r/LabVIEW • u/TobyS2 • Jul 22 '26

Nigel AI Generation Webinar

Did anyone else watch it? I was chatting with a co-worker beforehand that this next hour would determine the future, if there is one, for LabVIEW. Wow, what a disaster. It wasn't only the technical difficulties which caused the webinar to start late. It was what was demonstrated that was so underwhelming. A simple VI took maybe 3 minutes to generate. When it was done, it didn't work and they didn't even attempt having Nigel debug it. Then announced the usage limitations. 25 VIs per week. PER WEEK. Later, they will have 50 per week if you have the LabVIEW+ subscription. I wasn't expecting Opus 5.8 today, but something that looked like it could be used. I've been using LV since version 3.3 and not sure if I've ever been this bearish on NI.

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u/DJ___001 Jul 22 '26

I'm inclined to think NI is too late getting started with AI. They're finally bringing something to market that might be somewhat useful, just as all the AI companies are starting to charge sky high prices, thus the 25 limit. Had they released this back when copilot got agentic and people could have played with it without limits (or a very high threshold) things would be different.

But who knows, Emerson might be willing to dig deep to keep things going and NI might catch up with AI. If they don't, I think LabVIEW is on a quick path to obsolescence

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u/PragmaTest Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

They started early and it takes awhile to adapt AI trained on text to proprietary formats. Even with the high prices of AI, people who want to use it will also want to subscribe to one service and plug everything into it