The template-based website builder Wix has announcement that soon it will let you create entire websites by typing a description into a box and answering a few follow-up questions. Everything from design to text and images will then be automatically generated for you, and from the looks of it, it will be pretty quick.
In the past, companies like Wix and WordPress.com let you create websites using templates that you can modify to your liking. But Wix says its new AI Site Generator feature goes beyond templates, using AI and algorithms to create a “unique” website.
At the moment, the company uses a mixture of ChatGPT and its own tools to accomplish all of this. ChatGPT will take care of the text creation, with the company’s own AI models doing the rest. If Wix’s new AI site builder works well enough, it could make website building more accessible than it has ever been.
A video introduces the new feature, starting with “Wix AI” asking what the website will be used for. The user writes that he wants a fitness site and gives some details about what he offers. The chatbot then asks if it needs to consider any other details and, in the last step, shows some sample images of fitness trainers and asks the user to choose the one that “best represents the desired result. in terms of style and feel”. The user chooses one, then clicks “Generate Site”.
After that, a bunch of stunning graphs show it generating the site, and within seconds apparently, it’s done. (The video seems a little sped up at this point, but it’s hard to say for sure.) To edit, the user opens a prompt window to ask about alternate layouts and styles, for example, then chooses from the options provided.
The resulting website is impressive. It may be a little generic, but it’s way more professional than anything I’ve ever managed to create with WordPress or Squarespace, and it’s in a whole different world than what you could have done with Wix 10 years ago. It features overlay scrolling animations and graphics, image cutouts, and more. – everything you expect from today’s fancy, bloated websites.
What’s not clear, and what I hope the company can develop soon, is how much direct control you’ll have over things. It looks like you can enter custom text and upload your own images, but nothing in the video leads me to believe that you can create a site that doesn’t look like it was created with templates. Also, while the AI-created copy of Wix looks good on this hypothetical website, we already know chatbots have problem with the truthso it’s unclear how tedious it will be to make sure the details are accurate on your own site.
My last curiosity is this: with AI companies more and more target In copyright infringement lawsuits, Who is responsible if someone sues you for a part of your site created by the Wix AI? It looks like content created by Wix’s “Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)” will be the burden on the company, with a page stating that “content generated by Wix ADI, as content provided by Wix, is subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights, under local and international law”. But there is no mention of ChatGPT. Does Wix consider text generated by ChatGPT to be under the same copyright?
All in all, this looks like a pretty amazing tool that will make building a website much easier compared to the often clunky and cluttered interfaces that most website builders seem to offer these days. Will Wix’s new AI site builder be used to fill the web more with trash? Oh, probably. But it also has the potential, with prices that are affordable enough, to help small businesses and entrepreneurs be more professional than they otherwise might have been.
