Presti Uses GenAI to Replace Costly Furniture Photo Shoots

If you've ever bought a sofa online, you might have noticed the lifestyle settings in the background of product photos. These photo shoots are often costly and logistically challenging for furniture brands. To address this, French startup Presti, founded in November 2022, uses generative AI to turn a single product image into a realistic lifestyle photo. The company recently raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Partech, with participation from several business angels.

Identifying a Pain Point

“Very quickly, we picked up the phone and talked with 50 potential users,” said Presti co-founder and CEO Nabil Toumi. “Everyone was saying the same thing. Creating product visuals was a process that took a very long time, cost a lot of money, and they didn’t have a simple solution for creating these photos. At the same time, it was really the most important asset for brands to create a unique identity and sell online.”

Presti's solution addresses these challenges by converting a single product image into a realistic lifestyle photo, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming photo shoots.

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Tailoring AI for Furniture Imagery

Initially, Presti did not focus solely on the furniture industry, but it quickly became apparent that furniture companies faced significant challenges. Traditional photo shoots required renting locations, transporting products, and managing high logistics costs, often planned months in advance and costing hundreds of thousands to millions of euros annually.

Presti uses Stable Diffusion XL as its foundation model, which has been retrained for furniture product imagery. The vanilla version of Stable Diffusion XL had issues like distorted furniture parts and incorrect perspectives. By training their model with over 75,000 high-quality furniture images, Presti improved the accuracy and realism of generated images.

Enhancing with Accessories and Variations

Beyond background generation, Presti allows customers to add accessories like cushions, which project realistic shadows, enhancing the overall image. The company also aims to let users swap materials and colors for different furniture variations, simplifying the process of releasing new products.

Industry Impact and Future Prospects

While Presti's technology offers significant benefits to furniture companies, it poses challenges for freelance photographers and stylists. The question remains whether machine-generated backgrounds can fully replicate the creativity and originality of human-driven photo shoots.

Presti works primarily with mid-sized furniture companies and has a strategic partnership with Maisons du Monde, one of France's largest furniture retailers. Investors in Presti include Maxime Brousse, Thibaud Elzière, Julien Hirth, Abou Laraki, and Rémi Lemonnier, alongside Partech.