Diagrams AI can, and cannot, generate

By now, generative artificial intelligence’s ability to create text and images is well known. Generating system architecture diagrams would seem to be a natural extension of this. In this article, we examine three use cases for AI-generated system architecture diagrams. We will evaluate AI’s ability to create generic diagrams focused on technology, whiteboard diagrams for planned or proposed future systems, and system diagrams that detail real-life, existing systems. Generating generic AI diagrams First, a definition: generic diagrams in this context are diagrams not associated with source code or a deployed solution, present or future. They are usually entirely decorative or explain how a technology like AWS or Kubernetes works. Since they don’t describe an actual solution, generic diagrams have a lot of leeway regarding accuracy. Any sufficiently plausible diagram is acceptable. To start, let’s ask ChatGPT (version 4o) for something simple: Hello. Can you generate an image of a d ... Read full article.