Are you one of the millions of workers who’ve recently been laid off, had their wages cut, or are locked in an endless struggle just to hang onto the job you have? Are you tired of dreaming of a vacation that never seems to come, amidst a stagnating economy where all the wealth seems to line the pockets of a few powerful billionaires?
Not to worry — thanks to rapid advances in technology, you can travel from the skyscrapers of New York City to the canals of Amsterdam and be back home in time for instant ramen. The best part? It only costs a few bucks!
No, this isn’t Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film “Total Recall.” It’s Endless Summer — a new AI product created by a Meta designer named Laurent Del Rey. For just a couple dollars, Endless Summer will generate images in your likeness of you chilling in exotic locales, shopping with your totally-real travel buddies, and posing in front of world-renowned landmarks.
Users can buy anywhere from 30 to 300 photos at a time. Prices vary depending on how long you want your vacation album to be, with 30 photos running just a measly $3.99, or $34.99 for the largest package, according to TechCrunch. It even has a “room service” option which runs in the background, spitting out two automatically-generated travel pics every morning — so you can see what you’re missing in your sad little life, apparently.
Del Rey, who recently joined Meta’s infamous Superintelligence lab as a product designer, launched the generative AI app “for when burnout hits and you need to manifest the soft life u deserve — with fake vacation pics of you.”
Speaking to TC, Del Rey said the tool was inspired by his love for summer travel, a luxury which is increasingly dominated by high-income Americans as working class people from around the world find themselves priced out of expensive trips.
“As the season ends, I wanted to make something that felt like that,” the designer said. “It’s from that feeling that I reverse-engineered the product experience.”
The whole app is built on Google Gemini’s Nano-Banana image algorithm, which has already spewed over 200 million AI slop images into the world since its release in August.
While the app seems well-intentioned enough, Endless Summer presents itself as a deeply cynical product designed to fill user’s Instagram feeds — not to mention their subconscious — with false memories of fun and adventure. Maybe it isn’t that serious, but then again, when’s the last time you took a vacation?
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