We asked AI to redesign Leeds United's expanded stadium - and the results were just plain weird

It’s been rather a big week for Leeds United – not only have they won automatic promotion back to the Premier League and begun the process of sacking their manager regardless, but the planned redevelopment of Elland Road has taken a “huge and positive” step forward.

On Wednesday, Leeds council’s executive board unanimously agreed to begin the process of selling council lands around the club’s famous old ground in order to facilitate a massive, 30-acre rebuilding programme which will see Elland Road’s capacity increased to 56,500 – almost 20,000 more than it currently holds.

Of course, it’s also an opportunity for the architects to get a little creative. Elland Road, like most British stadium, follows the tried-and-tested “great big box” school of stadium design and it probably wouldn’t hurt to add a little bit of modern flair.

So in order to envision what the New Elland Road could look like once the builders are done with it, we decided to engage a firm of consulting architects to design a brand new look for the ground. But then we found out how much that would cost, so we just got AI to do it instead.

What Leeds United’s new stadium could look like – according to AI

Let’s start with some honesty… generative AI is, by and large, absolutely rubbish. When it isn’t spewing out wildly inaccurate information at the top of your Google search, it’s busy ‘creating’ some of the worst art known to mankind. We’re talking about programmes which can’t figure out how many fingers to draw on a human hand. We’re coming into this exercise with low expectations.

Still, we did it for Manchester United and Chelsea already, and the results were entertainingly nonsensical, so perhaps this will raise a few chuckles, even if it doesn’t offer us much of a glimpse into Leeds’ future.

Having asked our robotic friend to design and describe a new, expanded stadium and the facilities it might have, we thought at first that we were set to be disappointed. The ground itself remains, fundamentally, a big old box, as the image below suggests, and the only immediate point of interest is the fact that the pitch seems to have been relocated to be outside of the stadium:

It's a bold design choice that probably won’t win too much favour with season ticket holders, but still, you can’t say that it isn’t innovative. Quite what spectators in the stands will be watching when the football is happening somewhere else entirely remains unclear, but it would certainly be a unique match day experience.

There are some quirks in the concession stalls, at least. Apparently the same people who thought that the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium really needed a cheese shop have been providing data for the algorithm, because while some of the available food and drink will include “Yorkshire staples like pies and ale” – some stereotyping going on there, one feels – other culinary options are a little less typical to a football ground.

We particularly enjoy the concept of “Billy Bremner’s Bubble Tea”, served in a shop which is “covered in wallpaper that randomly projects GIFs of dancing Leeds legends.” Presumably the budget wouldn’t stretch to holograms, but of course one can’t sip bubble tea without admiring a looped video of Mark Viduka flossing on the wall. Does one sip bubble tea? We’ve never actually had any.

Still, some oddities in the catering department weren’t really as interesting a result as we’d hoped… until we came to The Peacock. Oh, yes. Now here’s a feature that would really make Elland Road stand out.

A nickname taken too far dominates the redesigned Elland Road

Leeds United, as every fan will know, are nicknamed The Peacocks. It’s not really a nickname that comes up very often in conversation, a big deal isn’t made of it, and it’s seldom seen when a second mention is required in a match report. But boy, did the AI seize on that nickname.

Fans can gather before the game on ‘Peacock Plaza’, which features as its centrepiece a “giant, abstract peacock sculpture… its tail feathers made of colourful LED lights that change pattern during matches.”

So at least the fans who stayed outside the stadium to watch the game will have something to keep them occupied during boring periods of play. But there’s more…

Pressed for further details of the peacock itself, the AI started to run pretty wild: “This 50-foot-tall peacock, dubbed ‘Sir Feathers’, has googly eyes and a tail that doubles as a windmill, generating power while flapping dramatically during matches. Every hour, it lets out a robotic “CAW!” that echoes across Leeds.”

First of all, who programmed the machine learning algorithm to take drugs? Second of all, but equally important, has anybody ever spent time in the presence of real peacocks and decided that what we really need more of is the noise they make?

At least ‘Sir Feathers’ – hey, at least it’s not Peacocky McPeacockface for once – is environmentally friendly, and we applaud the machine learning algorithm involved for thinking about energy generation whilst designing a 50-foot avian acid trip that seems primarily designed to scare pigeons and small children out of the car park.

That, mercifully, is about as mad as the AI went, and we don’t think we’ll bother passing its designs on to Leeds Council or the club as they go about the process of planning out their new development. Let’s hope that the real revamp puts imagination in the right place, eh?