Autodesk is rolling out AI tools that could reshape the way all creatives work, not just engineers working in the best CAD software, but all designers, digital artists, and animators. Ahead of Autodesk University 2025, Mike Haley, Senior VP at Autodesk Research, explained how the company is moving AI from a minor feature to the center of every design product. (Just as I discovered how AI is making animation easier at AU 2025.)
"We're going to see Autodesk AI go from something that is really a small addition to products to being central to our entire portfolio. We have a massive slate of announcements around AI this year, which I'm very excited to share with you," Mike told me during the event's pre-briefing.
The big difference is what this AI can understand. Most AI today can’t reason about 3D space or physical systems. Autodesk’s models, by contrast, can interpret geometry, materials, and structures in real-world contexts: "These are AIs that understand the structural and physical world, AIs that understand how you build and make things in the real world."
Just tell it what you want
For creatives, this opens up new ways to explore ideas. In Autodesk Fusion, you can sketch, drop in an image, or describe a concept in plain language, and the software will turn it into fully detailed CAD geometry ready for manufacturing: "Inside Fusion, we are able now to use language, sketching, or imagery to guide the software to produce a shape. That geometry is first-class CAD geometry. You could literally go and push that directly into a design to make a process inside Fusion and start manufacturing it."
Even more revolutionary is how Autodesk’s AI handles complex projects. In building design, for instance, the AI can instantly recalculate every connected element – walls, platforms, columns – when you make a change, letting designers experiment without fear of breaking the model.
"Every change you make, you have to consider every knock-on effect. What we have done is we have trained a large AI foundation model […] to actually be able to generate them," explained Mike.
Design is now for everyone
The interaction doesn’t stop with clicks. Project Think Aloud lets you sketch and speak simultaneously while the AI interprets your intent, adjusting the design in real time. Presently, it won't make the model for you, but it will bring in plans, ideas, and show how things can be done. This applies to all 3D modelling, as Mike offers an example of a designer creating a new game controller concept.
"The AI is able to take the speech and the text and reason about what your intent is to produce their building directly in format. As you design, what if you just spoke while you design? The AI is grabbing all that information and reasoning about how close you are to achieving that intent."
Today I saw Project Think Aloud in action to gauge a deeper understanding of what Autodesk is planning and how it's drawing together its many AI projects, both released and in development, to enable designers to change how objects are designed and made. Fundamentally, the current 3D modelling viewer will feel archaic once you can work with AI to create a model and a finished product.
The Project Think Aloud is about giving designers and artists a way to work with intentions, not being bogged down in process. It's a flexible workflow I'm sure many apps will adopt.
During the AU 2025 keynote from Autodesk's President and CEO Dr. Andrew Anagnost, for example, I got to see a little more of how AI is redefining how CAD can work and for whom, including how an air fryer is modelled live on stage from a text prompt – the little particles buzz around the bare white page, gradually building the model. But there's more, this is the final model, which is an editable CAD file that can be changed and refined – Andrew Anagnost, alongside Heather Kerrick, Director of AI Software, revealed Fusion isn't sharing a file but the data, meaning it's fully editable.
The inspirational part here? Designers unfamiliar with CAD can build a working product to safety standards, and then embellish on top, using imagination and artistry to create something unique that works.
Making creating simple
For anyone who creates, whether it's products, buildings, or game assets, this approach isn’t just about faster work; it’s about creating a new freedom to experiment, iterate, and explore ideas without limits. Changes can be tested instantly, sketches can become real designs, and ideas can move straight from imagination to form.
If you're a 3D artist and designer on the fence about AI, Autodesk's new tech could get you to climb down and start experimenting. And for that, you'll need the best laptops for CAD and the best 3D modelling software.
