Last year, Kulpati was among a group of more than a dozen friends who designed a monthlong, citywide scavenger hunt called PURSUIT<\/a>. Another one of that game\u2019s creators, Riley Walz, has pulled off a number of other stunts, including an app that tracked San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency workers ticketing parked cars<\/a> in real time and another that chronicled the music<\/a> passersby listened to on an undisclosed street in the Mission District.<\/p>\n Kulpati said the growth of these projects reflects a trend in the tech industry.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say most programmers now spend most of their time prompting AI to help them write code,\u201d he told KQED. \u201cOne way to look at that is, you can make your same old boring stuff faster. Another way to look at it is: \u2018What is stuff you\u2019ve never made before that now you can make?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Designing Facade Mash would have been a weeklong endeavor, at least, if Kulpati had to code it himself. Instead, he said, he built most of it in one night.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely this pocket of, I\u2019d say, creative technologists who are using this stuff and applying it in interesting ways,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very S.F.\u201d<\/p>\n Kulpati described the process of ranking buildings as a kind of collaboration between humans and AI. He used the computer to do an initial order before inviting people to play \u201cthis or that,\u201d so they wouldn\u2019t be comparing an empty lot, per se, to a Sea Cliff waterfront home.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s been evident that computer systems don\u2019t have the same taste as the human eye.<\/p>\n \u201cCivic Center was the best,\u201d after the AI ranking round, he told KQED. \u201cIf you look at the leaderboard now, it\u2019s more cozy.\u201d<\/p>\n The website asks users a simple question: Which building looks better? Below the prompt are two photos of addresses somewhere in the city. Pick one, and two fresh facades appear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/03\/260319-BEAUTIFULBUILDINGS-08-BL_QED-KQED.jpg\")
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