When Khalil Heron was tasked with creating a vision for a more sustainable university campus, he says he wanted to create “a perfect utopia.”

The second-year design studio foundations student at the University of Waterloo was told by his professor, Katherine Perrott, to start his plans using an articifial intelligence (AI) system called DALL-E.

DALL-E can design images based on written prompts and the system was created by the same developer as ChatGPT, a chat robot that’s been getting recognition lately for its ability to generate realistic conversations that sound like they came from a real human.

Heron wanted to experiment with making the final image look more stylized, like a painting or drawing.

“I wanted it to be in a solarpunk style — which is almost a cyberpunk-esque style, but with a big focus on sustainability. I wanted to create a perfect utopia world where everything is sustainable,” he said.

“I think it’s really powerful how the program can create not only just real images, but it can also create art.”

His final design included a focus on sustainable transportation and urban spaces.

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