I tried to make a credible interior rendering using AI and discovered a major problem. AI couldn’t make smaller windows. In the first image, the windows were floor-to-ceiling. That’s nice, I said, but can you make the windows smaller? No, it could not.
It made the windows exactly the same. After multiple revised inputs, including exact dimensions for the windows, the smallest I could get from AI looked to be 5 by 6 foot windows — more big windows!
The reason this is a problem for me is that it means I can’t use AI as a design tool unless my client already has lots of large windows in their home. But this problem is no surprise. Streaming shows, Instagram, Pinterest and other sources for inspiration and design ideas all have it.
What has always been odd to me about the shows on HGTV and accounts on Instagram of flawless luxury interiors, staged, rendered, photoshopped, and/ or A.I. generated, is that there hasn’t, before now, been a Truth Squad come to dissolve the fake facade and reveal the maggot covered skeleton behind it all. If it comes up, and it often does, that someone asks what I think of HGTV or some specific interior design show, I tell them, “I know there’s some good content on there, but I find it frustrating to watch.” To me, they do a disservice to homeowners by not showing the really challenging stuff that happens during a renovation; and by not showing a wider variety of styles and what makes them beautiful; and, more importantly, by not showing how much work it takes to keep a home in reasonably good repair.
It’s also odd to me that I don’t hear more people complaining about the fakery in interior design images, in which we see no dirty dishes, no computer cords, no outlets, no pet hair, no diaper bin, no over ripe bananas, no people, no animals. A home that is perfectly clean and never used is not the goal. Because this would mean the goal is not achievable. I need a moment to rant:
Nowhere in these images do we see the gaseous cesspool of housing industry sectors that have forgotten why we need a home: To survive.
But now we have the exquisite Amanda Hess, writer for the New York Times, calling out some uncomfortable truths (just as I gear up to share some pretty picture inspiration in my Substack.) Her article, “How A.I. Is Remodeling the Fantasy Home,” can be accessed here.
The subheading of Hess’ article points to the issue immediately, “Amid an intractable real estate crisis, fake luxury houses offer a delusion of one’s own.”
“A delusion of one’s own,” is a parody of Virgina Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own.”
“A Room of One’s Own,” is the private space a woman writer needs in order to create, or more specifically, to write.
The joke, if we can call it that, is how out of touch the A.I. fantasy is with reality.
The article, situated in our contemporary housing shortage in the U.S., points to how we let ourselves get misdirected by the allure of these interior fantasies. Although housing is out of reach for many, including the author, “[these] fantasies coax us to think of housing as a lifestyle choice, not a right. A.I. houses complete the trick. They represent housing that is finally free from any responsibility toward human beings.”
No one can live in the A.I. house. What about the rich people, who seem to have nice houses? Hess again: the rich people get nice houses. We get to watch.
But this is where things get interesting.
Listen, if you own your home, you are pretty well set. You are. But as I and any homeowner will tell attest, it rarely feels that satisfying. Expensive to buy, expensive to own, expensive to maintain. Custom home? Custom problems. What’s worse, many of us, especially after looking at fantasy images, still experience shame about the state of our home — that it isn’t tidy enough, or beautiful enough.
This is also a misdirection.
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