Will generative AI instruments assist folks construct higher web sites, or will they only fill the online with spam? With the current launch of Design Intelligence, a brand new web site builder filled with generative AI instruments, Squarespace is betting on the previous.
I spoke with chief product officer Paul Gubbay about Design Intelligence and Squarespace’s broader AI technique. Our dialog started with a glimpse at what different (unspecified) AI-powered web site builders ship when prompted to create a generic spa web site: complicated, ugly web sites.
This was, after all, a setup for a demo of Design Intelligence, which started with a couple of prompts permitting Gubbay to specify issues just like the type of web site he needed to construct and the character of the model being featured. The ensuing web site featured AI-generated design, textual content, and pictures, but it surely regarded — for lack of a greater phrase — like a “real” website, with loads of choices for additional customization.
Gubbay argued that whereas different web site builders have “scrambled very quickly” to launch AI options, these opponents are asking, “How can we take this technology and use it to stand out to our customers?” whereas Squarespace has been asking one thing a bit of completely different: “How do we take all these latest technologies and really use it to help our customers stand out?”
Learn a transcript of our dialog beneath, edited for size and readability.
Once I think about an AI web site technology product, I think about it wanting like a immediate — like all the pieces at the start of the demo. However right here, with each step, you may nonetheless go in and customise it. It seems, in some methods, like Squarespace at this time. So I’m curious: How did you resolve the place you needed the AI to step in and generate parts of the web site versus the place you needed it to nonetheless be customizable by people?
We’ve taken our time to essentially take into consideration how these items come collectively. So now we have this precept on the subject of constructing one thing like an internet site or something visible: I do know it after I see it. And I feel that holds true for not simply professionals, however for anyone.
Attempting to construct an internet site by a chatbot is admittedly difficult. It’s like being in a automotive and typing in “turn left” or “turn right.” You need the system to have the ability to present you issues, and once you see the factor you want, you wish to go, “OK, that’s it.” However you then don’t wish to be restricted by that; you need to have the ability to proceed enjoying. We would like it to really feel like a playground.
And so for us, it actually was taking this “I know it when I see it” idea. And each time the workforce got here and stated, “How about we add a chat? How about we do these things that everyone’s doing?” we had been like, “I don’t think that’s really the way people want to do this.” That simply grew to become the mannequin for us, and as soon as everybody adopted that, it grew to become very pure for all of us simply to suppose by that ideology.
It was crucial for us, additionally, that we deal with the purchasers’ info that they offer us with numerous respect. You’re telling us one thing about who you might be, you’re entrusting us to take that and use it successfully for you. So we needed to be sure that the ideas that we confirmed you in Blueprint would carry by into the system as effectively, so that you’d really feel like these selections you made up entrance weren’t only for naught.
You additionally talked about this concept of curation and know-how. Usually these issues are set in opposition to one another, but it surely sounds such as you’ve really tried to construct curation into the know-how. You even stated that you’ve a curation engine. Are you able to discuss a bit extra about what that appears like?
Our CEO says this typically; I feel it’s true: The truth that now we have textual content technology within our web site device, it’s nice. However you may additionally go to Open AI and ChatGPT, kind in one thing, get the textual content, and replica and paste it [into Squarespace], and that’s superb as effectively. The problem lots of people have is understanding the best way to immediate these engines the proper technique to really get the proper output from them.
We’ve a really particular, proprietary standpoint on how we immediate engines and the way we curate the content material that comes out of them, to get the feel and appear and the views that we predict are going to be actually worthwhile to our prospects based mostly on our expertise, based mostly on what they’re telling us, and based mostly on our style.
AI imagery is a good instance of that. We constructed our entire library of how we immediate [AI models] particularly to get the kind of imagery that we wish to get out, that we really feel could be very Squarespace, very proper for our prospects. We tag and curate these issues, after which we feed that again into the system once more.
We try this after we have a look at coloration palettes; we try this after we take into consideration format switching. That’s the curation factor. It’s our design and inventive workforce spending a lot of time desirous about: How do these parts come collectively? How can we immediate engines? How can we select what comes out of this and discard the issues that we don’t need that come out of this? We maintain getting higher and higher, so that you don’t need to do it. The entire level of coming to us is that you simply don’t need to do it.
It seems like a part of your method is, you’re not essentially attempting to construct all these fashions your self. You’re specializing in the way you current it and make it accessible and convey it collectively.
Look, we’re not the LLM consultants in creating all these several types of content material. We leverage them. We leverage Google, we’re leveraging OpenAI, Anthropic. We’ve nice partnerships. However for us, the key sauce is how we’re prompting and curating that content material because it’s popping out, and ensuring it suits what we learn about you.
Clearly, Squarespace has made it simple to create and customise web sites already. How do you suppose bringing extra generative AI into the method will change that ecosystem? Are Squarespace web sites going to look completely different than they do at this time?
I’d wish to suppose that they’re going to look even higher. It’s very, crucial for us, and it’s at all times been extremely essential for us, that design is at all times on the forefront. Individuals come to Squarespace as a result of they imagine that design goes to make a distinction. And an enormous a part of that distinction isn’t just capturing their model and who they’re, but it surely’s about ensuring that the factor that will get pre-created, on the finish of the day, feels bespoke.
If you ask a query like that, it might indicate all of them look the identical ultimately. And that’s completely not what we’d need, proper? So I feel we’re going to give folks the instruments to get even higher outcomes quicker, however we’ll at all times be sure that it’s going to stick to the imaginative and prescient of what they need.
Squarespace works very carefully with designers; you simply wrapped up a complete occasion with design companions. How do you suppose designers, particularly Squarespace companions, ought to be taking a look at a device like AI? To what extent ought to they see it as a risk versus a chance?
I feel it’s essential to have a look at it as a chance. AI know-how is clearly an enormous a part of our future, and identical to any new know-how, studying the best way to leverage it and use it the proper method goes to boost what you’re in a position to do. I 1 million % don’t imagine it replaces design. It’s meant to boost it. We’ll proceed to play our function to make sure that it enhances it for our prospects and our creators.
We simply had Circle Day with many [design] professionals. And after I take into consideration one thing like design intelligence, for me, it simply helps them convey a imaginative and prescient to life quicker to share with a buyer. However after all, [customers are coming to us] to implement all the issues that they need on prime of that. If we will encourage them with some selections that they’ll then change and go deeper on, implausible. We’re simply going to make the job quicker for them and perhaps simpler for them, however we’d by no means change them.