Beware of the AI Pinterest home

It isn't real!!!!

If you’re anything like me and spend too much time on Pinterest, you may have noticed that AI has all but taken over the interior design boards. This shouldn’t come as a surprise — artificial intelligence has been rampant in the news due to its recent and intense availability to the masses through apps like ChatGPT, and integration into the websites and software you already use everyday, like Google.

The AI home can be difficult to spot — they may feature items completely out of place, asymmetrical Persian rug patterns, typefaces that don’t say anything in any known human language, or that “AI glow” that makes corners look a little too soft.

But on Pinterest, where you’re typically looking at multiple images at a time and scrolling quite quickly, you may not have the opportunity to scan each pin.

I think one of the reasons AI images bother me so much — even when it comes to something as seemingly innocuous as Pinterest home inspiration — is that they aren’t real. I know that’s obvious, and I know plenty of people argue that it doesn’t really matter that they’re not depicting something that exists in real life. But I think it does matter. I think it matters that we know when we are looking at something that is pretending to be real, the same way it matters that we know the Amazon customer service chat bots we’re typing back and forth with are just simulating the way a real person might speak.

I pulled this image off Pinterest. Note the different sized tiles, subtle curve in the floating vanity, and a hinge on the wrong side of the vanity door. There’s also a perfume bottle floating in front of the mirror, and a vase that seems to be growing an ear.

Home inspiration already seems so far out of reach. The homes featured in Architectural Digest aren’t accessible to the lower middle and working classes. And that’s kind of the point. They’re supposed to be aspirational. But throwing AI into the mix just feels sacrilege. It’s not even aspirational anymore because the home depicted doesn’t even exist. How can you aspire to something generated by a computer?

Magazines like Arch Digest and websites like Apartment Therapy are fun, in part, because they tap into our voyeuristic tendencies. We love peeking and peering into the lives of others — from what a celebrity’s home looks like, to how a 31-year-old makes her studio functional and cute. There is nothing about the AI home that is real; it wasn’t even imagined by a human.

However, obtaining photo copyrights can be complicated. And AI simplifies that.

Every time I feature a home in this newsletter, I go through a process of reaching out to the listing agent, having them send over the photo files, and getting the proper photographer credit. It can take a long time — I’ve given up on featuring numerous beautiful homes because the agent never got back to me with photo credits. With AI images, you don’t have to do that because no one owns the images. No one lives in the AI house. No one cares if you reproduce a fake image that belongs to no one.

When face filters became common on social media sites like Snapchat and Instagram, the public opinion was quite clear: While these may be fun, they’re unhealthy because they show you a version of yourself that you know isn’t real, but could be. A 2021 study showed that over 60 percent of those interviewed felt worse about how they looked in real life after using face filters.

My question is this: At what point do we all agree that constant reproduction of the fake pretending to be real is damaging to humanity’s understanding of shared reality? And if we already all agree, why are AI images still being pumped out en masse?

(If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Go ahead and leave a comment!)