Base44 wants to help users ditch the mundane look of AI-coded websites with new AI models.
The San Francisco-based Vibecoding startup announced Monday that it has trained and released its own large-scale language model, called Base 1. Before instructing the platform to build an app, users can now choose Base 1 from a selection of AI models, including Claude’s Opus 4.8, Fable 5, and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5.
Shlomo told Business Insider that one of the reasons his company developed its unique model was to counter the decidedly generic look of many mood-coded products.
He said the problem with using frontier models to create websites is that “when you’re coding with a generic model, it feels like everyone’s getting the same UI.”
Base44 was acquired by Wix for $80 million last June and became part of Wix’s website building arsenal. Shlomo said Wix has a large team of designers and generates a large amount of data that it uses to train its models.
Shlomo said the Base44 team plans to perform “reinforcement learning” on the new model, which involves encouraging it to keep generating new and unique-looking designs.
Although Base 1 is “not there yet,” Shlomo said the goal is to “create something that looks uniquely different” each time it generates a user interface. He said the team started developing Base 1 about six months ago, but has made breakthroughs in recent weeks that have allowed them to release the model sooner than planned.
He said that producing unique designs distinguishes Base44 from its competitors. Startups such as Lovable, Replit, and Cursor compete with Base44.
Many UI/UX experts and design gurus warn about the poor look of AI in vibe-coded websites and apps. Paul Bakaus, CEO of AI design startup Impeccable, said in a June interview with Andreessen Horowitz that signs of an AI-encoded product include beige or tinted backgrounds and sans-serif fonts.
Bakaus likened it to “the Uniqlo or Ikea of algorithms,” calling the design OK but not unique.
Shlomo told Business Insider that Frontier Models needs to be generally good at everything from poetry to coding.
“And we think there is an opportunity if you can take a model and narrow down its capabilities to address certain use cases really well,” he said.