AI doesn’t know how to depict chemistry

AI on caffeine Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) software isn’t coming for chemists’ jobs just yet—at least not when it comes to visualizing molecules. As an experiment, this Newscriptster directed three genAI chatbots to draw the chemical structure for caffeine. When Grok, the genAI tool made by X, was asked to “draw a caffeine molecule,” the program provided images of grayish, amorphous collections of spheres linked by what might be chemical bonds. It had the characteristically glossy, dreamlike sheen of all genAI “art.” Aside from looking “menacing,” as one C&EN colleague described it, it wasn’t evocative of a chemical structure—caffeine or any other—so Grok got more-specific instructions: “Draw the molecular structure for caffeine.” This time, Grok supplied one image that was more like a spiderweb than anything resembling caffeine. “Caffeine, or MOF? You decide,” said another C&EN colleague. (Notably, caffeine is not a metal-organic framework.) Its final generated faux structure involved