When AI imagines cities, smaller communities can disappear A Virginia Tech study found that AI image generators produce more realistic and recognizable images of large cities than smaller communities, raising questions about geographic bias in artificial intelligence systems. Research at a glance Problem AI-generated city images can misrepresent smaller communities. Context Researchers tested how well AI captures the identity of Virginia cities. Solution More local data and community input could improve AI-generated imagery. When College of Natural Resources and Environment geospatial data scientist Junghwan Kim asked an artificial intelligence (AI) image generator to create a picture of Blacksburg, the result wasn't quite right. “The image looked generic,” Kim said. “It didn’t capture what makes Blacksburg unique.” But when he asked the same system to create images of larger cities such as Richmond, Virginia Beach, and Washington, D.C., the results looked much more recognizable. The images included familiar landmarks, waterfronts, and city features that reflected the character of those places. That observation sparked a research question: Does AI do a better job representing large cities than smaller communities? A new study from researchers at Virginia Tech, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), and the University of Alabama found the answer is yes. The team discovered that AI-generated images were consistently better at representing larger metropolitan areas than smaller towns such as Blacksburg. The findings raise questions about how generative artificial intelligence tools portray places and whose communities are most visible online. The study, published in Technology in Society, examined how OpenAI’s DALL·E 2 image generator created images of three Virginia localities — Blacksburg, Richmond, and Virginia Beach — and Washington, D.C. Researchers then asked residents to evaluate how realistic and recognizable the images are. As generative AI tools become more common in travel planning, urban design, marketing, and public