Will generative AI instruments assist folks construct higher web sites, or will they simply fill the net with spam? With the current launch of Design Intelligence, a brand new web site builder stuffed 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, in fact, a setup for a demo of Design Intelligence, which started with just a few prompts permitting Gubbay to specify issues just like the sort 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 “actual” web site, with loads of choices for additional customization.
Gubbay argued that whereas different web site builders have “scrambled in a short time” to launch AI options, these opponents are asking, “How can we take this expertise and use it to face out to our prospects?” whereas Squarespace has been asking one thing a bit completely different: “How will we take all these newest applied sciences and actually use it to assist our prospects stand out?”
Read a transcript of our dialog under, edited for size and readability.
When I think about an AI web site technology product, I think about it trying like a immediate — like every thing at the start of the demo. But right here, with each step, you would nonetheless go in and customise it. It seems, in some methods, like Squarespace as we speak. So I’m curious: How did you resolve the place you needed the AI to step in and generate components 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 this stuff come collectively. So we now have this precept in terms of constructing one thing like an internet site or something visible: I do know it once I see it. And I believe that holds true for not simply professionals, however for anyone.
Trying to construct an internet site via a chatbot is absolutely difficult. It’s like being in a automotive and typing in “flip left” or “flip proper.” You need the system to have the ability to present you issues, and while you see the factor you want, you wish to go, “OK, that’s it.” But then you definitely don’t wish to be restricted by that; you need to have the ability to proceed taking part in. We need it to really feel like a playground.
And so for us, it actually was taking this “I do know it once I see it” idea. And each time the crew got here and mentioned, “How about we add a chat? How about we do this stuff that everybody’s doing?” we had been like, “I don’t assume that’s actually the best way folks wish to do that.” That simply turned the mannequin for us, and as soon as everybody adopted that, it turned very pure for all of us simply to assume via that ideology.
It was essential for us, additionally, that we deal with the purchasers’ info that they provide us with quite a lot of respect. You’re telling us one thing about who you’re, 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 via into the system as properly, so that you’d really feel like these decisions you made up entrance weren’t only for naught.
You additionally talked about this concept of curation and expertise. Often these issues are set in opposition to one another, but it surely sounds such as you’ve really tried to construct curation into the expertise. You even mentioned that you’ve got a curation engine. Can you discuss a bit extra about what that appears like?
Our CEO says this generally; I believe it’s true: The undeniable fact that we now have textual content technology inside our web site software, it’s nice. But you would additionally go to Open AI and ChatGPT, sort in one thing, get the textual content, and duplicate and paste it [into Squarespace], and that’s tremendous as properly. The problem lots of people have is realizing how one can immediate these engines the precise method to really get the precise output from them.
We have a really particular, proprietary perspective 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 expect are going to be actually invaluable to our prospects primarily based on our expertise, primarily based on what they’re telling us, and primarily based on our style.
AI imagery is a superb instance of that. We constructed our complete library of how we immediate [AI models] particularly to get the kind of imagery that we wish to get out, that we really feel may 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 do this once we take a look at coloration palettes; we do this once we take into consideration format switching. That’s the curation aspect. It’s our design and artistic crew spending plenty of time fascinated by: How do these components come collectively? How will we immediate engines? How will 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 complete level of coming to us is that you simply don’t need to do it.
It feels like a part of your strategy 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 produce it collectively.
Look, we’re not the LLM specialists in creating all these various kinds of content material. We leverage them. We leverage Google, we’re leveraging OpenAI, Anthropic. We have nice partnerships. But for us, the key sauce is how we’re prompting and curating that content material because it’s popping out, and ensuring it matches what we learn about you.
Obviously, Squarespace has made it straightforward to create and customise web sites already. How do you assume bringing extra generative AI into the method will change that ecosystem? Are Squarespace web sites going to look completely different than they do as we speak?
I’d wish to assume that they’re going to look even higher. It’s very, essential for us, and it’s at all times been extremely vital for us, that design is at all times on the forefront. People come to Squarespace as a result of they consider that design goes to make a distinction. And a giant 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.
When you ask a query like that, it may suggest all of them look the identical not directly. And that’s completely not what we might need, proper? So I believe we’re going to give folks the instruments to get even higher outcomes quicker, however we are going to 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 assume designers, particularly Squarespace companions, ought to be taking a look at a software like AI? To what extent ought to they see it as a menace versus a possibility?
I believe it’s vital to take a look at it as a possibility. AI expertise is clearly an enormous a part of our future, and identical to any new expertise, studying how one can leverage it and use it the precise approach goes to reinforce what you’re in a position to do. I 1 million p.c don’t consider it replaces design. It’s meant to reinforce it. We will proceed to play our position to make sure that it enhances it for our prospects and our creators.
We simply had Circle Day with many [design] professionals. And once I take into consideration one thing like design intelligence, for me, it simply helps them deliver a imaginative and prescient to life quicker to share with a buyer. But in fact, [customers are coming to us] to implement the entire issues that they need on prime of that. If we will encourage them with some decisions that they’ll then change and go deeper on, improbable. We’re simply going to make the job quicker for them and possibly simpler for them, however we might by no means change them.
