I was browsing Instagram recently when I came across a new page in my feed: @tinyhouseperfect. It seemed designed to incite my frustrated longings for a space of my own. I want to have a house, but I can't buy it. But what if the house was small, and also perfect?
Soon I was browsing the reading nooks and chef's kitchens of an elfin cottage, a coastal Gothic A-frame, and a cozy “lake house” in the Scottish Highlands. I had projected my future to the Scottish coast, when I realized that the house did not exist. Each of these houses had been rendered by AI. She had been fantasizing about a fantasy.
I have made no secret of my obsession with homeownership and renovation from the internet. At night I wander between Zillow and do-it-yourself Instagram accounts, stalking the hallways of houses I will never visit. Now artificial intelligence has burst into my domestic fantasy, reshaping my desires to fit within its ghostly walls.
An AI dream home economy has materialized in recent years. Search Pinterest for decorating inspiration and you'll find it filled with faux bedrooms. And dozens of AI-powered design apps and services offer images tailored to your specifications.
A set of house keys was once synonymous with success in America. Now, thanks to high interest rates, insufficient supply, and corporate landlords taking over that limited housing stock, Homeownership in America is more unrealistic than ever. AI houses make that unreality explicit.
AI and predictive algorithms make a dream home seem like it was built just for you. The lake house at @tinyhouseperfect seemed to have been outfitted to suit my tastes. There was a clawfoot bathtub with pewter fixtures, a charmingly cluttered window reading bench, and a kitchen painted a fresh green. Instead of cabinets, there were shelves filled with shapely glass containers of potions and preserves.
It was full of design touches in sync with the ones that fill my feeds on Instagram and Pinterest. The “personal taste” that attracted me was actually an impersonal taste: an aesthetic that dominates my Internet browsing so thoroughly that it feels like I selected it myself.
In “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture,” Kyle Chayka describes “the strangely frictionless geography created by digital platforms” and “the sense of vaporousness and unreality” created by the existence of, say, barely differentiated hipster cafes in every city. of the world. This feeling of lack of air has also invaded our collective imagination.
Even as social media and AI tip us toward ubiquitous megastyle, their products are often sold as hubs of creativity. An article in Architectural Digest about AI design tools describes them as offering a “new perspective.” But much of the AI decor that appears on Instagram features the same strange images: liquid blankets, accidentally surreal wall art, homes lit with dead flames.
The lake house I coveted was created by Ben Myhre, a Norwegian designer who started creating architectural concept art with artificial intelligence a couple of years ago.
He said he had guided the software to create a “cozy, whimsical kitchen in the beautiful Scottish highlands”, one with “window views over a vast, picturesque loch”. He asked for “rustic details.” And “no people, no animals.”
I hadn't fully understood the appeal of his work until he said those last words; fantasy is about spaces devoid of living beings. There's a post-apocalyptic feel to the series of house-for-sale type images and their AI counterpart. The houses feel urgently abandoned.
No human being lives in the lake house, but this increasingly also applies to real dream houses. Many of the luxury apartments in New York are empty. Some are acquired by the ultra-rich as assets. They exist to shelter no one, even when people sleep on the streets.
AI houses represent homes freed from any responsibility towards human beings. No shelter, just vibes.
By: Amanda Hess
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7123026, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-02-20 20:48:04
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