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Oct 17, 2024

All I Wanted Was a New Couch, but AI Gave My Entire Living Room a Versailles Makeover - CNET

You could save money on an interior designer by trying a disembodied one. Just watch what it does with your house. The living room in question. Please ignore the box of furniture pieces that have been

You could save money on an interior designer by trying a disembodied one. Just watch what it does with your house.

The living room in question. Please ignore the box of furniture pieces that have been sitting there for a month while I work up the nerve to tackle the assembly process.

When my neck started to ache after long gaming sessions on my 5-year-old Ikea sofa, which had, admittedly, seen one too many moves to be considered stable, I knew it was time to switch up the seating at home. A good couch can be life-changing, a bad couch can be back breaking, and finding the right style for the way you live can cause major decision paralysis.

Here's how using artificial intelligence tool Gepetto to search for a new couch led me into an aesthetic overhaul of my mismatched living room -- and how you can use AI to reimagine your living space, too.

Gepetto was created primarily with real estate professionals in mind who need to cheaply stage homes and apartments for online listings without actually having to rent furniture.

It's like a text-to-image AI tool, only instead of writing a prompt that creates an image, you're directed to upload a photo of the room you'd like redesigned or furnished and select from a drop-down menu of different interior design styles to apply.

The in-browser Gepetto workspace.

You can change things like the colors of the walls and give the tool less or more creative freedom in its results using the in-browser workspace.

Since I'm looking for a complete overhaul to go along with a comfier, better-made sofa, I let Gepetto redesign my entire living room into a more cohesive look to take the place of the current mish-mosh of styles I've slapped together over the years, bit by bit.

Using the in-browser tool is simple:

The results can be a lot of fun, like when you go for something on the fancy-schmancy side. The reimagined room below looks like it could be a nook at Versailles:

Ah, yes. The perfect setting for chilled caviar and vodka while you revel in the merits of all political power resting firmly in the iron fist of a small ruling class.

There's also an option to keep everything in the room the same and simply switch or add furniture, making this potentially valuable for people moving into a new house or apartment and starting with empty spaces.

Gepetto is free to use the first seven times, and then you have to pay a little more than $43 a month for unlimited use and image upscaling. I tried seven different styles, resulting in a mix of tastefully appointed rooms and gaudy living spaces in which a Russian oligarch might be quite comfortable.

Amid miles of jute, ornate ceiling frescos, curtains that looked like they were melting from the windows and likely unattainably expensive flooring changes, I did find one useful suggestion (just ignore the two wide-brim sunhats the AI tool decided would make premium wall decor).

This is a pretty great example of how I'd like the living room to look and feel, minus the jolly green giant-sized wide brim sunhat decor.

At the end of the process, you can hit the shopping button on the right-hand side of the browser window and sift through Google Image search results of websites where you might find similar furniture and decor to those in the generated room.

The top results were not the most useful. Real estate sites like Zillow and Apartments.com or short-term rental sites like Airbnb and Vrbo took top billing, but scrolling a little further down revealed some retailers like Etsy selling items similar to the decor and furniture Gepetto created.

I dropped the image I liked the most into Google outside of Gepetto and was served some decent options for furniture from reputable online retailers, like West Elm, Amazon, Soul & Lane, Etsy, Article and Pinterest.

Now all that's left for me to do is source a new sofa that doesn't assault my spine or my bank account.

If you're looking for other visual ways to use AI, here's how to plan your Halloween decor using Midjourney and how to remodel your bathroom with the help of Renovate AI. For more AI news, tips and reviews, check out CNET's AI Atlas hub.