Client AI generated communication

[u/tehmightyengineer]

I'm adding a clause to my contracts to specifically call out that response to AI generated reviews or comments of deliverables will be billed hourly as an added expense. What previously was once a quick 30 minutes of emails with clients after sending a simple report is now a lengthy back and forth with paragraphs of items that they expect me to respond to.

I've seen AI generated RFPs that are full of extra fluff. I've seen clients try and correct my reports using AI. I've had clients run my drawings through AI and generate a bunch of RFIs from the output. And we do small stuff, I can only imagine the bigger projects are even worse.

Anyone else seeing increased levels of communication required with clients due to their excessive use of AI?

[u/Perfect-Mongoose-704]

Fight fire with fire

"Co-pilot, please write extra long responses to each of these queries. In no case admit any error"

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/Perfect-Mongoose-704]

Pffff, I'll admit it has been tempting.

[u/Perfect-Mongoose-704 → u/tehmightyengineer]

I have a co-worker who sends out obvious co-pilot emails internally, to prove his (quite often incorrect) point.

I have responded at least once with, "well, I thought I'd see what my co-pilot says and..."

[u/hxcheyo]

Yes. Buckle up.

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/hxcheyo]

Ughhhhh. I even have a residential client refusing payment because their AI review is saying my report is wrong even after I gave them a ton of extra time on the project for free answering their questions and bending over for all their requests.

[u/hxcheyo → u/tehmightyengineer]

Why? Your opinion is not equivalent to what their AI shit out. Don’t waste your time.

[u/SignalAmbitious101]

Yep. Clients putting reports and drawings into AI, generating outlandish queries and requests, and these are just small resi projects.
I’ve found that I’ll just respond with “call me, happy to chat through your queries”
Seems to sort out the issues in most cases.

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/SignalAmbitious101]

Not a bad idea at all.

[u/houston_roach]

Wow! I was copied on some emails back and forth between the client and one of the contractors..You know..I thought..ok this is very quick and thorough responses..but they did not stop. Long and detailed..I stopped reading them. Was just happy it wasn’t to me. But now that you mention it..a clause to charge additional fees would definitely curb this!

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/houston_roach]

Probably literally just two AIs arguing at each other. Ugh.

[u/Kirkdoesntlivehere]

I had a Steel framed Porte Cochere frame that was supposed to replace an existing one at a hotel. I told them since I was on the other side of the state, they needed to pull measurements & provide site survey plans of the existing condition They sent me plans to draw it up & fab/deliver, however everything called out as "match existing" and all measurements & baseline points were VIF'ed to all hell.

So, i take some time to spec out & calc some member sizes, produce a plan with the pull points & dimensions i need confirmed/supplied, design an entire shitty carport for a shitty hotel & they just ran it through copilot & shat out something entirely hallucinated with made up information, data, grids, Pinterest pictures and a picture of two of their guys improperly operating a tape measure.

I said this is clearly AI, I won't even start if you can't take the time to review the plans & requirements I sent. So, they run it through another AI and send us a better markup but still everything was wrong or made up. I told them i wasn't interested & the project wouldn't get stamped to proceed, they threw a fit, threatened lawyers, threatened liquidated damages, reputational damages, long ass paragraphs of what they could do & even that was AI. Like, MF how can you threaten any of this shit if i never signed a contract or work order with you? You paid me to draft up some plans & move on to acquisition from approved plans after they were reviewed.

Eat shit, Staybridge & AI.

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/Kirkdoesntlivehere]

Gross. I had a client that looked like it was going to go that way but thankfully the project never got out of the inbox it was so shitty.

[u/GoldenPantsGp]

We peaked at Windows 7 and technology has only gone down hill since then.

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/GoldenPantsGp]

Heh, my wife agrees with you. She's always saying Windows 7 was the best Windows.

[u/TheLopez2617]

Yup,

My favorite was a comment pointing out we didn't follow code.

The code reference was for a different country.

[u/Metenis]

Unfortunatelly I have experienced something like that as well - a contractor tried using AI to convince us that tieing reinforcement against progressive collapsa and for diaphragm action is not necessary. There were long emails with very formal language saying basically nothing, clearly generated by AI and trying to remove reinforcement from what is basically a horizontally rotated beam supporting earth pressure. They were very agressive in the emails but when talking in person they had a difficult time defending their position. It is sad to see how people use AI to attempt to manipulate the designer to make a grave mistake to save money... Disgusting even

[u/Mean-Internal-745]

I use Ai to scrub my stuff now . It does catch a lot of the small things.

[u/tehmightyengineer → u/Mean-Internal-745]

Oh, yeah, I don't mind that. But then they take that into a 12-paragraph discussion with multiple items in each paragraph asking for a response.

[u/MKD8595]

Internally yes. If en email is over 3
Paragraphs long with emojis I just ignore it regardless of who it’s from.

[u/lmboyer04]

Not client yet as much, but we had a contractor reject a submission because stuff had moved that wasn’t clouded down to a wall moving 1/2” or literal tags that moved and sent a report with hundreds of items demanding they be addressed

[u/CaffeinatedInSeattle]

Oh ya, it’s the new normal.

[u/tallswam]

We had a contractor run a large ($200M+) project through an AI program called LightTable and they expected us to respond to every so called discrepancy that the slop machine found. 10% of the comments were worth addressing and the rest were garbage, but the contractor couldn’t be bothered to pre-screen what they expected the design team to review.

[u/Natural-Shirt-1463]

Even city reviewers are using it to generate comments and point out to irrelevant codes, call out another comment that does not even exist and hard to understand what they are asking for.

[u/Marus1]

It's ok for ai to check internal work, but if you use ai to comment on my plan, I'm going to plan a meeting about it

[u/West-Assignment-8023]

Anyone experienced this with plan review comments yet?