My social media feed is full of images generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The street transformations are generated using a variety of AI tools. I’ve tried Canva and Gemini in producing similar images of street transformations; an exercise I’ve included in my undergraduate and graduate classes for more than a decade now but using their sketching and software (CAD, Sketch-up, etc.) skills to do the transformations. The photos below show an example of transformation along the University of the Philippines Diliman Academic Oval using Google Gemini.

The original photo I took at the UP Academic Oval

The first attempt at replacing the orange bollards/barriers with something that blended with the campus.

The second attempt showing plant boxes instead of the fence in the previous photo.

I think it’s possible to have excellent transformations of whatever roads or streets there are. One just needs to prompt or instruct the AI well enough to obtain these alternative designs. While the transformations are nice though, context is still important. Many of the transformations circulating on social media call for almost all major streets to be transformed. (Kulang na lang pati expressway gawan ng transformation.) Advocacy is good but context-sensitive solutions require a more constructive and cooperative. It certainly can do without being combative or antagonistic.

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