When Chat GPT 4o’s Image Gen feature came out in late March, I was in Savannah looking at real estate and trying to convince my husband that we could do magic tricks with paint. Describing what you are envisioning to a spouse isn’t easy, and this new version of AI wizardry felt, to me, like a fairy godmother capable of granting all my wishes. For the first time ever, I could quickly create renderings of what I was imagining in the exact same rooms we were looking at: getting my zany ideas across in a way that was unimaginable on Chat GPT even a week before. The night I discovered what the new version could do, I was up until nearly midnight inputting my ideas, gobsmacked when they would be visualized on my laptop in minutes.
But for design industry professionals, the concept of Chat GPT 4o has both its perks and its pitfalls. Here’s what you need to know.
What is Chat GPT 4o and how do you make renderings with it?
Released on March 25, 2025, Open AI’s Chat GPT 4o Image Gen feature allows you to create renderings tailored to exact rooms fairly quickly. It’s helpful to be precise—dare I say (ahem) robotic—in your instructions. For example, to try to show my husband how painting a home’s existing faux Tuscan kitchen cabinets black might look like, I would upload an image of said cook space and then input a very clear command: “Restyle image with black cabinets keep all details.” And yes, the words “keep all details” are important, lest you end up with an entirely different imaginary kitchen. (She’s a good intern, but she can get confused.)
How will Chat GPT 4o change things for designers?
“When people talk about all the new AI that’s coming out, it brings back memories of 15 years ago when Instagram was rolling out,” says Suzanne Sykes, a designer in Winnetka, Illinois. “I feel like there was such a divide in the industry between the older and the younger designers.”
Paul Mencel, owner of custom solid wood furniture maker Philadelphia Table Company, uses Chat GPT to convey his ideas. “For me it’s [a tool] like the calculator was, right? I just used it the other day, for example, to pitch a bed idea because it’s expensive and it takes a lot of time to do proper drawings.” Mencel is quick to point out to those he is working with whenever his concepts were ‘drawn’ with AI. “You need to have a ton of language in place upfront, basically saying, ‘Hey, this is AI generated. This isn’t exactly what it is. This is just to help convey the ideas a little better.’”
Mencel will also purposefully ask the AI program to produce a sketch or a watercolor rather than a photorealistic rendering. “This way it’s not so close to something that somebody can get really attached to. That’s my big fear—that they’d be like, ‘Oh wow, I really love the grain of this wood.’ I’m like, well, that’s a digital creation!”
Mikal Eckstrom of AD PRO Directory firm Studio Eckström is firmly in the no bot business. “We really strive to actually not do any renderings whatsoever unless the client mandates them, because what it’s really doing is erasing the potential for magic in the work,” says the Nebraska-based designer. When he has toyed with AI on various platforms, just for fun, Eckstrom wasn’t impressed. “We put in a simple prompt and what did we get? We got the most banal, mediocre version…. It was just like white tile on the wall. Just awful.” But he has an even larger concern. “The larger question is where’s the IP? What’s original, what’s not?”
Ridgewood, New Jersey–based designer Kerri Folb Pilchik also steers clear, much preferring physical samples to get ideas across. “I feel about 80 years old answering like this, but I’ve never used Chat GPT personally, and I’ve never used any version [of AI]…. I’m very much about being able to see the human hand.” With a rendering, she says, “You can’t really understand the feeling that the room is supposed to evoke. You don’t get the nuances of the color and the pattern and the texture.” And it takes away that incredibly crucial ‘marination’ stage. “There’s a value in things taking time and not everything being so fast.”
How will Chat GPT 4o disrupt the interior design industry (for better or for worse)?
Mencel sees Chat GPT 4o as a tool—not a competitor. Ditto Sykes. “It’s not going anywhere, so we might as well embrace it,” she says. “It can help us more efficiently and more effectively convey ideas to our clients or even to our trades.” As she puts it, “As a good designer, what it really comes down to is your creativity and your people skills…. I like to think of [AI] less as something that’s coming to take our job and more as a competitor to AutoCAD. It’s just another tool in your tool belt to put together your thoughts and express your ideas.”
Fretting about the future of AI is understandable, but the AI-designer takeover will be a while. For one thing, as a consumer, I think it may be decades before an AI designer can, say, do site visits and measurements, place a bazillion custom orders, and coordinate an install like a living and breathing decorator. Sykes also believes that what these tools can do is far from what designers do, “unless AI is creating the idea, tailoring it to their client, partnering with trades to bring it to life, coming up with who the trades are, coordinated delivery, coordinating installation, processing payments…. I mean, I think we’re a long, long way away from that.”
And there’s that human-to-human factor. In other words, if AI were to designers what Splenda is to sugar, it would similarly not delete the desire for bona fide sucrose, grown right in the earth. “To be human is to create magic, to have an error,” Eckstrom says. “Every room needs anchovies. It needs that piece of anchovy in order to pop. There’s no anchovy in Chat GPT!” Spoken like a true human.
Grow your business with the AD PRO Directory
