I let AI design my living room and immediately regretted it

I uploaded a photo of my living room and typed one line.

“Redesign this.”

Ten seconds later, I had four options!!

All of them were beautiful.

That was the first problem…

Every render looked finished. Warm light, styled shelves, a throw draped over the sofa at exactly the right angle!

I stared at them for a long time…

Then I started noticing what wasn’t there.

In one, the sofa had moved to a wall with a door on it. The door could no longer open.

In another, there was a lovely round table where my walkway to the kitchen actually is.

In the third, the window was a different size.

The tool hadn’t made a mistake, exactly.

It had made a picture.

A picture doesn’t have to work.

A room does.

Here’s what I think is going on.

When you design a space, most of the job is invisible.

Where does the door swing? How wide is the path from the sofa to the kitchen? What happens when two people are in the room at once?

Those are trade-offs, and every one of them costs you something somewhere else.

The renders skipped all of it, because nothing in a picture pushes back.

I’m not against these tools.

They’re quick, and they’re good at one thing in particular, which is helping you see options you wouldn’t have thought to try.

I’d use one again to get unstuck.

But I wouldn’t let one decide.

Because deciding means knowing what you’re giving up.

And a tool that never has to live in the room can’t feel what a bad choice costs.

So I took the prettiest render and drew it on paper, to scale.

It didn’t fit.

The one I liked least was the only one that did.

Use the picture to find the idea.

Use the drawing to find out if it’s true…!!