Abstract: Techniques for treating an area with both crop plants and weeds involves applying a treatment to both the crop plants and the weeds to increase contrast between the crop plants and the weeds. For example, a non-lethal dose of herbicide may be applied to an area with both weeds and a crop to increase contrast in color, morphology, or both. The weeds may then be detected using artificial intelligence (AI) object detection, and an automated sprayer can then apply a second targeted treatment to the weeds based on the AI object detection. The first treatment to both the crops and the weeds that increased contrast between the crops and weeds enables higher accuracy object detection and therefore improves the performance of the automated sprayer.