This market resolves positively if an AI can create a website based on a detailed request and with access to ~$100. The AI should be able to use references from other websites to understand the desired design and produce a reasonably good-looking website using any means it prefers, including third-party tools like Wix.
Update 2023-03-19: This functionality should be generally available for a positive resolution. And it should be possible to do without knowing code. E.g., I should be able to ask an AI to do this and produce a website with design skills roughly on par with something like this: https://www.glendower.com/
The website should be accessible by typing in the URL into an incognito browser.
Mostly static content and a few interactive website elements should suffice for a positive resolution.
Update 2023-04-26: For positive resolution, the AI actually needs to be able to create the website with my only input being a text prompt. That includes interfacing with any web hosting services, purchasing the domain if necessary, etc. My only input should be the text prompt before the newly-created website is ready to browse.
Update 2023-04-26: I'm fine with whatever the process is to create the website as long as it costs around or less than $100 and my only interaction with the process is to (i) establish a profile on whatever 3rd party platform is hosting the AI interface (e.g., OpenAI), and (ii) feed text inputs to an AI.
Related questions
It seems like the AI feature of Framer satisfies all of the criteria: https://www.framer.com/ai
It will develop an entire website from a text prompt and the quality is very similar to the examples provided.
Is this enough to resolve the market? If not, what would be required from a tool to resolve it?
Here’s a video demonstration and here’s the site it created.
@MitchellButler "The AI should be able to use references from other websites to understand the desired design"
I think this isn't satisfied
@MitchellButler Looking at the demo site you linked, one key limitation is that there's only one page, and none of the the text that appears to link to other pages is actually a link.
The original market description doesn't explicitly say that the site must be composed of multiple pages (although the reference site does have multiple pages). It does say that the generated site should have at least "a few interactive website elements," which I don't think is satisfied by the demo you linked.
@NLeseul I've just sold all of my shares in this market at a loss to make this case without any skin in the game. Also, I find the goalposts a little unclear, and I see how they might turn out to be in a position where there would be no financial incentive for a company to satisfy them.
The reference site says, "... with design skills roughly on par with something like this ..." and I see later in the thread that @CarsonGale mentions multiple text prompts, so I would imagine designing a single page with a single prompt is reasonable.
Also, I would assume that functional links would satisfy the description of "interactive elements," though the "client" of the AI designer does have to manually select the linked page from a dropdown menu in order for the link to be functional. fwiw, I hope gotchas like this won't be the deciding factors in this market.
As @MrLuke255 mentioned, it should be able to use references from other websites to understand the desired design as in the description. However, I wonder if the legality/liability might be more of a blocker for businesses than being "able to produce ...". Maybe an acceptable alternative would be to use provided images for inspiration? For example, pulling colors and common themes. Clearly, if it can do this, then it would also be able to do so with a 3rd-party website.
There are other elements where I think the market could use some clarity:
• Framer only seems to design landing pages. Should the "client" be able to ask for a blog listing page or a product page?
• Framer can only iterate on a design at the page level. Should the "client" be able to request changes to individual elements?
I'm not going to participate, but I'm still quite confident that Framer and/or one of its competitors would be able to satisfy those conditions in the next 18mo.
@MitchellButler I really appreciate the detailed thoughts and contributions to this market. It is, unfortunately, somewhat vague, so it is good to clarify.
I find Framer very impressive and I think it gets close to a positive resolution. I don't think it counts for purposes of resolving the market for a few reasons:
- I don't think the design elements of the site created are 'roughly on par' with the example Glendower website provided. I can provide specific examples if helpful, but when scrolling through the Glendower site, it seems noticeably cleaner and more capable than the draft Framer site provided. I don't want to be too much of a stickler on design, but it has to be within the ballpark.
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the Framer site satisfied having a 'few interactive website elements'. Examples might include linking a Twitter / LinkedIn page, having other clickable pages (e.g., the Investments, Strategy, Contact pages), or having graphics to click on and expand. I don't think having to manually link the other website elements should count - that doesn't seem like a 'gotcha' to me, it just seems like fairly simple functionality.
- The ability to reference other websites for design / content suggestions is not satisfied. In retrospect, this requirement might have been aggressive, and I appreciate your note regarding potential legality issues. If it is clear that this functionality could exist but is blocked for legal issues, then I'm open to relaxing this requirement in the overall spirit of the market.
In terms of the specific items you requested more detail on:
- Q: Should the 'client' be able to ask for a blog listing page or a product page? If what you're getting at is the ability to include functional links on the landing page to other companion pages (e.g., blog listing, product, etc.), I'm open to being convinced that a given website created by AI should satisfy the criteria without any other related pages, but it seems highly likely that the 'interactive website elements' requirement will involve companion pages for a positive resolution.
- Q: Should the 'client' be able to request changes to individual elements? A: I assume you're referring to edits like - "change the font and the design in this section of the site" or something like that, after initial generation. If so, I don't think this is required with my current market description and requirements.
I would welcome additional feedback and opinions from traders - this type of market is challenging to make specific and these types of comments help a lot to clarify for everyone what is intended.
@CarsonGale I appreciate all the detailed criteria. I don't think I saw: What's the scope of text prompts that can be allowed and the success rate needed? E.g., if I put in, "make a blog about giraffes for left-handed Swedes," and it never gets it right, but if I put in, "make a personal website for me, President Biden," and it makes a criteria-fulfilling website 90% of the time, how might that resolve?
@CKLorentzen Yes, that's right. Though such functionality wouldn't be strictly required in order to satisfy the resolution criteria.
The website should be accessible by typing in the URL into an incognito browser.
Does it have to be hosted on a second level domain that belongs exclusively to the site that was created?
In other words, if the site I'm creating is about bananas and the AI service I'm using called ACME, will both of these URLs satisfy the requirement:
https://www.bananas125.com
https://bananas125.acme.com ?
I would expect that if a service like this were to appear, it would by default put a website on a URL similar to the second one, and would require the user's action to go into configuration or something to put it on a URL similar to the first one.
@Roma or others please feel free to disagree and I'm open to changing my mind, but I think the criteria as I outlined in the market description is inclusive of second level domains (i.e., second level domains should qualify).
@twink_joan_didion GPT-4 did not exist in 2020. There were other tools but mostly template based, I don't know about just from one text prompt.
@ShadowyZephyr Well yes lol, I meant since gpt-3 came out, which can write boilerplate html css and js as well. It's the wiring together part ("interfacing with any web hosting services, purchasing the domain if necessary, etc.") that doesn't seem likely (nor even possible in the current framework ?) to me
@twink_joan_didion "GPT-3" and what ChatGPT was using, "GPT-3.5", are different models with a huge gap in quality of output.
@cloudprism At a glance, it looks like they have a wizard where you choose color themes and stuff, rather than a text input, so that would technically be disqualified under the current description.
What if this system were a service offered by the same company that sells the domain and webhosting? Like, suppose that GoDaddy offers a service where they run your description through a LLM, automatically buy whatever domain the output suggests, and automatically upload it to GoDaddy webhosting. Would that still count as "the AI" doing those steps?
@NLeseul There's a tough conceptual rabbit hole to go down here in which any instance where the "AI is doing something" clearly utilizes work done by humans. On one end of the spectrum the AI just creates a listing on UpWork or something with my description and thereby "creates" a website. On the other end of the spectrum the AI codes the website from scratch and purchases the domain directly from a 3rd party.
To establish a consistent resolution line, I'm fine with whatever the process is to create the website as long as it costs around or less than $100 and my only interaction with the process is to (i) establish a profile on whatever 3rd party platform is hosting the AI interface (e.g., OpenAI), and (ii) feed text inputs to an AI.
So if GoDaddy created an LLM or something that created websites based off text inputs, that would count as long as my only interaction was to set up a GoDaddy account and input the text.
@CarsonGale That's fair. I'm just concerned that it doesn't leave any guarantee that AI is actually meaningfully involved in the process. You could have a service that has the interface you describe and loudly advertises itself as "AI-authored websites!!1", but behind the scenes the work is mostly done by humans, and the only "AI" involved is a trivial NN that picks a color palette for the CSS or something.
Not really sure how to meaningfully address that, though. As you say, it's a conceptual rabbit hole either way.
@NLeseul I was hoping the $100 limit would address an instance where most of the work is done by humans since I think it would typically cost more than that for a human to both purchase the domain and build the website for you. Though in hindsight I think I should have used a lower amount...
@CarsonGale All technological parts to do this are already available as far as I can tell. The question comes down to whether someone puts them together by close