Have you heard of the AI bot Craiyon? The artificial intelligence project, hosted by the company Hugging Face, has skyrocketed in popularity over the last month, sketching more than 50,000 images per day. We joined in on the fun and asked the bot to draw six of Cola’s most iconic landmarks — here’s how it did, well, according to us.

Note: This application shares nine versions of each photo, so we selected our favorite for each example.

Busted Plug

Our grade: D

Weighing in around 675,000 pounds and standing over 40 ft tall, the Busted Plug sculpture from local artist Blue Sky is one of Cola’s most unique and recognizable public art installations. We say AI did about as good as one can do with “world’s largest grey fire hydrant in a parking lot.”

Five Points

Our grade: B

We think this AI painting captures dusk on the Harden Street block near Groucho’s Deli well, and if you squint, it even looks like the State House dome is in the background.

Soda City skyline

This Cola-esc skyline was created using AI technology. | Image by Craiyon

Our grade: B-

We didn’t tell Craiyon to give us the Cola skyline view from Finley Park, but that looks like what we have here. The buildings aren’t exactly in order, but overall this passes the test and captures Cola from Arsenal Hill.

SC State House

Our grade: A

We think the bot did an admirable job capturing the SC state house, even throwing in a few Palmetto trees and showing off that nighttime glow. Throw a crescent moon in the sky and we’d bump it to an A+.

Riverwalk

Our grade: C+

In this image, the bot captured a composite of Columbia’s bridges and riverwalk but misses any exact location. We give it a C+ for throwing in multiple features, including the city skyline hiding in the background.

Williams-Brice Stadium

Our grade: A

That color of garnet isn’t too far off and the overall shape of the stadium is on point. This would be the view from the visitor's section, where the visiting marching band is located across from the student section.

Think you can create a better image of an iconic Soda City location? Go on and have some fun with Craiyon, and send us your favorite creations while you’re at it.