At last, a serious use for AI: Brickit

Brickit is what AI was made for. You take a picture of your pile of LEGO with your phone or tablet, then the app figures out what pieces you have, and suggests models you could build with it, including assembly plans. The coolest detail, perhaps, is that, having done so, it highlights the bricks you will need in the photo you took of your pile, so you can find them more easily. I’ve not downloaded it yet, so I’m not sure how well it works, but I love the concept.

The fan-made app is iOS only for now, but an Android version is coming in the fall. It’s free, but I’m guessing it may make money in future from in-app purchases giving access to more designs, options to purchase missing bricks, or something along those lines.

It would be cooler if it connected Lego enthusiasts so that they could share their MOCs (my own constructions) with others. I’m guessing it might use the LXFML format, which LEGO® itself uses to export designs from its (unsupported, discontinued, but still available) LEGO DIgital Designer app, so this ought to be easy enough. It would be even cooler if it supported a swap and share feature, so users could connect via the app to get hold of or share missing bricks. The fact that it should in principle be able to catalogue all your pieces would make this fairly straightforward to do. There are lots of existing sites and databases that share MOCs, such as https://moc.bricklink.com/pages/moc/index.page, or the commercial marketplace https://rebrickable.com/mocs/#hottest; there are brick databases like https://rebrickable.com/downloads/ that allow you to identify and order the bricks you need;  there are even swap sites like http://swapfig.com/ (minifigures only); and, of course, there are many apps for designing MOCs or downloading others. However, this app seems to be the…er…missing piece that could make them much more useful. 

Reviews suggest that it doesn’t always succeed in finding a model and might not always identify all the pieces. Also, I don’t think there’s a phone camera in the world with fine enough resolution to capture my son’s remarkably large LEGO collection. Even spreading the bricks out to take pictures would require more floor-space than any of us have in our homes. But what a great idea!