If you happen to didn’t know legendary tennis player and seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams had an eye fixed for interior design, consider this your heads up. It’s been 22 years since she founded her interior design firm V Starr Interiors, and now Williams is entering the generative AI space with a brand new platform called Palazzo, which creates design ideas to assist encourage people seeking to revive their space.
Palazzo officially launched today and is out there on the internet. The corporate has plans to develop iOS and Android apps within the near future.
When users open the platform, they’re prompted to upload photos of the room they wish to design, and Vinci, an AI-powered assistant, will generate an edited photo of the room. The AI analyzes the users’ input, so in the event that they ask for a mid-century modern look, Vinci will churn out renderings with furniture, decor and color combos that align with that style. (And yes, the AI assistant is known as after the famous Italian artist you’re pondering of.)
Users may upload an inspiration photo alongside their image, giving Vinci a greater idea of what they need. They’ll enter multiple ideas and requests, instructing the AI to remove a couch from the design or change the wallpaper. Because the user continues working with Vinci, they’ll learn their style and produce renderings that more closely fit their vision.
Image Credits: Palazzo
The variety of free iterations that users can create is restricted. Users only get 10 or so probabilities to make tweaks at no additional cost. Palazzo sells 4 different bundles, starting with $5 for 20 credits, $20 for 100, $40 for 250 and $75 for 500. Moreover, a referral program gives users five tokens each time someone is referred to the platform and makes an account.
The corporate continues to be experimenting with the model so this may occasionally change, co-founder Raffi Holzer tells TechCrunch.
Holzer is the previous CEO and founding father of Avvir, a platform for construction sites that was acquired by industrial tech company Hexagon in 2022. Also on Palazzo’s founding team is Edward Lando, Goody founder and early angel investor who has backed unicorns like Ramp, Mercury, Current, Spendesk, Truebill and others.
One other certainly one of Palazzo’s offerings involves taking an “Aesthetic DNA” test, which asks a user to pick from various room designs, starting from super colourful wallpaper and rugs with flashy patterns to a more toned-down vibe with neutral tones and minimalistic artwork. The outcomes of the quiz help the AI generate renders which are designed to talk to that aesthetic.
There’s an explore feed as well, encouraging users to interact with a community of creators with whom they will share their designs, collaborate and browse other user-generated content. And, after all, Palazzo lets users share their designs on social media platforms.
Williams has been hyping up Palazzo on X (formerly Twitter) since December, sharing her creations like this one:
Palazzo is currently powered by ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, but the corporate will proceed so as to add and revise the AI.
“We modified out the brain of our AI a variety of times and can proceed to achieve this as newer models pop up,” Holzer explains. “We’ve architected our system in such a way that we are able to type of plug out a given model and plug in a brand new one pretty seamlessly, so regardless of the innovative is, we offer the identical user experience.”
The corporate says the training process involved making a dictionary of industry-related terms and teaching the AI what the present furniture trends are. Williams uses the “cloud couch” fad for example, the dreamy plush, oversized white couch that’s getting its viral moment on TikTok.
“After we first began, we needed to teach the platform what [cloud couch] meant. They’re so popular immediately,” Williams says during our interview. “So those sorts of things are definitely essential from an industry standpoint and to essentially be on top of what people love and what’s trending. Last 12 months, there was an enormous thing in regards to the color peach that was trending… So being ahead of that curve and ensuring that we’re teaching our language model what meaning.”
Palazzo launched its beta in late December. There have been a couple of thousand users who signed up and are energetic monthly.
Image Credits: Palazzo
We tested the beta version, and while it isn’t perfect, Palazzo is straightforward to make use of, accessible and reasonably priced, making it a handy inspirational tool for any consumer, no matter their design skills.
“It’s fun and intuitive to make use of since it looks like you’re talking to a design assistant, but it surely also recognizes its limitations. It’s not here to exchange the human relationship,” Holzer says.
A majority of these platforms aren’t latest. Many retail giants are putting their hats within the generative AI ring, including Ikea, which, earlier this month, debuted its AI-powered home design assistant exclusively on the OpenAI GPT Store. Walmart announced in October 2023 that it was developing an interior design assistant that leverages generative AI and AR technology. Last summer, Wayfair launched its Decorify app.
While Palazzo doesn’t have a big-name brand to depend on for growth, it does have a tennis icon on its team with twenty years of interior design knowledge as well.
Image Credits: Palazzo
Palazzo has ambitious plans for its platform and desires to expand beyond generative AI-powered offerings. This includes shopping and checkout features, “enabling people to purchase [similar] furniture and residential decor from throughout the image that they create for themselves,” Holzer reveals. The corporate will bring on retail partners to incorporate inventory on the platform for Vinci to suggest to potential customers. The aptitude is rolling out soon.
It also hopes to enterprise into other services beyond the design phase, like connecting consumers to home remodelers and other professionals.
“We see expanding into connecting people to home service providers that wish to help execute the design visions they’ve created. So, whether that’s finding a designer to attach with or finding any individual to color your room, then all of that’s on the table,” he adds.
Most notably, Palazzo is bringing in well-known interior designers and firms (like V Starr) to contribute designs on the platform and be compensated for his or her work.
“AI is thought for ripping off creatives. If you happen to’re a creative, you place your IP out into the world and that enormous language model will scan what you’ve created without your consent and even your knowledge and definitely with none remuneration. The model we’ve created here is this idea of a design imprint. So, if any individual desires to create their room in V Starr style, our design engine can produce that aesthetic inside any individual’s space. But V Starr then gets compensated if any transactions are made on the platform,” Holzer shares.
“We’re pro-human touch. To me, I feel like AI is a tool for efficiency and creativity, but we still want the human interaction. I don’t think we are able to forget that in life,” Williams says.
