Can you spot Ai in gardening images and advertising?

Lately I’ve been seeing ai generated images of plants that aren’t real. My clients will show me a picture of their dream garden scape and I have to gently explain that the image they’re showing me was made with artificial intelligence. The blue Macrophylla Hydrangea tree below is one such example.

Don’t get me wrong - ai can be a useful tool for gardeners. You can use it to imagine how your space might look, and can ask it to generate images to give you ideas for plants. Ai can be helpful for listing plants that work well in growing zone to save you time in researching.

That being said…I cannot stand the use of Ai images used in advertising/sales of garden materials. Especially plants. It is intentionally misleading to customers and frustrating to gardening professionals.

Are you an expert at spotting ai in gardening pictures? Try the photos below and see how you do.

This is an ai generated patio image, and an example of ai as a useful tool for planning planting beds. This one isn’t trying to sell you anything, so it doesn’t rank as especially sinister in my book. The relative size and scale of the plants in the bed aren’t unrealistic, either.

Another ai image of a beautiful zinnia planting bed. The wooden border isn’t realistic, but the zinnias look a lot like Benary’s Giant mix (although the stems are much longer in reality!) During peak season, you can expect a bed of closely planted zinnias to look something like this.

I wish! Unfortunately, the tree above is a mix of the H. macrophylla (or bigleaf) hydrangea and a H. paniculata (or panicle) hydrangea. A client sent me this picture because they wanted to put this kind of plant in their garden. I had to be the bearer of bad news to tell them unfortunately this tree doesn’t exist…yet!

Hostas don’t come in orange…and I’m not sure what many of the bottom row of plants are (aside from the pink/green hydrangea). This is an example of ai being used to give you an idea for filling a landscaping bed.

I must say, the lawn full of weeds and random other plants with half a stone border is realistic in the sense that many of my clients have this type of landscape bed as a starting point!

Have you used ai to help you with gardening? Did you have a positive experience?