What will the world’s largest cruise ship look like in 20 years? Just two decades ago the largest cruise ship on the planet was Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas, coming in at 140,000 gross tons.
Today, that’s considered a moderately sized ship with the current largest cruise ship — Icon of the Seas — measuring a staggering 250,000+ gross tons. That’s about 80% larger.
With that growth in mind, what will the world’s largest cruise ships look like come 2044? To imagine what’s possible, we turned to an AI image generator to see what it thought.
Using AI to See The Ship of the Future
There’s been no bigger buzzword in the past six months than “AI,” (artificial intelligence) and frankly some of the things this technology is doing are pretty impressive. From face-swapping videos with celebrities to passing the bar exam, there’s seemingly been a revolution in what computers can do. That includes the ability to create entirely new images from just a simple text prompt.
Being cruise fans, we found one image creation tool from Microsoft and put it to the test to imagine the future of the industry. The results? Well, they have to be seen to be believed.
First, we asked the AI tool to “Create an image of the pool deck of a modern cruise ship in 2044.”
As you can see, the results range from impressive to literally out of this world, where we guess that the technology believes we’ll be cruising in space in twenty years?
Take a look:
While the pools certainly piqued our curiosity, we wanted to see more. From there, we went a little deeper, prompting the tool to “Create an image of what a cruise ship looks like in 2044.”
In this case, the results were markedly different. It returned a completely futuristic design that definitely looks more like a ultra-modern yacht than a cruise ship. Perhaps AI believes that the era of mega ships is over and passengers will want smaller, more luxurious ships? Here’s what AI thinks a cruise ship will look like in twenty years:
Asking AI to Create the Largest Cruise Ship in the World… Twenty Years From Now
What really caught our attention, however, was when we asked the technology to “create an image of the biggest cruise ship in the world in twenty years.”
The results were jaw-dropping.
Rendition #1
This first image definitely takes inspiration from Royal Caribbean, who is known for creating the largest cruise ships on the planet. The split decks and twin exhaust funnels are both signatures of their largest ships.
Here, we see a massive outdoor area that features twin pool decks and multiple pools, including one that appears to have fountains. At the rear of the ship is another massive pool with waterfall, and a suspended deck that goes across, looking out over the pool.
Rendition #2
Next is arguably the most impressive image the AI tool generated. This massive cruise ship not only dwarfs the surrounding dock, but also looks like nothing else we’ve ever seen.
The bow of the ship doesn’t come to a point, but instead features a round nose with wraparound decks. The main pool deck looks spectacular, with multiple pools that have natural edges that flow with the contours of the ship.
While we can’t know for sure just how large this ship would be, it certainly looks to be 2-3 times larger than the current lineup of cruise ships at sea.
Rendition #3
If you want water, then this rendering of the world’s largest cruise ship in twenty years is just the thing. Just don’t get too caught up that it is also shaped like a bedpan.
Here, towering wraparound decks overlook a central pool that is not only massive, but also comes with fountains. Lower down the ship, another large pool wraps around the bow of the ship, much closer to the waterline.
Now we don’t think this design would ever work in real life in that it appears so top heavy and not very streamlined, but we do have to give it kudos for creativity.
Rendition #4
Finally, the image we were most impressed with (and which seemed the most realistic) was the last generated.
Here we see the lines and split towers like what’s common on Royal Caribbean ships. At the waterline, we see a multi-level dining room with large windows looking out over the ocean. Above that is a large pool and open-air deck, with what looks like waterslides tucked behind it.
Moving up the ship, a massive pool is suspended between the two sides of the ship, with likely another ahead of the exhaust funnel. There also look to be lots of activities at the top of the ship, with a number of colorful features, but the AI doesn’t exactly show what they are.
All images were created with Microsoft’s DALL E3 Image Creator.
