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Programming IT

Wix's New Tool Can Create Entire Websites from Prompts (techcrunch.com) 35

Wix, a longtime fixture of the web building space, is betting that today's customers don't particularly care to spend time customizing every aspect of their site's appearance. TechCrunch: The company's new AI Site Generator tool, announced today, will let Wix users describe their intent and generate a website complete with a homepage, inner pages and text and images -- as well as business-specific sections for events, bookings and more. Avishai Abrahami, Wix's co-founder and CEO, says that the goal was to provide customers with "real value" as they build their sites and grow their businesses. [...] AI Site Generator takes several prompts -- any descriptions of sites -- and uses a combination of in-house and third-party AI systems to create the envisioned site. In a chatbot-like interface, the tool asks a series of questions about the nature of the site and business, attempting to translate this into a custom web template. ChatGPT generates the text for the website while Wix's AI creates the site design and images.
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Wix's New Tool Can Create Entire Websites from Prompts

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  • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @02:26PM (#63694108) Homepage

    For whatever reason, no one seems to know how to do UIX. Here's hoping AI designed websites get this right, although given the training data I don't have high hopes.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Great. Just what we need. More useless, content-free websites, that are even shittier than what we have now.

      If you are too lazy to learn how to build a website and/or too cheap to hire someone who knows how to do it, then get the fuck off the Internet.
      • If you are too lazy to learn how to build a website and/or too cheap to hire someone who knows how to do it, then get the fuck off the Internet.

        If I can get an automated system to build my shitty content-free websites, I'd be stupid to hire a human to do the same thing. Setting aside your hurt feelings of course.

        • Your comment and the post you replied to - I agree completely with both. Each comment has a different point of view.

          Your comment is insightful and correct. If someone is too constipated to give a crap about a decent website, just wants to get on the web because what the hell, then a cheap mindless say-nothing look-shitty site that took a minute and cost zero, that is logical. It's cheap, sleazy, embarrassing to any one who cares about quality, but you are exactly right, it would be stupid to hire a human

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      What on earth would make you think that AI would be capable of producing anything novel?

      • What on earth would make you think that AI would be capable of producing anything novel?

        First, who cares? What OP says (and what I believe customers want) is not to get something "novel". It's to get something good. So your ask is completely besides the point.

        Second, how often human "creators" really come up with something novel? Most works (web sites too) are mostly rehashes of other previous works; this is sometimes intentional - when you paint "a homage to Dali", or "in the style of Rembrandt"), but usually automatic - and then the critics will say [wikipedia.org] things like Led Zeppelin have influenced h

        • by narcc ( 412956 )

          The parent wrote:

          no one seems to know how to do UIX. Here's hoping AI designed websites get this right

          If no one can 'get UIX right' and the hope is that AI will, then AI must necessarily do something novel. As you probably already know, this is not something that AI of this kind can do.

          What I'm trying to say is

          ... a lot of nonsense that has nothing to do with my post. You AI apologists are ridiculous.

          • Good ux isn't hard, but it's too "boring" and people ruin ux trying to be "cool".

            Good UX is often a milqtoast website that any one with skill could hammer out in a short while, but they choose not to because they think it's cool that they can, for example, hijack scrolling to pause the site in the middle of navigation to suddenly have scrolling become animating some crap illustration.

            AI basic site and app generation is right up the alley of use cases I think the technology is capable of. It's not up to the

            • by narcc ( 412956 )

              My post is about the limitations of this particular type of AI, not about user interfaces.

              • by Junta ( 36770 )

                Right, but the point is a lot of human designers fail to do UX properly not because it needs novelty to be good, but because human designers are frequently acting actively against good UX.

                An AI will happily make a boring, consistent, sort of arrangement of a UI that looks and feels just like tons and tons of other websites, just with different text and imagery from the user doing the input. In fact the current templating that Wix offers is good enough for their users, the prompt frontend is likely not real

                • by narcc ( 412956 )

                  Once again, the parent wrote:

                  no one seems to know how to do UIX. . Here's hoping AI designed websites get this right

                  If AI is going to "get UIX right" when "no one" has managed it before, then AI must necessary do something novel. An impossibility for AI of this type.

                  What is so difficult to understand about that?

                  If you want to talk about user interface design, complain to the parent. They're the one claiming that "no one gets UIX right."

      • https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/29/ai-generated-drug-begins-clinical-trials-in-human-patients.html
    • Someone with an AI: "Challenge Accepted"

    • There are three kinds of UI designers - ones who want it to be perfectly utilitarian, those who want it pretty above all else, and the ones who want to optimise the profitability.

      The latter two usually find a way to collaborate and win, and they're the reason for all the crap on websites that makes it difficult to get what you want, and the reason that standards keep evolving to embrace the way they abused the previous standards.

      • by znrt ( 2424692 )

        There are three kinds of UI designers - ones who want it to be perfectly utilitarian, those who want it pretty above all else, and the ones who want to optimise the profitability.

        The latter two usually find a way to collaborate and win, and they're the reason for all the crap on websites that makes it difficult to get what you want, and the reason that standards keep evolving to embrace the way they abused the previous standards.

        it's the target audience: people. yes, designers have preferences and managers love to cut corners, but those standards and guidelines have evolved over a few years of usability tests and studies, and they work. meaning those standards are correct in general, probably just not for you. they are intended to maximize the audience and it so happens that the vast majority of people just tends to have short attention span, high resistance to change or effort, very little patience and usually expects to be spoon

        • That presumes they are targeting a sure to be useful, rather than fancy or, more commonly, exploitative.

          No one likes scrolling through a website and suddenly scrolling stops because of wants to change everything to navigating an instructional ad. It's just they have a captive audience. Even when it isn't advertising, it is commonly a designer s showing off a trick they think is cool, but it's annoying. That are out to prove that they aren't just some basic person, but capable of doing more than a beginner

  • This looks great for making simple pamphlet-like pages. Simple information with pretty presentation. It doesn't seem to make anything impressive beyond that.

    Could be used by mom & pop places to create a website for their business, maybe.

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      This is less useful than a template, which, if we're honest, is likely what this is using anyway.

      • by znrt ( 2424692 )

        it looks like it's just their regular "web builder" with a chatgpt plugin to generate the actual web text content. now ai powered!

    • by SpzToid ( 869795 )
      It's a prompt-driven input for brochure-ware, using templates. Yay? (functionality be damned, along with vendor-lock-in).
      • by SpzToid ( 869795 )
        ...also this AI web stuff better not infringe on any open-source licenses. A lot of websites use open-source software. What model is Wix using to train their model?
        • They're probably just using their own templates for the HTML and CSS. These types of companies have offered similar services for over a decade, but you had to fill out the template with your own text and images. This probably just uses text that an LLM spit out and images from either a set that they have the rights to or are freely available under some license that would allow them to be used here.

          This is just the company trying to get some free publicity due to all of the hype and buzz around AI at the
  • by John.Banister ( 1291556 ) * on Monday July 17, 2023 @02:55PM (#63694226) Homepage
    "I want a stock trading site that does peoples taxes, including personal income tax for them." "I want a website where 3rd parties can provide banking services and my customers can also shop and auction things." "I want a website where an AI tells my customers entertaining stories they can use in court to explain why they were speeding."
    • by Anonymous Coward
      "I want a website that looks like a funny social media site with videos and chat, but in reality harvests people's username and passwords and saves them to a database so I can try them on banking and credit card sites."
    • by khchung ( 462899 )

      "I want a website that will make me money."

      Why not just ask what you wanted directly?

    • by mccalli ( 323026 )
      None of these sound particularly outlandish to be honest. A module for 'shop', and if the prompt contains the word 'shop' here's your template. A module for 'auction', and if it contains the word 'auction' here's your auction services. If the prompt contains both, then here's your two page website with both modules...

      Etc., etc.
  • There are entire movies made from some text on a napkin.

    And don't get me going on the 'movies' where they wear capes and their underwear on the outside.

    • by SpzToid ( 869795 )

      There are entire movies made from some text on a napkin.

      Until I read your second paragraph, I was gonna bet you were talking about The Emoji Movie [youtube.com]. Note to readers, do not waste your time watching the trailer, it is so bad.

  • by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Monday July 17, 2023 @03:03PM (#63694268)
    The first and foremost reason why people create stupid little web pages without useful content is to do "Search Engine Optimization", as in "fooling some search engines to believe that page X is relevant because oh so many other web pages link to it".

    Chances are this is yet another SEO garbage mill, maybe slightly more advanced.
  • But I'm an individual who argued at one point that the OSI application and presentation layers are nothing but abstractions of the other 5 layers therefore are unnecessary.
  • Or just a flashy front end that can be done in 5 minutes any number of ways. Well, here's one more.
  • Drag and drop is just tooooo hard for people to get their heads around.
    Also, what's a website?
    Can I get it from the App Store?
  • I'll believe this when I see it with my own eyes. I don't think there's anything that can beat the web monkey touch, even if web monkeys have failed UX 101 over recent years.
  • Because that's what the people who want these website want. More "Swoosh!"

  • There are a lot of wannabe web developers out there who charge ridiculous sums of money to small businesses, cranking out garbage web sites that are little more than an online brochure. If this tool can replace those kinds of developers, that will not only help the businesses who just want to do their thing and not worry about fancy web sites, it will also help customers (or potential customers) avoid having to deal with crappy web UIs when all they want to do is find out what services are offered by a part

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