THESE are the incredible landmarks in Cairo that you can’t visit. You can spend all year looking for them but you’ll eventually have to give up, and for good reason – they don’t exist.
They’re examples of the incredible AI architecture dreamed up by Egyptian artist and designer Hassan Ragab, based on the traditional Islamic buildings of Cairo and Alexandria.
When they first appeared in August last year they sparked an internet sensation. They looked so real that people worldwide clamoured for information about their location.
Hassan, who is based in California, watched as an extraordinary 8.5 million Instagram users checked out the images in the Cairo Sketches series, which you can see more of on his feed here.
“It went beyond Egypt,” he said. “There were people in Iran claiming that it’s a Persian tomb, others claiming it’s a Spanish building.
“Also, what was really ironic was how people were arguing (backed up by their own beliefs and ideologies) about the ‘whatabouts’ of that building.”
They are actually, he explains, “AI-generated patterns exploring Islamic Cairo architectural facades through 3D fractals”.
Follow Hassan Ragab on Instagram – www.instagram.com/hsnrgb
Paul Cole Writes 
I am glad I found this. There is a video being spread around, where the very last item was referred to as “middle house in CLARO” by a computer generated voice, and an internet search on that phrase turned up CAIRO, and a facebook page where (some) people were questioning its authenticity, and others were seemingly just assuming it was real, and one comment pointed to this page. So is THIS page generated by AI to throw us off the scent of a real place by claiming it’s not real? Kidding, but it will happen, and welcome to our new world of AI and “deep fakes” and a population ill equipped to discern fact from fiction.
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