A few months back, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about the iconic Sun Valley ‘Bender’ and how it might be an early version of an AI (artificial intelligence) robot. Along the same vein, and with the recent proliferation of generative AI tools available online to anyone, I decided to see what Microsoft Copilot thinks Sun Valley, Nevada looks like.
While possibly not my best ever, the prompt I ended up using was: “Ultrarealistic photo of Sun Valley, Nevada, using Google Street View images, if possible. Viewpoint is from a driver in a car. Through the windshield and outside the side windows, one can see realistic scenes of Sun Valley, including food trucks, rainbow umbrella carts, local stores, etc., with the low hills in the background that surround the valley.”
As you can see in the photo, the hills surrounding the valley are pretty convincing. The photo definitely feels like Sun Valley. I give it an ‘A’ for capturing the essence of Sun Valley, including the hills, the small trees, the one-story buildings, etc. It would have been an ‘A+’ if Copilot knew that Sun Valley Blvd was four lanes (two in each direction).
One thing I’ve consistently noticed while playing with AI image tools is that as good as LLMs (large language models, like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, etc.) are understanding text, they’re horrible at inserting realistic, correctly-spelled words into images.
For example, in this image, the fictitious “Sun Valley Market” is spelled “Sin Mlley Market.” I mean, I guess it’s kinda close… And I can only guess that “Carneeiua Ta Seaka” is a carniceria (‘butcher shop’ in Spanish) of some kind. I give the text in the image a ‘D+’.
I do like, however, that the image features a food truck and a rainbow umbrella vendor cart, although the placement of the umbrella cart is too close to the road, which would be potentially dangerous to visit in real life. I give those items a ‘B+’.
The realistic framing of the scene from the inside of a car—including the rear view mirror, UV tinting at the top of the windshield, the side mirror, semi-realistic dashboard and steering wheel with shadowing from the sun—are very well done. I give it an ‘A+’, despite the buttons on the radio being a jumbled mess of squiggly lines, but that’s a very minor detail.
Overall image rating: ‘B’.
