We asked an AI app to paint pictures of famous Shropshire 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.

We downloaded one of the most famous A.I. Painting apps and asked it to produce a few well-known Shropshire 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 and oil paintings of Ludlow Castle, Lord Hill's Column in Shrewsbury, The Wrekin, Attingham Park, Shrewsbury Cathedral and Ironbridge.

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

The Wrekin, Telford

This is what the A.I. app produced when we asked it to paint The Wrekin from a distance.

Ironbridge, Telford

This is what the app painted when we asked it to produce "Ironbridge, Shropshire".

A real photograph of Ironbridge. You can certainly see the likeness in the A.I.'s attempt.

Ludlow Castle, Ludlow

It's certainly a castle, but not necessarily the one in Ludlow.

Attingham Park, Shrewsbury

It certainly looks like a pleasant house and grounds.

The A.I. definitely produced the national trust house quite well.

Lord Hill's Column, Shrewsbury

Shrewsbury Cathedral, Shrewsbury

It definitely shows the inside of a cathedral, but not necessarily Shrewsbury.

The A.I. overstated the pillars but as you can see from this real photograph, it wasn't bad.

It's worth mentioning that the A.I. app is primarily learning painting styles as opposed to simply sweeping the Internet for location information.

As a result, if you feed it a photograph, it'll produce an incredibly accurate representation.

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