San Francisco-based startup Galileo AI today opened its text-to-UI generator to public beta, aiming to augment human creativity in interface design. The company also announced $4.4 million in seed funding led by VC firm Khosla Ventures.
Galileo AI allows designers to simply describe an app or website design in text prompts such as "a friendly dashboard for dog walkers." The AI then generates multiple visual options for layouts, UI elements, images, and text in under a minute. Users can easily copy the design to popular tools like Figma where they can make further refinements and iterations.
Most professional designers however require a lot more control over their creations, so text prompting alone won't cut it. To meet this need, Galileo is developing an image-to-UI feature that allows users to convert sketches, screenshots, or wireframes into high-fidelity designs.
Cofounders Arnaud Benard and Helen Zhou led development of Galileo AI's specialized natural language models, trained on tasks aligned with design principles to enable high-quality UI generation. Benard, a former AI researcher at Google and Faire, brought expertise in state-of-the-art language model training, while Zhou drew on her product design background at Facebook and Cruise to focus the AI on core concepts like components and styles.
After a private beta launch in October last year received strong user traction, Galileo AI incorporated additional features like generating designs from wireframe images. The public beta also allows users to produce multiple variants from one text prompt.
A cadre of prominent designers and product leaders have thrown their support behind Galileo AI. They include Julie Zhuo (former VP of Design at Meta), David Hoang (VP of Marketing and Design at Repl.it), and Howie Liu (CEO of AirTable), Dan Becker (Design leadership at Google), Anisha Jain (VP of Design at Cruise), Matt Robinson (CEO of Nested), Joel Hellermark (CEO of Sana) and others.
"Out-of-the-box language models don't understand design subtleties," said Sahuguet. "It's the deep collaboration between AI and design that brings this product to life. Galileo allows anyone with an idea to design an interface."
The public beta launch marks an exciting milestone for Galileo AI after intense months of user feedback. With strong investor backing, the startup plans to stay at the forefront of AI and design capabilities.