Courtesy of Rooms GPTThe other day my son found me in a frenzy of speed-tidying. I was hastily stashing appliances in cabinets, fluffing cushions, and muttering about coats left on chairs. Then I started snapping photos on my phone and fussing some more.“Move over — you're in my picture!” I barked, swatting him out of the frame.“What are you doing?” he asked.“I’m cleaning up for the AI!” I snapped.Do you know what feels even more foolish than precleaning for the housecleaners? Cleaning up for a phone app.I was preparing to try some of the new AI interior design tools—the ones where you upload a photo of your space, input your style preferences, and get to see the magical result, much like those face-altering apps that show you what you’d look like with bangs or a facelift—and I needed a bunch of “before” photos to get started. I just couldn’t bear the thought of uploading photos that revealed a sinkful of dirty dishes or stray socks on the floor. Was I afraid of being judged by an algorithm? Yes.These tools have multiplied like boba shops in Brooklyn. There’s Home Visualizer, Reimagine Home AI, Home Designs AI, Interior AI, Collov AI, AI Room Planner, Palazzo, and countless others, many with confoundingly similar names (Room GPT versus Rooms GPT versus Room GBT—spot the difference!). All promise to revamp your space with unprecedented speed and creativity, usually charging fees not much higher than the price of a Netflix subscription. Alas, I can’t afford a human interior decorator. The kind of talent you see in Elle Decor would likely take one look at my chewed-up upholstery and quietly back away, so the idea of getting some AI help certainly had its appeal.“Was I afraid of being judged by an algorithm? Yes.”One thing I learned early on is that many apps are not so good at distinguishing between day-to-day clutter and actual decor. Playing around with Palazzo, I uploaded a photo of a room that wasn’t fully tidied: I had left a pile of winter coats on a stool. The app interpreted the outerwear as a lumpy furniture piece and continued to offer me versions of that strangely biomorphic mound.Another surprising find: These tools test your patience. Another surprising find: These tools test your patience. Whether you're using a phone app or desktop platform, you'll face a constant stream of glitches, slowdowns, and error messages. The waiting game may be the most maddening part of the experience. Each app has its own way of telling you it’s thinking. Palazzo shows a crude graphic of spinning tools: a measuring tape, a triangle, and what I eventually realized was a level. Reimagine Home tries to distract you with inspirational quotes from design legends like Dorothy Draper while it processes. (“I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.” Thanks, Dorothy, but I'm still waiting.)The results? Sometimes underwhelming, sometimes unhinged. Using Home Visualizer, I uploaded a shot of my dark, beaten-up little kitchen and requested a “Martha Stewart–style makeover.” Where the real Martha would surely have ripped everything to the studs, the result was pretty much my same kitchen with exactly the same cabinets and appliances, just brightened up with white paint and with a few mysterious objects added—including what appeared to be a needlepoint wall hanging where my oven mitts had lived.Maybe I’m playing it too safe, I thought. So I chose a bachelorette party palette of “Fuchsia Fun, Midnight Black Elegance, and Glittering Gold Grandeur” rendered in “glam” style for my kitchen and steeled myself for a scene from Magic Mike. After a seemingly eternal cycle of processing, it returned essentially the same kitchen, but with two hot pink fluffy rugs and a brass chandelier.“Maybe I’m playing it too safe, I thought. So I chose a bachelorette party palette of ‘Fuchsia Fun, Midnight Black Elegance, and Glittering Gold Grandeur.’”Switching to Reimagine Home, I uploaded a photo of my bathroom, a drab, gray little phone booth of an en suite, choosing “Scandinavian” style and one of the app’s preset color combinations, “Sage Green Serenity, Blonde Wood Brightness, and Pale Beige Peace.” I anxiously awaited the results, but the image it served me was nearly the same, the main discernible difference being a new green soap dispenser. Meanwhile, my electric toothbrush remained, as unsightly as ever.The results weren’t all disappointing. Some AI engines do flaunt surprising design literacy. Beyond the typical preset style menu options that most tools offer (think: “traditional,” “modern,” “contemporary,” “farmhouse,” “vintage” and the soul-sucking “transitional”), Rooms GPT offers filters that are like catnip for any design cognoscente who stumble upon its bare-bones website. Its pulldown menu lets you filter for the aesthetic of design luminaries like Bunny Williams, Jacques Garcia, and India Mahdavi—though, based on my experimentation, it’s clear that the real India Mahdavi doesn’t have to worry she’ll be out of a job. Where these tools really showed promise was in their ability to work with real design inspiration. I was most enamored of Home Visualizer's “Fusion” functionality, which asks you to upload a favorite inspiration image—a welcome request for anyone with a Pinterest board. I uploaded a photo of my gray-on-gray dining room (what can I say, it was 2013) along with an inspiration photo from Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm, that temple of Josef Frank designs where I’ve often told my children they should scatter my ashes. Fusion delivered admirably, keeping what I liked (my chairs and light fixture) while adding color and pattern in a reasonably Frankian style.Courtesy of Home VisualizerBut then I had my epiphany. While these tools could generate endless variations on a theme, what I really needed was expertise. I wanted someone to look at my space and tell me what actually needed fixing—not just make it prettier. Enter ChatGPT. When you upgrade to the pro version (GPT-4), you get both image analysis and generation capabilities—meaning it can create design concepts as well as actually assess my existing rooms.I started by telling it exactly what kind of designer I wanted it to be. “You are a famous interior designer known for your excellent taste whose work has been published in Elle Decor,” I wrote, uploading photos of my living room. “You are warm and witty and have a reputation for honesty. Please look at this space and tell me how it could be improved.”To my delight, it responded with a mix of authority and encouragement, starting—as any good designer knows to do—with a compliment. “To elevate this already charming space into something truly spectacular…” it began, before launching into thoughtful suggestions about enhancing architectural features, adding library lights to the bookshelves, and reimagining the lighting scheme.When I directed its attention to the room’s single, small window, which in my mind was the element in most obvious need of zhuzh, it perked up immediately, saying, “Ah, the window—a small but mighty design opportunity!” and proceeded to suggest a velvet or linen-blend curtain “in a soft moss green or taupe with a botanical texture” to be hung on a “clean, slightly tapered rod in antique brass with either orb-shaped or leaf-inspired finials to complement your English-country sensibilities.”I complimented it on its sound advice, while critiquing its overly florid language as “straight out of a 19th-century novel.” It shot back with some sass. “I'll rein in the 19th-century novelist vibes, though I must say, a touch of drama never hurts when discussing drapery!”Before long we were deep in collaborative conversation in a way that felt collaborative rather than condescending. “We'll hang full-length drapery panels well above the window frame,” it told me. It suggested Kravet, Schumacher, and Romo for sourcing the fabric, which met my approval. When I asked about costs, it broke down everything from fabric yardage to installation fees in my area.Surprisingly, after testing numerous specialized AI design tools, I found the best help from ChatGPT playing the role of decorator. While those other tools promised instant visual transformations but delivered mostly superficial changes, ChatGPT offered something closer to an actual design consultation. It could analyze my space, understand its challenges, and engage in the kind of strategic thinking that leads to practical design decisions—corny decorating jokes totally optional.I may have started this experiment frantically tidying up for an algorithm’s approval, but I ended it having actual conversations about design. Though I still draw the line at hanging up my coats.