How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a beautiful photo
Summary
The post explains turning a freeform query like 'sfo-jfk' into a curated image for an AI travel app by combining LLM understanding, traditional software engineering, and human photo curation. It outlines a three-part approach: define a notion of 'place', build a places-to-pictures mapping using Unsplash, and implement a system that maps a query to the closest known place to render a suitable photo. It also discusses practical trade-offs and dataset gaps, emphasizing tasteful, curated results over purely AI-generated imagery.