All I wanted was a new couch, but AI gave my entire living room a Versailles makeover

When my neck started to ache after long gaming sessions on my 5-year-old Ikea couch, which, admittedly, had seen one too many moves to be considered stable, I knew it was time to change the seating at home. A good sofa can be life-changing, a bad sofa can wreck your back, and finding the right style for the way you live can cause major decision paralysis.

Here’s how to use an artificial intelligence tool Gepetto The search for a new sofa led me to an aesthetic overhaul of my mismatched living room — and how you can use AI to reimagine your living space, too.

The AI ​​tool: Geppetto

Geppetto was founded primarily with real estate professionals in mind who need to offer cheap houses and apartments for online advertising without actually having to rent furniture.

It’s like a text-to-image AI tool, but instead of writing a prompt that creates an image, you’re asked to upload a photo of the room you want to redesign or decorate and choose from a drop-down menu with different interior design styles to apply.

You can change things like the colors of the walls and give the tool less or more creative freedom in the results using the workspace in the browser.

Since I’m looking for a complete overhaul to go with a more comfortable, better-made sofa, I had Geppetto redesign my entire living room in a more cohesive look to take the place of the current hodgepodge of styles I’ve been hitting. over the years, little by little.

Using the tool in the browser is simple:

1. Go to the Gepetto AI site and click Get started. Create a login with your Apple, Google or Microsoft account.
2. Take a photo of the room you want to redecorate.
3. Upload the photo to Gepetto.
4. Tell Gepetto which room of the house it is – you can choose from bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, home office, dining room, balcony, garden and other rooms. There are also options for professional spaces, such as a clothing store, bar and coworking space.
5. Select which of the interior design styles you want to apply to the image. Some of the options are Provence, Normandie, Moderne, Midcentury Retro, Bali, Classique, Colonial, Cyberpunk, Hampton, Miami, Minimal, Californien, Rococo, Scandinave and Pièce enfant (a styling system especially for children’s rooms).
6. You can also select whether you want to repaint the walls and whether you want to keep the same type of furniture you already have. You can then turn the creativity meter up or down before pressing Generate.
7. It takes about 15 seconds to generate an image for you, after which you can browse the results and select your favorites.

The living room makeover, Versailles edition

The results can be a lot of fun, for example if you go for something on the chic side. The redesigned room below looks like it could be a corner in Versailles:

There’s also an option to keep everything in the room the same and easily swap or add furniture, making this potentially valuable for people moving to a new house or apartment and starting with empty spaces.

Gepetto is free to use for the first seven times, after which you’ll have to pay just over $43 per month for unlimited use and image upscaling. I tried seven different styles, resulting in a mix of tastefully decorated rooms and ostentatious living spaces that a Russian oligarch might feel comfortable in.

Amid miles of burlap, ornate ceiling frescoes, curtains that looked like they were melting from the windows and probably unattainably expensive flooring changes, I found a helpful suggestion (just ignore the two wide-brimmed sun hats that the AI ​​tool decided were a premium would make wall decoration).

Shop online for the AI ​​look

At the end of the process you can press the button shopping on the right side of the browser window and browse the Google Images search results of websites where you might find similar furniture and decor to those in the generated room.

The best results were not the most useful. Real estate sites like Zillow and Apartments.com or short-term rental sites like Airbnb and Vrbo got top billing, but scrolling down a little further revealed that a number of retailers like Etsy were selling items similar to the decor and furniture Gepetto made.

I dropped the image I liked most outside of Gepetto into Google and was presented with some decent furniture options from reputable online retailers, like West Elm, Amazon, Soul & Lane, Etsy, Article, and Pinterest.

Now all I have to do is buy a new sofa that won’t damage my spine or my bank account.

If you’re looking for other visual ways to use AI, learn how to plan your Halloween decor with Midjourney and how to remodel your bathroom using Renovate AI. For more AI news, tips, and reviews, visit CNET’s AI Atlas hub.