Systems and methods relating to image processing and artificial intelligence. Given a small number of defect images, a multitude of other defect images can be generated to serve as training data sets for training artificially intelligent systems to recognize and detect similar defects. Given original images showing defects, a clean image of the background of the original images is created. The defect image is then isolated from each of the original images. The characteristics of each defect image are determined and characteristics of similar defects are also determined, either from other images or from subject matter experts. Based on these characteristics of similar defects, multiple other defect images are then generated. The generated defect images are combined with the clean image to result in defect images with a suitable background. Each of the resulting images can be used in training systems in recognizing and detecting defects.