How AI Is Realizing the Promise of Additive Manufacturing

About this report

That additive manufacturing (AM) and artificial intelligence (AI) go together is, in an intuitive sense, not hard to see. One is a digital manufacturing technology, while the other is the analysis capability arising from new ways to process lots of data. However, just how they fit together has been less clear. One obvious scenario is this: AI could use the measured outputs of AM to better control the process inputs for precise and nuanced effects related to material properties and thermal management during the build.

But as it turns out, that scenario does not sufficiently describe the AI/AM interconnection. Or rather, that scenario does not capture the sole link between AM and AI, or even the primary link as yet. Instead, AI is enabling and reshaping AM in a number of ways, and the most recent ASTM International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing (ICAM 2025) was, among other things, a tour through the clear, specific and varied ways that AI is helping to expand and realize AM's promise…

Here is how far AM is now going, and how AI is making it possible for AM to cross the distance: