it
In a generated site image, spot one invented condition that could mislead a client or an authority. Then draw the line, in writing, between fair speculation and a false claim about what is really on the ground.
Take it to crit
When a student shows a generated context view, do they flag what is real site and what the model invented — before anyone has to ask?
How it works
Two things make the false site more than an ethical lapse. A drawing submitted for approval is a statement to a public authority, and a false one can carry consequences under whatever law governs such submissions where you practise. And in the EU, since 2 August 2026, AI-generated images that resemble real places and could pass as authentic fall under a disclosure duty, with exceptions for evidently artistic work. Neither of these is why the Lab holds the position. The position would stand with no law at all.
What this idea builds on
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.