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For those that are new around here, this is weekly newsletter where I highlight new and innovative AI products that are worth exploring.

Hey hey!

Happy Friday! We’re back for another issue.

In this week’s issue:

• Product of the Week

• Other AI Things Happened

• What I’m Reading

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

After testing dozens of AI products this week. Here’s my report!

We’re not going far this week! We’re staying right at home. 🏘

Gone are the days of saving beautiful spaces on Pinterest hopelessly trying to cobble together similar aesthetics in our homes and apartments!

This week’s product pick is Spacely.AI an awesome, creative use of AI for a pretty focused use case: Interior Design. This product is a strong example of a solution very intentionally being aimed at tooling users to tackle a focused set of frustration points, and focusing on delivering actionable value.

To the detriment of my neighbors, I’m an avid 3AM redecorator. I often find myself inspired to try new layouts, new configurations across my living spaces about 4 times a year. After experimenting with Spacely.ai I truly feel like I have something to ideate faster, and more clearly see the potential of my spaces.

This week’s product is a home decorator’s visual sandbox, complete with buckets, shovels, and water features

Okay time to stop waxing poetics and get to it. The solution is actually built to be a image editing toolset with a number of decoration specializations. Have a look at the image down here for the huge variety of tooling you get access to.

Here’s a few examples to give you an idea of what’s packed in there:

✅ Got an idea for your space? Upload and get creative with AI generative fill features. (Yes, it does a better job at GenFill than our Mona Lisa mishap from 2 weeks ago)

✅ Snagged inspiration from online and want to fit it to a space? Upload your pictures and let the AI models get creative with style transfer features.

✅ Or on the off chance that you have something you’re pretty proud of and want to check the Feng Shui of it? Yep, they even have an AI model for that too (in BETA currently). I suspect that it’s still in its fledgling stage, so yes @DearModern, you’re safe.

Check out the Feng Shui Outputs I got from this image. ⏬

In this room, the "feng shui" principle can be applied to analyze the layout and arrangement of the furniture. A white room with wooden walls is decorated with various wooden furniture such as a coffee table, two chairs, a desk, and a laptop monitor. The presence of these furniture pieces suggests a comfortable and welcoming environment with a focus on comfort and functionality.

The coffee table and desk are positioned in the center of the room, which is considered a good location for business or work activities. The two chairs are positioned next to the desk, which is favorable for seated work or relaxation. The laptop monitor is placed on a flat surface, adding to the workspace's efficiency and productivity.

Additionally, the room is well-organized with various books stacked neatly on the coffee table, which supports the idea of a balanced and harmonious environment. The room's layout and arrangement are in line with the principles of feng shui, providing a comfortable and conducive space for personal and professional use.

Now from a limitations perspective, we're not looking at something to land in the market and dislodge the interior design profession given that much of the technical work going into design still needs the human mind. Rather I’d place Spacely.ai squarely as a tool that's fantastic for enhancing the human element, by smoothing frustrating portions of the décor simulation process: the grindy hours spent in specialist design software. 

Further work I see for the Spacely team involves a double down on the key user journeys that they get from their usage analytics:

• Key points of improvement come from the SaaS wrapper outside of the AI itself, helping users contextualize thier input outputs in a more impactful manner. Some to-fix items are more obvious than others: e.g. Individual Tool labeling could use help, since they’re currently named after their AI function, rather than a “Designer’s use case naming”

• I could see a great step in this product’s growth is building seamless integrations between various creative steps within the platform to create design workflows.

  Imagine: A photo of an empty room ➡ Generative Fill with furniture according to user specifications + User approval on placement & purpose ➡ Blend the last output with an aspirational style coming from up to X reference images (Object identification + Spacely’s clipart blending tool + inspiration style transfer from either proprietary style guides, or linked Pinterest boards and moodboards) ending in a final output render presenting the potential of the space in all its glory.

OTHER AI THINGS HAPPENED

Some other notable news and product launches from this week

• The article from SiliconANGLE dissects the AI boom with a nod to the dotcom era, examining similarities and differences. It highlights the rapid pace of AI innovation, significant capital investments, and the transformative potential of AI compared to the internet's early days.

• AI for business applications is still evergreen! Quite a few experts regrouped in Australia would agree after meeting in a consortium composed of major players across various industries to discuss the impact of AI on industry.

• McKinsey, yes, that McKinsey, put out an interesting piece on the state of Canadian healthcare and how it could do better to enhance itself with AI as part of its fundamental transformation needs. As a born Canadian, I will say the sentiment to awaken some urgency in transforming the healthcare system for the better is a fantastic idea, I for one, think there are some larger systemic fundamentals that are in greater need of fixing.

• Infoworld put out this article about how Data governance needed to evolve to start handling Generative AI… The article seems like a playbook on adopting just about any new tech: Have your house in order, Establish guardrails with the new thing, make sure people are playing nice with the new thing.

• Google pulled the brakes on generating Gemini images after some quite sensitive images were being generated without some key period accuracies (We are talking about a WW2 themed AI Gen’ed image with some glaring historical issues) that would be needed to allow their AI’s outputs to hold an amount of credibility.

  Raises & Mergers Recap:

• FAST CLOSER: Intapp is set to revolutionize the professional sectors by acquiring delphai, a leader in AI-driven firmographic data. This strategic move will enhance Intapp's cloud solutions, infusing them with advanced AI technology and expertise from delphai's team. Aiming to close the deal within 60 days, this acquisition marks a significant step towards transforming data utilization and decision-making in the industry.

• Bain Capital's Tech Opportunities fund is charting a step aside from some of the AI enthusiasm. The firm is focusing on later-stage companies, diverging from the early-stage, higher-risk AI ventures.

• Fundrise has broken down the door for retail investors to get into share ownership of Anthropic AI

• Figure AI, makers of humanoid robot tech, has just landed a massive raise from most AI giants, including Amazon, Nvidia and a few others.

• 

  Are we one step closer to iRobot? Only time will tell. Photo credits: the movie I, Robot (2004) inspired off of Isaac Aasimov’s short story

WHAT I'M READING

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them"

- Albert Einstein

This article published by ET insights is hailing the great potential for AI to alter Lifestyle industries across India. While I don’t entirely agree with this techno-heraldry article, I do see it as a good point of conversation to open with you all. Most of the article takes space to tackle the avenues of AI-driven personalization, Supply chain changes, and the potential of AR/VR being mixed into customer experiences.

In my perspective, to genuinely transform our digital interactions, the innovation must extend primarily beyond the retail industry’s business current fixation on AI algorithms as its silver bullet to its many brick and mortar issues. To encompass new, more intuitive, and more human-centric interfaces has a higher chance of yielding new experiences to customers, because these interfaces are what people touch, they are what people see, smell, and live by walking into lifestyle & retail spots. AI’s use is intersectional and but a sliver of the larger creations that are needed to best leverage its power. As you’ve seen me write in my reviews & reports prior, I’m a very strong proponent that the use case in which AI is used, and its context of interactions with humans is often more critical than the complexity (or technical modernity) of the solution developed... AND That’s my talk on why designers everywhere should not overlook their fundamentals along the way!

Stay well, and until next week.

-✌🏽 Sam

P.S. Interested in private feedback about a product you’re building? Send me an email: [email protected]