{"id":419345,"date":"2026-07-31T11:26:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/419345\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T11:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T11:26:40","slug":"people-cant-stop-ai-generating-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/419345\/","title":{"rendered":"People can\u2019t stop AI-generating San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

On social media, San Francisco\u2019s housing warriors are trading AI-generated pictures<\/a> of upzoned neighborhoods like barbs \u2014 either in furtherance of urbanists, or to mock them.<\/p>\n

The posts are occasionally serious, and more often than not ragebait<\/a>. The Marina \u2014 but make it Miami<\/a>. How about an apartment super-complex<\/a> along Golden Gate Park? What if everywhere but downtown was more like Barcelona? \u201cHere\u2019s my best slop at what that might look like,\u201d one anonymous X user wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The strange new medium for SF\u2019s decades-old debate between growth and preservation has, if nothing else, amused the professionals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will come up in conversations at work. I\u2019ve certainly seen all this on X, Bluesky, and even Instagram to some degree,\u201d said Mark Hogan, an architect and principal at OpenScope Studio in SF, which redesigned Victorians in the Mission for transitional housing. \u201cMost of these AI images don\u2019t reflect what\u2019s feasible, financially or structurally.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a long history of image manipulation in environmental decision-making, said Sarah Jones, the Director of Marin County\u2019s Community Development Agency. Architects and developers are generally known to render their projects in the best possible light, highlighting the proposed buildings and not always their context, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A fluid technology that can start conversations about what\u2019s possible for communities can, at the same time, pose more polarization: a \u201cconfirmation bias\u201d of attitudes based on made-up scenarios, Jones said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re inclined to be opposed to more density, you\u2019re going to see an AI-generated picture that embodies what you oppose and that will make you more opposed,\u201d Jones said. \u201cIf you\u2019re inclined to think it\u2019s fine, you\u2019ll see the same picture and think it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April, an anonymous X user<\/a> who regularly posts about SF politics submitted an AI image of the Marina neighborhood as a hyperdense stretch of high-rises, mockingly endorsing it in the voice of a YIMBY caricature. A collection of actual YIMBYs rallied around the rendering with enthusiasm, calling it an improvement<\/a> over the neighborhood. Some even tweaked the image with their own ideas.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kat Scott, an open-source software engineer living in the Sunset, said she doesn\u2019t identify as a YIMBY or NIMBY: \u201cI see the world both ways. Obviously, cities have to grow, that\u2019s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for months, her X timeline was dogged with YIMBYs dunking on her neighborhood\u2019s lack of density. She found the posts annoying, but inspiring.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Scott posted two AI renderings of San Francisco: One as a collection<\/a> of Vienna-style social housing, and the other with every building replaced<\/a> by a single-family home. The next day, she posted another of the city as a proliferation<\/a> of luxury five-over-ones, corporate chain stores and AI billboards. The purpose was \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 to trigger the YIMBYs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you just say the word YIMBY, they appear,\u201d Scott told Mission Local. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s exactly productive. But it\u2019s funny; these AI images are meant to poke people and get eyeballs. And look \u2014 I can do that too. It doesn\u2019t really mean anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A string of pro-growth stalwarts flocked to Scott\u2019s posts. Among them was YIMBY activist <\/a>\u00a0Armand Domalewski, who responded with sarcastic despair<\/a> over the prospect of new homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funny thing about this is it\u2019s not anything new \u2014 I\u2019ve been doing housing activism since 2015, and long before AI generation got decent, you would have NIMBYs create stuff with Photoshop,\u201d Domalewski told Mission Local. \u201cAI is a new tool for a longstanding tradition among people who fear change and support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it\u2019s too early to tell how it\u2019s changing the debate, if at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all political arguments in general are not for the benefit of the people arguing but the audience,\u201d he said. \u201cI also feel like we\u2019re being so spammed by AI representations of everything that people could be tuning it out entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On social media, San Francisco\u2019s housing warriors are trading AI-generated pictures of upzoned neighborhoods like barbs \u2014 either…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2007,2080,28539,101,103,102,104,106,105,23681],"class_list":["post-419345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-nimby","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-yimby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}