It took me a whopping three months just to organize the photo albums on my phone to reflect all the places I lived in and traveled to throughout my 20s. Then I realized: although I have 10,611 photos, I’ve never actually physically commemorated my time spent in those places.
This brought me face to face with Mixbook, an online photo book creation and memory curation platform. It recently added artificial intelligence design technology — an AI-powered caption generator, along with “Mixbook Movies,” an AI-powered video created from your photo book, with customizable themes and accompanying music.
Founded in 2006 by Andrew Laffoon and Aryk Grosz, friends who met during their studies at UC Berkeley, Mixbook is a collaborative online photo book creation platform. Prices for Mixbook’s products start from between $0.15 and $90, depending on paper type, size, number of pages and other product personalizations.
In the nearly two decades since its launch, the company has expanded from yearbooks and photo books to include cards, calendars and other photo products, like its new AI-powered design technology and Mixbook Movies.
The company’s goal is to make personal storytelling intuitive, achievable and fast. But as I skimmed through photos of time spent in Toronto, New York, Copenhagen, Portland and Puerto Rico, I found myself hesitant to select certain photos over others. I was oddly worried about what AI could intuit from my photos and art direction, and even the photo placement and layout.
Was I really concerned about how a non-human entity understood, processed and described my photos? Yes. But was I eager to have AI help generate fun and creative ideas for my photo book? Also yes.
Mixbook’s new key features
Mixbook AI generates caption ideas for your photos.
Mixbook’s AI features suggest captions, text elements and layouts, allowing you to edit and customize the suggestions according to your preferences, enhancing the narrative behind the images.
As a result, you can create professional-looking photo books that encapsulate the essence of your experiences — all as part of Mixbook’s ongoing efforts to blend technology and creativity to preserve and share its users’ stories.
Once I began uploading photos, Mixbook immediately stepped in to accommodate the process. After setting up my photo placement, I used its AI caption generator. Caption ideas were set up as different themes, including smart, by topic and location.
For my leading photo, I was impressed to see that AI knew my photo was taken in Brooklyn (the Brooklyn Museum, to be exact). Though the caption generator feature was intended to be used this way, it still felt thoughtful and personal, reflecting a significant time in my life.
I also spent time playing with typefaces to alter the mood and feeling the text conveyed on top of my photo. If you’re lacking inspiration, the caption generator acts as a creative boost to better develop and understand the storytelling your photos naturally convey.
My favorite feature was AI’s ability to regenerate results, even if I wasn’t satisfied with its attempt. I was struck by Mixbook’s second attempt at generating text for my photo. So much so that I kept it in as part of my photo book’s final design. From my experience, if you give AI the freedom to continually regenerate new ideas across its subcategories, you are bound to find something that either you like, or inspires a caption of your own.
The process took less than 2 hours, mostly with most of the time spent placing my photos in layout and playing with features once they were laid out. With upgrades like choosing a hardcover book and using premium lustre paper, my Mixbook Photo Book totaled $65 before tax and shipping, and close to $100 following. But I also created a 10×10-inch Deluxe Square Glossy Premium Lustre Hardcover Photo Book — 11 hand-selected pages with my travels in mind and text built out across them.
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