Wix template-based website builder has Announced which, soon, will let you build entire websites by typing a description into a box and answering a few follow-up questions. Everything from the layout to the text and images will be automatically generated for you, and from the sounds of it, it will be pretty fast.
In the past, companies like Wix and WordPress.com have allowed you to create websites using templates that you can modify to your liking. But Wix says that 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 combination of ChatGPT and its own tools to achieve all of this. ChatGPT will take care of the text creation, and the company’s own AI models will do the rest. If Wix’s new AI site builder works well enough, it could make website building more accessible than ever.
A video shows off the new feature, beginning with “Wix AI” asking what the website will be for. The user writes that they want a fitness site and gives some details about what they offer. The chatbot then asks if there are any other details to consider, 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 and then clicks “Generate Site”.
After that, a bunch of hissing graphics show that it’s generating the site, and within seconds, it seems, it’s ready. (The video seems a bit sped up at this point, but it’s hard to tell.) To edit, the user opens a popup window to ask questions about alternate layouts and styles, for example, and then chooses from the provided options.
The resulting website is impressive. is perhaps a little generic, but it’s far more professional looking than anything I’ve ever managed to create using WordPress or Squarespace, and it’s completely in another world from what you could have done with Wix 10 years ago. It has fancy animations and overlays of scrolling graphics, image cutouts, and more—everything you expect from today’s fancy, bloated websites.
What isn’t clear, and what I hope the company can elaborate on soon, is how much direct control it will 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’s made from templates. Also, while the copy that Wix’s AI creates looks good on this hypothetical website, we already know that chatbots have a problem with the truth, so it’s hard to know how tedious it will be to make sure the details are correct on your website. own site.
My final curiosity is this: With AI companies increasingly in the crosshairs of copyright infringement lawsuits, who is liable if someone sues you over a part of your site created by Wix AI? It appears that the content created by Wix’s “Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)” will be the burden of the company, with One page stating that “Content generated by Wix ADI, like content provided by Wix, is subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights, under local and international laws.” But there is no mention of ChatGPT. Does Wix consider text generated by ChatGPT to be subject to the same copyright?
All in all, it looks like a pretty awesome tool that will make it a lot easier to build a website than the often clunky and cluttered interfaces most website builders seem to offer these days. Will Wix’s new AI-powered site builder be used to further litter the web with junk? Probably. But it also has the potential, with friendly enough pricing, to help small businesses and entrepreneurs take a more professional step than they otherwise might have.
