Express & Star

We asked an AI app to paint pictures of famous Black Country locations - these were the results

It has been said that Artificial Intelligence will overtake the human brain within a decade or two, so we've done a rather unscientific experiment to see how A.I. is getting on in 2022.

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This is how the artificial intelligence interpreted our prompt to paint an aerial view of Wolves stadium Molineux.

We downloaded one of the most-famous A.I. Painting apps and asked it to produce artworks of some well-known Black Country and Staffordshire locations to see how it squares up against reality.

A.I. painting apps work by analysing thousands of images to learn a certain aesthetic and an algorithm then tries to generate an image based on a prompt written by the user.

We asked the app Wonder to produce watercolour paintings of Walsall Town Hall, Walsall FC's Bescot Stadium, Wolverhampton's St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Molineux, Dudley Zoo Castle, Wednesbury's Ikea, The Hawthorns, Aston Villa stadium Villa Park, Stafford Castle and Lichfield Cathedral.

The results are below, and we've included real photos so you can compare the A.I.'s artistic efforts with the real thing.

Molineux Stadium, Wolverhampton

This is how the artificial intelligence interpreted our prompt to paint an aerial view of Wolves stadium Molineux.
A general view of an empty Molineux

St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton

It's a good effort, but perhaps our prompt wasn't detailed enough when we asked the A.I. to produce an image of St. Peter's Collegiate Church
St Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton

Dudley Castle, Dudley

Dudley Castle's courtyard seems to have been understood by the A.I.
An aerial view of Dudley Castle with Dudley Zoo around the perimeter

Walsall Town Hall, Walsall

Well, it understood what a town hall looks like. Just not the one in Walsall. Perhaps our prompt was off.
Walsall Town Hall

Bescot Stadium, Walsall

A genuinely impressive effort.
Banks's Stadium

Ikea Wednesbury, Sandwell

It kind of looks like an Ikea I suppose.
An aerial shot of the Ikea store, Wednesbury

The Hawthorns, West Bromwich

This is what the A.I. app came up with when we asked it to paint West Brom's stadium.
The Hawthorns

Lichfield Cathedral, Staffordshire

It certainly knows there are spires involved.
Lichfield Cathedral

Stafford Castle, Staffordshire

Stonehenge or Stafford Castle?
Stafford Castle

Villa Park, Birmingham

The app has done a pretty good job on this one.
Villa Park

It's worth mentioning that the A.I. app is really learning painting styles as opposed to sweeping the Internet for location information. If you feed it a photograph, it'll produce an incredibly accurate representation.

As you can see, that's often not the case with prompts, but I think we can all agree the technology is still incredibly impressive.