In superyacht design, every detail is custom-made for individual clients. Now Vripack is adding AI to its creative process - not to replace human designers, but to work alongside them, says Marnix J Hoekstra, co-creative director at the Dutch design house.

While AI transforms industries across the board, superyacht creation has remained largely traditional. Vripack is changing that by using machine learning to speed up design iterations and explore new possibilities for their UHNW clients.

The approach treats AI as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement. Designers can test ideas faster, respond more quickly to client requests, and experiment with concepts that might not have emerged through conventional methods alone - useful advantages in an industry where projects cost millions and take years to complete.

Marnix J Hoekstra, co-creative director at Vripack, explains exactly how the studio integrates AI into yacht design and why the technology is becoming essential for creating custom vessels.
What do you use AI for at Vripack? How can it be beneficial?

"We predominantly use AI at Vripack for the Ideation phase, which is the stage where we focus on the generation of ideas and solutions. It is the second step in the design thinking process, and we use AI as an additional colleague or team member. During this time, our designers will be sketching and modelling to create designs and at the same time we feed these into various AI tools to receive feedback. We find this provides fresh insights, which can then be incorporated into the designers' sketches.

"The huge benefit this brings is that it enables us to speed up the process. If you can connect with AI as a design partner, it will give you, arguably, better and deeper designs in less time. The human element is massively important, but you would not be able to do the work in the same time by yourself or even with an additional human team member. This in turn benefits our clients as it means, following a briefing meeting, we can get back to them quicker with a high-end design."

Do you have any specific examples where you have used AI recently?

"All our projects in the past 18 months have benefitted from including an AI team member. We recently used AI in the development of a project called Triple X, where it directly impacted how the main shape of the superstructure looked. We probably would have found this solution with just human resource, but I am certain we got there quicker due to AI. The benefit was that we were able to discuss this solution with the client much sooner."Vripack was an early adopter of AI in the superyacht industry, but how has it evolved recently?

"In general, AI has become better, with a much wider variation of AI tools available. This allows us to use multiple AI programmes for different reasons. For example, we now know which tools work best for exterior design, which for interior design, and which are most useful for image visualisation or sketching."

What are the limitations of AI? What are some of the things it can't do?

"Overall, it lacks originality and works best when building on the vision of a creative person rather than generating ideas entirely from scratch. For instance, if you ask it to design a logo for a superyacht, the result will often feel familiar, as it can only draw from what already exists.

"Its visual outputs are driven by Large Language Models, meaning they're based on patterns and references it can find online. In its early days, most yacht designs it produced resembled a specific, well-known yacht brand simply because that brand's images dominated the internet. This has improved over time, partly due to better prompts, but it still can't independently create something as intricate as a yacht from the ground up.

"What it can do is help you quickly produce multiple iterations once you already have an original concept in mind."
What is the future potential of AI? Is there potential beyond design – for example, in autonomous navigation or smart interior systems?

"The future potential of AI is beyond what we can currently imagine. I believe it lies in the rise of LQM (Large Quantitative Models). Unlike today's systems that interpret images or text from the internet, LQMs are grounded in the laws of physics. They generate answers based on facts, formulas, and measurable reality.

"Imagine, we could collaborate with AI to run wave-pattern analyses on yacht line plans, using real sea-state data recorded over the past 50-plus years. By feeding this quantitative data into an AI, we could design hulls and structures with unprecedented precision.

"The same applies to navigation. Navigation is fundamentally mathematics and algebra. If an AI is trained on the physics behind star positions, GPS coordinates, and related principles, it could navigate autonomously without any reliance on the internet, just purely on science."

As creatives, do you have concerns about how AI could limit design? How will it impact the next generation of SY designers?

"We don't have any concerns that it limits design. Some people will be lazy, and you can already see that happening. People will show designs that are made with purely AI, and you can tell because its super boring and uninspiring. I have faith that our clients, who are smart people, will be able to recognise the difference between those who simply rely on AI and those like us who use every tool at our disposal, from the pencil to AI, to express creativity shaped by years of experience.

"For future generations of superyacht designers, the challenge is that it's becoming too easy; you push a few buttons, and it looks fine on the surface. But in reality, the boat probably wouldn't even float. The risk is that this makes people lazy, not just in yacht design but also in architecture, aviation, automotive, and more. That said, laziness isn't new, and I believe that those with talent and grit will still succeed."