This Company Says 1 New AI Feature Can Handle 20 Hours of Work in Seconds

Popular wedding planning platform The Knot has released an update to its mobile app that uses AI to streamline the process of finding local vendors. In a press release, the company said that the new update “cuts over 20 hours of planning work to just seconds.” The reimagined “planning experience,” as The Knot calls it, allows couples to browse through thousands of photos of weddings to create a vision board. By clicking an icon, users can activate a new feature called “make it yours,” which scans the image and then searches through The Knot’s database of venues and vendors to find similar options that “fit your vibe, budget, and location.” Christine Brown, The Knot’s VP of product, says that the company built this new AI feature entirely in-house, rather than relying on AI models from external providers like OpenAI or Anthropic. To create the feature, Brown says the company trained its own models on “more than a million images accessible on The Knot.” To test its effectiveness, The Knot ran a two-month pilot in which thousands of couples were given early access to the tool. As an example of how the new feature can help amateur wedding planners save time, Brown pointed to one of the most time-consuming aspects of throwing a wedding: picking a venue. Brown’s team estimated that most couples take roughly six weeks to pick a venue, spending 3.5 hours per week devoted to the search. That adds up to 21 hours of total searching time, which Brown says can now be reduced to minutes thanks to this new tool. The Knot says that this update is just the first step in a larger push to introduce AI-powered wedding planning features. As for what’s next, she says the company is building AI tools to help both couples and professional wedding planners and vendors. One of those tools is an AI-assisted email reply feature that allows vendors to convert more leads into bookings. “We see AI as a powerful force to support the planning journey,” Brown says, “helping couples and vendors save time, while still keeping personalization and human touch at the heart of the wedding experience.” BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY