The green industry is reeling today with the announcement that the AIPlantBot Company is experiencing problems with the first artificial intelligence tool for creating living, growing gardens. The company had high hopes for the ability of its generator to quickly create instant landscapes, mature flower gardens, and organic vegetable beds. “Our initial tests were so promising,” remarked Dr. Lirpa Loof, who is the lead developer of the program. Dr. Loof, it is remembered, was the head of team behind Google Plant, the first plant-to-English translation service.

“After the tests at major horticultural universities were so promising, “said Dr. Loof, “we released the beta version to members of GardenComm International, since they are not only experienced plant people, but are the communicators who can get the word out to the gardening public. But it seems that our early enthusiasm was premature.”

The first sign of trouble appeared when members of GardenComm began reporting alarming experiences on the GardenCommUnity. One of the members posted a photo of Cornus kousa tree filled with dog heads. “I asked the AIPlantBot to give me a mature dogwood tree,” the member, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our reporter. “The next thing I knew I had a tree filled with barking dogs! They constantly need to be fed and brought dishes of water, and believe me, it isn’t easy to balance those dog bowls in tree branches. Next thing I knew, I had the ASPCA at the door saying a neighbor had reported me for having too many animals!”

Soon other GardenComm members began posting photos of their AI plant and garden problems. “All I wanted was a few more hens-and-chicks succulents for the top of my rock wall,” Yad Sloof, a member of the organization reported. “But the bot gave me chickens…actual live, clucking chickens, growing on the top of the wall!”

Using a botanical name for plant requests didn’t seem to help. One member reported requesting a Monstera, currently one of the hottest house plants, but getting a hybrid of that tropical plant and Godzilla. “I wouldn’t mind so much,” she said, “but the darn thing stomps around the house causing all kinds of chaos. My cats are afraid to come out of my bedroom.”

Members have reported these disasters back to the developers, but help is slow in coming. “We kept these photos on the ‘members only’ areas of the CommUnity at first,” said C.L. Fornari, the current President of the organization, “becaise we didn’t want the public to be alarmed. We wanted Loof’s team to be able to work out the bugs. But the babies were the last straw. Once one of our members asked the bot to give him cabbage patch, it was impossible to keep our experiences quiet.”

It seems that the AI program that was creating gardens not only took information from real gardens, but from myths and fairy tales too. “It must have stumbled on the old falsehood that babies come from cabbage patches,” Dr Loof admitted, “and now gardeners are being blessed with abundant sauerkraut and bundles of joy.”

Dr Loof concluded the interview by admitting that they’ve been overwhelmed with requests from people who want to grow everything from more children to money trees. “Once this story got out, we had so many emails from the public that we needed to use AI to generate our responses…apologies in advance.”