[HN Gopher] Using AI tools to design an entire website
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       Using AI tools to design an entire website
        
       Author : thisdickie
       Score  : 75 points
       Date   : 2023-02-19 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.samdickie.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.samdickie.me)
        
       | toiletfuneral wrote:
       | As a designer none of these make me worried about my skill set,
       | they all look pretty bad with the slightest amount of attention.
       | 
       | The real concern is how ugly a world the capitalists are willing
       | accept to cut labor costs, and we know the answer, just look what
       | capitalism did architecture. Dogshit buildings everywhere
       | designed by contractors to avoid skilled labor. What an ugly time
       | to be alive
        
         | kypro wrote:
         | I doubt profit hungry capitalists are your main concern, but
         | your average struggling startup or entrepreneur.
         | 
         | At a startup I worked for we spent about PS10,000 just on our
         | brand and website design. That was a big chunk of our budget
         | and I'm genuinely not sure that would be needed anymore. I
         | think I could probably prompt AI to design a site and logo
         | roughly as good.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ericmcer wrote:
         | This page isn't something the AI built, the AI built
         | specifically defined pieces of it and the author assembled
         | those into the page using Webflow. I feel like their claim of
         | "no-code" is a bit suspect. Embedding an AI generated block of
         | code into a Webflow site has nothing to do with AI generating a
         | website. If I add a block of AI generated code to a pull
         | request that isn't "Using AI to write an entire PR".
         | 
         | AI still feels like self-driving cars to me. People saw some
         | shadow of success there and said "by 2020 cars won't even have
         | steering wheels" but who knows now if we will ever see them. I
         | could be totally wrong, but my prediction is we see a ton of
         | cool stuff but getting that last 5% down to where we can
         | actually trust AI to run the show will not happen for a long
         | time if ever.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | This is day one.
         | 
         | You're seeing the results of amateurs adapting unspecialized
         | tools. They're using minimal effort and still deriving head
         | turning results.
         | 
         | A great analogy might be all the folks making Geocities
         | websites back in '99. Look at how far we've come from that. Can
         | you even fathom where we'll be in five years? (Or even just
         | this fall, given the pace of research and new startups
         | optimizing models/workflows?)
         | 
         | These tools are going to be specially purposed for every domain
         | soon. VC is going to pour into every possible optimization
         | niche, and talented teams will build specially purposed tools
         | that put entire careers on easy mode.
         | 
         | This is good. We shouldn't want to write HTML any more than we
         | should want to churn butter.
         | 
         | The job of designer will change to incorporate the new
         | workflows. But everything else will also change. Websites of
         | 2000-2020 will look as dated as magazine ads. New websites will
         | be rich and interactive as never before.
         | 
         | This is the biggest boom and shakeup of our industry perhaps
         | ever. Get excited by the opportunities. You're not going to
         | have to work like a caveman designer anymore. You'll be a year
         | 2080 designer before the decade ends.
        
           | minusf wrote:
           | is that you sidney?
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | jfvinueza wrote:
           | how do magazine ads look dated?
        
           | grugagag wrote:
           | > Websites of 2000-2020 will look as dated as magazine ads.
           | New websites will be rich and interactive as never before.
           | 
           | Why? Do we need any of that aside from specialized tools
           | (e.g. data intensive) for which it actually makes sense to
           | use tried and proven tech?
           | 
           | Im sure new things are going to come out of AI, they're
           | already becoming obvious. But using AI to build things we
           | already know how to do and just add more complexity is bound
           | to not go anywhere useful in my opinion.
        
           | gtirloni wrote:
           | _> New websites will be rich and interactive as never
           | before._
           | 
           | So Flash is making a comeback?
        
             | toiletfuneral wrote:
             | [dead]
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | >Dogshit buildings everywhere designed by contractors to avoid
         | skilled labor.
         | 
         | This seems to be the opinion of everyone on HN, but I never
         | encounter this in real life (and do not agree with it myself).
         | Where I live (mainly London, but I've spent a bit of time in
         | some US cities as well) the buildings being built/applying for
         | planning permission look pretty good. It's the ones built in
         | the late 20th century that are hideous.
        
       | oldstrangers wrote:
       | It's so close to being decent but if you lack the design
       | sensibilities to see it through and guide the process, it's kind
       | of a mess.
       | 
       | People think AI is going to bridge some talent disparity between
       | designers and developers vs non-technical types (and it probably
       | will someday). But currently, AI is just acting like an infinity
       | gauntlet with the designers and developers still holding all the
       | stones.
        
       | Severian wrote:
       | "I haven't found a workaround for this yet but I can imagine this
       | would be a game changer if future improvements allow precise
       | blending placement from one image to another."
       | 
       | ControlNet allows you to sketch or use a pre-existing sketch to
       | then use as the basis for image generation. Allows for very,
       | ahem, /stable/ variations between different sub-prompts.
        
       | joe_the_user wrote:
       | It's entertaining to have an AI create a fantasy web page for a
       | fantasy product that's clearly not serious. Entertaining but I
       | see it sooooo much now that it's kind of wearing off.
       | 
       | However I'd like to see AI create a web page for an product
       | that's appealing and plausible. This would be closer to seeing if
       | the AI as a human replacement or not.
        
         | awb wrote:
         | I used to run a design agency catering to tech startups. I've
         | tried dozens of times to produce something that looks better
         | than a free template for a personal site or a tech startup and
         | came up well short every time.
         | 
         | The high quality designs I have seen were for:
         | 
         | * Nike shoes
         | 
         | * Jetskis
         | 
         | * A donut shop
         | 
         | AI web design is not ready for prime time yet.
        
       | sublinear wrote:
       | I'm still baffled how so many people are willing to gloss over
       | all the heavy lifting the user has to do to glue all this
       | together. Organizing a project is still and always has been the
       | majority of the work!
        
         | vsareto wrote:
         | It'd probably take them a lot longer to learn to make the
         | images than to organize a project (which is something they
         | already know how to do). Doubly so for the video clip.
         | 
         | Plus this was mostly copy/paste - that's not heavy lifting!
        
       | beepbooptheory wrote:
       | Appreciate the effort but these demos have really quickly become
       | so boring. If you can design an entire website with the AI tools,
       | it appears its almost certainly a website you don't need to
       | create in the first place. Either it has already essentially been
       | made by somebody who actually understood and cared about the
       | code, or it's such a trivial mix of stuff you're better off
       | making a squarespace site or whatever. At least that is hardened
       | and tested as a product.
       | 
       | Like, we should maybe give pause to the fact that this is at
       | least the 20th demo specifically about "making a website." If
       | this technology is so powerful, saves so much time, democratizes
       | the profession so much, etc why are the demos all the same?
       | Either people are unimaginative, which they are not, or perhaps
       | this is pretty much what we can get from this in general.
       | 
       | Coding involve care and inspiration, and should not necessarily
       | be reinventing the wheel again and again, even if youre getting
       | the AI to do the reinvention for you.
       | 
       | But beyond any principled thoughts, just not seeing the returns
       | here that people are trying to get me to see. Lots of laymen have
       | been making wonderful websites for 30 years. Its cool the
       | computer knows what css people have been using for those decades,
       | but it only makes brittle uninspired things that only
       | incidentally work.
       | 
       | I'd really like to know, beyond the hype, if any serious
       | engineers have actually used this stuff for an extended amount of
       | time. Ive tried and tried to use it and convince myself its
       | helping me, but it just leads to so much frustration with the
       | hallucinations and misunderstandings and schizophrenic
       | comprehension of its own context..
        
       | pmlnr wrote:
       | Looking at these makes me think I should retreat to gopher.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | cammikebrown wrote:
       | I've gotten a (very) basic website done via Chat-GPT in about
       | five minutes. Very static but you can ask it to do fancier stuff
       | and it seems to work all right.
        
         | shostack wrote:
         | It can do basic rails stuff. But I do wonder what options there
         | are to train it on your codebase for even a small project so it
         | can just know what files to edit and that to name things.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-19 23:00 UTC)