NEW YORK, Oct 21: In an era when startup hustle culture has returned with a vengeance — with tech founders even embracing the grueling “996” work schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) — a new AI app offers a surreal escape by generating fake vacation photos of users.

Laurent Del Rey, a product designer recently hired by Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, has launched Endless Summer, an iPhone photo booth app that uses AI to create vacation images starring the user in picturesque locations worldwide. Whether it’s strolling through a beach town, overlooking a European city balcony, shopping, dining with friends, or attending social gatherings, the app paints a picture of an enviable summer lifestyle — all digitally fabricated.

Del Rey explained on X (formerly Twitter) that the app was designed for those moments when “burnout hits and you need to manifest the soft life u deserve.” Simply put: when you can’t live the life, you can at least fake it.

Inspired by his love for summer, Del Rey told TechCrunch he wanted to capture the season’s feeling through the app. “As the season ends, I wanted to make something that felt like that. It’s from that feeling that I reverse-engineered the product experience,” he said. The app features a minimalist interface with a small camera preview button at the bottom; tapping it generates AI-created summer photos featuring an AI version of the user exploring idyllic scenes.

Powered by Gemini’s Nano Banana image-generation model, Endless Summer creates multiple variations of the requested photos. Del Rey assured users that the app does not save selfies unless the optional auto-generation mode is enabled. Users can delete their accounts and all associated data with just two taps.

Due to the cost of running the AI, the app limits free photo generation to six images before requiring payment. Pricing tiers include $3.99 for 30 images, $17.99 for 150, and $34.99 for 300. A “Room Service” mode can automatically deliver two new AI-generated vacation photos every morning. Users may also customize their gender or allow the app to guess automatically, and toggle auto-saving to their iPhone’s camera roll.

Recently, the app added a Halloween mode, letting users generate photos of themselves in various costumes, broadening the creative possibilities.

Endless Summer’s images feature a vintage film aesthetic reminiscent of casual, candid lifestyle pictures from the mid-2000s, tapping into a growing cultural trend favoring nostalgic, imperfect photo sharing over highly curated social media posts.

In a twist of irony, AI technology — often associated with hyperrealistic and flawless imagery — now helps users recreate a more nostalgic and relaxed visual narrative of their lives, reflecting a unique facet of modern digital culture.