> However, AI art is especially dangerous for haunted attractions. For haunts, promotional materials are also meant to be indicative of what the experience will be like. AI art can, and often does, give a very misleading impression of what the haunted house will be like.
This is the main reason I heavily dislike the obviously AI generated Flyers, posters and menus you see so often nowadays. When i look at your menu, flyer or poster, the main thing I want to know is "What is this and what can i expect from it?". Real photos of your actual food, embedded in an AI generated layout/design? Good! Great even! "Chatgpt, please make me a flyer for my burger joint"? might as well have a no pictures plaintext flyer/menu.
The only photos of food I care about are customers posting them from the restaurant to for example google maps. I guess these can be gamed/smurfed as well, but I think mostly not, and they'd have to prompt for a bad photo from a mediocre phone camera taken by a person not caring much about framing.
True! Most of the time i don't remember pictures being there at all (especially in menus), which is (imo) still preferable to having generic AI generated images
When I took my daughter to a birthday party the other weekend, the playplace where the party was held had multiple party rooms, each with a large themed mural covering the walls. We were in the "dinosaur room" and the art was obviously AI-generated. This crap is everywhere.
I have a coworker who used AI to generate music for a funeral using prompts with facts about the life of the deceased. (He just mentioned this offhand one day like it was no big deal.) I guess he "saved money" by not hiring a human musician.
I am sure that there is some abstract art that is intended not to produce any emotion whatsoever, but this is absolutely not the norm. Rothko paintings, rather famously for example, produce complex emotions like dread and unease.
In what subset of the population? Maybe this is just due to my own neurodivergence, but abstract art does absolutely nothing for me emotionally or cognitively... it's arguably less interesting than a blank canvas because at least a blank canvas invites me to imagine what could be, rather than imposing something so meaningless and ineffectual upon me.
This is true for all art. I don't feel much emotion from an early renaissance marian icon but I do feel a lot of emotion when experiencing an Agnes Martin painting. The point is that abstract art is not emotionless.
Reflecting on this more, I'm not sure traditional illustrations actually do much for me in general. I am incredibly deeply moved by certain examples of photography, cinematography (both with and without explicit storytelling attached), architecture, and engineering, but I don't think paintings in general have much of an impact on me emotionally.
Was the mural handpainted or just a print glued to the wall? I feel even something handdrawn from ai generated inspiration could go a long way to add some quality. Even if just by the fact that no one would spend hours to trace terrible slop by hand.
> AI art has also seeped into the actual haunted houses themselves. AtmosFX, one of the largest providers of digital projections to the haunt industry, has admitted to using AI to create some of their characters.
So 'ruining' here means "it's used, and the author has a bias against AI".
For the vast, vast majority of people, this will make either little difference, or improve the experience.
Modern image generation has fixed most of the obvious tell-tales like mangled hands, square pupils, etc. And the few that remain end up looking like spooky things, which are pretty good for scary art anyhow.
Yes, even though I'm ok with its use in many circumstances, if I can immediately tell it's AI that usually means the person was very lazy when making it. It's boring when everything looks the same.
Also ignoring the fact that without AI many of these offerings would be pricier, lower quality, or just nonexistent.
The usual counterargument is “well I would gladly pay more for man-made art!” which is a fair personal preference, but judging by the market most people clearly disagree, and businesses aren't obligated to cater to your niche.
I'd love a world where people have choice. Instead we're left with all the shit the general population deems sufficient, and everything just gets worse and worse.
You can choose to spend money elsewhere or you can choose to start your own business and promote it as you see fit. How much more power would you deem sufficient?
gen AI is being used instead of real picture products on aliexpress and amazon. you aren't even getting what's advertised.
same for things that advertise scenes that do not match up to reality.
some countries have laws against false advertising, with good reason.
I know the AI ultras get mad when you point out that AI slop is bad quality, looks bad, and results in a worse aesthetic experience, but it's reasonable to have taste and to rebel against all design and illustration being brought down to the level of obvious low-effort content. Just because you have no taste, does not mean that other people must have no taste, or that having taste is somehow elitist.
The tradeoff you gotta contend with is that by making AI-style art effectively zero-cost and everywhere, not only does it immediately signal zero effort/taste on the part of the people using it, it also makes everything look the same. Composition, color choices, and style of AI-generated art is so samey, and people respond to that sameness negatively, for good reason.
As an art teacher of mine often quipped, it does not matter if it took you five minutes to make it, it just can't look like it took you five minutes to make it. Art tickles the brain when the viewer perceives aesthetic choices being made -- interesting, sometimes surprising, or skillful ones -- and the choice of AI-generated art signals to the viewer that no such choices were made.
(If AI is used is actually ultimately irrelevant, it's whether something is crap and lazy people can tell it's crap and lazy.)
There's actually rock-solid proof of this in the article:
> So, imagine my disappointment when I walked up to my first haunted attraction of the year and was immediately greeted by low‑quality AI art. One of the images was so bad that it even included the Gemini diamond in the lower‑right corner of the page.
The image in question is a sign or menu, the sort of thing that's usually neither good nor bad. Here it's exceptionally bad because it "included the Gemini diamond." In other words, it's exceptionally bad because it's AI, and for no other reason.
At this point, I don't know if it has much to do with quality...
What it had to do with quality is that nobody actually cared enough to review the art. No taste, no attention to detail, not even a basic walkthrough to evaluate whether anything breaks the 4th wall.
Since this is primarily still a programming site, consider mediocre code that looks like it works but clearly nobody actually made an effort to make sure.
So the problem is the people lacked attention to detail and failed to provide an immersive experience. That's a classic haunted house problem that goes way back before AI.
In this case I think part of the "bad" was the clear lack of care shown by leaving in the AI "brand" in the end result. "Slop" is a perfect term to apply there.
Bastiat's "seen and unseen". You see the cheap-looking AI graphics. You don't see the extra rooms they could afford to build, the ticket that might be $5 cheaper, or the new haunted house in your area that only exists because a small operator can now open one without hiring a studio.
The problem is not that people aren't doing work, it's that everything starts to look and feel the same.
With code, that doesn't matter so much. We are using it to achieve real-world objectives. The creativity of the programmer is rarely at issue -- from the user's perspective, a programmer is more akin to a plumber or an electrician. What matters is the result, not the creativity of the code.
But it does matter when part of the point of an in-person event is to see and appreciate someone else's creativity and skill. There is a real difference when that creativity and artisanship is replaced with AI output.
If I want to see AI art, I can prompt a model all day long and see whatever art I want, customized to my preferences. It's freely available and easy to get, so it doesn't have a lot of value.
> How about we let this part time business focus on entertaining it's visitors rather than wasting time virtue signaling to hypocrites.
What do you think "virtue signaling" means?
Did you read the article and understand the author's dislike, or did you just come here to whine that if I think AI is a bad choice in one context, I can never complain about it in any context? I assume you're aware that is a trivially silly and childish position.
The context here is the same: using AI to optimize a job or task.
And yes, I read it and I stand by what I said. From TFA:
When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed. When I see an AI-generated flyer for an event, I’m annoyed and much less likely to go.
To me this is silly. The event is the draw, not the way the flyer was created or the amount of effort that went in to it.
AI hasn't ruined anything, it has merely enabled people to ruin things, and everyone is queuing up. We could decide not to create low-quality, low-effort things that jeopardize entire sectors for the sake of saving a few hours/bucks, but nah.
I’m on the fence reading the other comments. On one hand I hate stock AI art, it looks like crap and signals that someone didn’t care at all and has zero taste. On the other hand, most peoples Halloween decorations are dollar-store made in China garbage, it’s not like we’re retreating from a world of lovingly hand-crafted decorations towards AI hell. I think a lot of it is really the anger it inspires due to the connotations (for me primarily of low effort and ignorance) rather than anything objective. I still hate it.
I want a haunted house based on Harlan Ellison's "I Have no Mouth but I Must Scream", where they duct tape your mouth and torment you with AI generated attrocities.
No. Halloween has long passed from being a pre-christian Celtic harvest feast day to a tacky plastic costume and kids sugar festival. Nothing sacred before AI about Halloween. And seriously, AI ruining Halloween is just silly.
I see this thread as a manifesting of fear that AI will inevitably own software engineering. We'll hang on to some of the peripheral areas for a few years but it's over. Seeing reminders of this in the AI images generated for decoration must be hard for some.
AI art has made attractive graphic design available to the masses. I don't get the hatred for them since they both look good and wouldn't exist without AI.
The "usual fairground airbrushed abominations" at least have a distinctive style and mean that someone cares enough to do more than type into a computer a few times and say "eh, good enough."
Why imagine the mental state of the person using the tool? You have no idea one way or the other how much a hypothetical person cared. Also, what does it mean to "care enough"? Can we measure and quantify caring? What if it turns out the AI user cared more under whatever metric you provide, would that change your mind about the quality of the output?
A big part of the problem, in my view, is that the process of creating the art/graphic design/writing was to think and be creative. Having to do the work itself led to a wide variety of outputs that were interesting. Now that's often gone.
And if the work is an ad, a flyer, etc., the quality of the output used to signal something about the event or product. Not so much any more.
There is nothing to be done about it, but it's still a real tradeoff.
I would be more interested in a flyer that was in rainbow comic sans, than one that just made up what it will look like because it can't see the actual event
I much preferred the fake photos—as in not photos of food served at that restaurant—than the AI generated images of food that doesn't exist at all on menus, as an example.
I also hate that Etsy is now mostly an AI-image gallery.
First, most AI generated art and graphic design isn't attractive. It certainly isn't more attractive than what amateurs have always come up with. I know AI enjoyers don't want to admit it, or don't care, but where aesthetics are concerned it does actually matter what people think and most people don't like it.
Second, and more importantly, graphic design (like programming, game development, video production and everything else AI enjoyers claim to be "liberating" from "the gatekeepers") was already available to the masses. Often the only gatekeepers are imagination and effort, and if AI enjoyers don't want to put in either, it isn't surprising the results are so often ugly and mediocre.
>>It certainly isn't more attractive than what amateurs have always come up with.
These events(amateur ones anyway) usually have a comic sans flyer made in word with some clip art pumpkins, let's be realistic. The art and the flyers shown in the article look great.
>>When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed.
Why. I literally don't understand it. Is the menu clear? Is the food good? Why would you be disappointed over a _menu_ of all things? I could maybe understand it if I went to a Michelin star restaurant for a £400/head tasting menu and they had an AI generated menu - purely because I'd feel like if I'm spending this much money, I expect you to actually have a silk wrapped menu written by hand, ideally. But at a local pizza place? Who cares?(I mean obviously you do, but I don't see why)
For me, it’s because I have no idea what I’m actually choosing from. The description of the burger says it has cheese, lettuce, and tomato. The picture shows pickles and mayo. The patty doesn’t even look like meat. I’m not expecting a professional menu when I go to a burger place, but I’m expecting accuracy. If there was a burger place next door that just had pics of food off a mobile phone printed on the wall, I’d choose there instead.
Does whole experience of having dinner at restaurant involve more than dropping some plates of food on the table and a finale of "Fuck you, pay me"?
If does, then: The menu is an important part of the experience. It's the first part of the experience that involves the food itself, and it leaves an impression just as every other aspect does.
Well no of course not, but I don't understand why an AI menu is automatically making OP disappointed about the experience. I know at least one local restaurant where the AI menu has improved my experience of dining there, it's just straight up better and more attractive than what they had before.
The food delivery services have begun replacing menu descriptions with LLM-generated text. This leads to some hilarious consequences. In all cases, there will be a disconnect between what the restaurant (I should say, Sysco foodservice) is serving up, and what the text says it's supposed to be.
An in-house menu is usually lovingly crafted by the marketing minds, and the glowing description of the food they're serving is at least... accurate, in terms of ingredients and presentation.
For a recent example, a Chinese menu listing egg rolls. The LLM summary says they "sometimes include meat". Well, what kind? And wouldn't it be a good idea to commit to a "yes" or "no" before I order the thing?
"When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed. When I see an AI-generated flyer for an event, I’m annoyed and much less likely to go."
This kind of anti-AI sentiment really is baffling to me, as baffling as anti-trans sentiment.
The two really have a lot in common if you look beneath the surface: both are instances of aggressive intolerance as a response to other people failing to live up to an arbitrary moral standard the aggressor has decided they have the right to impose on other people, whether or not those other people have any interest in the aggressor's arbitrary moral standard.
The response to the aggressor is the same in both circumstances: "but how does that affect you in any way?", with the honest answer being that it doesn't, and the more likely answer being some goofy rationalization invoking the rest of society's collective well-being, as the aggressor fantasizes everyone else as better off if they all also adhered to the aggressor's choice of arbitrary moral framework.
Anti-trans sentiment targets a population for who they are rather than what they do. It has also led to things like banning medical care for minors, banning trans people from accessing facilities safely, banning expressive entertainment like drag shows, banning trans people from joining the military, ending grants for studying gender identity, and banning discussion of gender identity even through undergraduate programs.
My point isn't that the impacts are remotely similar, it's that the rationale for the aggression comes from the same place - enforcement of one's arbitrary selected moral framework on other people who don't share that framework and are just trying to live their lives. Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons, one's just more harmful than the other.
P.S. No need to apologize for politely expressing ideological disagreement :)
> Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons
Only in the most abstract sense where virtually all criticism would fit. What you describe is not some unique similarity.
And the example here is how AI use harms the experience of a customer. This is distinct from "just trying to live their lives." If somebody is using AI at home to do whatever, fine. If somebody is using AI to produce low quality children's books to read to my child at day care, that matters to me.
The customer isn't compelled to transact with a business using AI any more than right wingers are forced to interact with trans people though. If you don't like a practice a business is doing, just don't do business with them. To that end, any "harm" suffered by a customer due to AI use by a business is essentially voluntarily chosen by the customer, no? Going to a daycare that gives children AI books and then being upset about it is like a bigot going to a trans pride convention and then being upset that there are trans people around them. It's like... you chose this, didn't you? If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to be there.
The tool is getting blamed here when it's people that are using it that are at fault.
When McDonald's uses 10s cooked patties with plastic and craft materials to make their fotos it isn't exactly any different then when a restaurant AI generates pictures of their menu's. The Burger at McDonald's has never looked like the pictures nor will it ever.
It's a choice the owner has and if they oversell expectations it's on them to deal with the consequences. At some point it also becomes fraud.
From what I recall talking to a photographer, the burger is all actual ingredients. They push everything to the front and angle the shot so it looks bigger than it is. That’s why you just see buns when you get yours, all the ingredients are in the center. But it’s possible to recreate the same pic with enough time and attention to detail. Lighting makes a huge difference as well.
Mcdonalds imagery at least matches the ingredients of the food actually being served, if i see a burger joint with a generic ChatGPT burger i have no idea if they actually have pickles on them or not
i saw an image for a 4 way power extension for sale that look like it was made by MC Escher the other day. it would be simpler to just take a photo of the actual product rather than hallucinating an impossible thing.
> However, AI art is especially dangerous for haunted attractions. For haunts, promotional materials are also meant to be indicative of what the experience will be like. AI art can, and often does, give a very misleading impression of what the haunted house will be like.
This is the main reason I heavily dislike the obviously AI generated Flyers, posters and menus you see so often nowadays. When i look at your menu, flyer or poster, the main thing I want to know is "What is this and what can i expect from it?". Real photos of your actual food, embedded in an AI generated layout/design? Good! Great even! "Chatgpt, please make me a flyer for my burger joint"? might as well have a no pictures plaintext flyer/menu.
>Real photos of your actual food
Many if not most restaurants weren't using real photos of their actual food long before gen AI was a thing, especially in promotional materials.
The only photos of food I care about are customers posting them from the restaurant to for example google maps. I guess these can be gamed/smurfed as well, but I think mostly not, and they'd have to prompt for a bad photo from a mediocre phone camera taken by a person not caring much about framing.
True! Most of the time i don't remember pictures being there at all (especially in menus), which is (imo) still preferable to having generic AI generated images
Motor oil for pancake syrup. White glue for stretchy cheese. Soap for beer foam. Shampoo for milk.
When I took my daughter to a birthday party the other weekend, the playplace where the party was held had multiple party rooms, each with a large themed mural covering the walls. We were in the "dinosaur room" and the art was obviously AI-generated. This crap is everywhere.
It's anywhere someone can save money. We all use it, to save money why shouldn't others?
I have a coworker who used AI to generate music for a funeral using prompts with facts about the life of the deceased. (He just mentioned this offhand one day like it was no big deal.) I guess he "saved money" by not hiring a human musician.
I really, really wish I were making this up.
Whenever the day comes where I am a candidate for a funeral, I really hope my friends and family save their money and do it as cheap as possible tbh.
But these custom songs about the deceased would not exist without the AI! This would definitely reduce the value of the funeral
So any use is good as long as it saves money. There are no tradeoffs or reasons not to use it?
Code only needs to work, art needs to generate positive emotions.
>art needs to generate positive emotions
Is abstract art "not real art" if it doesn't generate any emotions at all?
I think you’ll find abstract and modern art evokes quite a lot of emotion. Quiet a lot of indignation from people who “know what real art is”.
I am sure that there is some abstract art that is intended not to produce any emotion whatsoever, but this is absolutely not the norm. Rothko paintings, rather famously for example, produce complex emotions like dread and unease.
>I am sure that there is some abstract art that is intended not to produce any emotion whatsoever
It's not abstract, but Jeff Koons, probably.
In what subset of the population? Maybe this is just due to my own neurodivergence, but abstract art does absolutely nothing for me emotionally or cognitively... it's arguably less interesting than a blank canvas because at least a blank canvas invites me to imagine what could be, rather than imposing something so meaningless and ineffectual upon me.
This is true for all art. I don't feel much emotion from an early renaissance marian icon but I do feel a lot of emotion when experiencing an Agnes Martin painting. The point is that abstract art is not emotionless.
Reflecting on this more, I'm not sure traditional illustrations actually do much for me in general. I am incredibly deeply moved by certain examples of photography, cinematography (both with and without explicit storytelling attached), architecture, and engineering, but I don't think paintings in general have much of an impact on me emotionally.
Maybe I'm just uncultured.
Hmmm so when CEOs use this excuse to fire devs it is bad but not for cutting out artists?
Oh no, AI boosters are completely fine with firing devs as well
Was the mural handpainted or just a print glued to the wall? I feel even something handdrawn from ai generated inspiration could go a long way to add some quality. Even if just by the fact that no one would spend hours to trace terrible slop by hand.
From the article:
> AI art has also seeped into the actual haunted houses themselves. AtmosFX, one of the largest providers of digital projections to the haunt industry, has admitted to using AI to create some of their characters.
Big TV and projectors are very cheap now.
Sure, I was referring to the venue hosting children birthday parties. Big screens and projectors would feel even more dystopian there.
I've seen projectors here in Argentina in venues that host 5-10 y.o. children parties. I guess big TV are too easy to break.
So 'ruining' here means "it's used, and the author has a bias against AI".
For the vast, vast majority of people, this will make either little difference, or improve the experience.
Modern image generation has fixed most of the obvious tell-tales like mangled hands, square pupils, etc. And the few that remain end up looking like spooky things, which are pretty good for scary art anyhow.
They haven't gotten rid of the biggest tell though; the fact that it looks like mass produced AI art.
Yes, even though I'm ok with its use in many circumstances, if I can immediately tell it's AI that usually means the person was very lazy when making it. It's boring when everything looks the same.
Or is it only the cheesy low effort AI art that you spot?
Also ignoring the fact that without AI many of these offerings would be pricier, lower quality, or just nonexistent.
The usual counterargument is “well I would gladly pay more for man-made art!” which is a fair personal preference, but judging by the market most people clearly disagree, and businesses aren't obligated to cater to your niche.
I'd love a world where people have choice. Instead we're left with all the shit the general population deems sufficient, and everything just gets worse and worse.
You can choose to spend money elsewhere or you can choose to start your own business and promote it as you see fit. How much more power would you deem sufficient?
gen AI is being used instead of real picture products on aliexpress and amazon. you aren't even getting what's advertised. same for things that advertise scenes that do not match up to reality. some countries have laws against false advertising, with good reason.
I have to disagree here. I don't have a bias against AI art, but I've noticed some real effects with public events:
1. You can no longer judge what an event will be like by its materials
2. Everything starts to look the same, and you feel like you've seen it all before
Maybe these effect will attenuate as people start getting more adept with AI. But I think we're in for a least a few years of this.
> "bias against AI"
I know the AI ultras get mad when you point out that AI slop is bad quality, looks bad, and results in a worse aesthetic experience, but it's reasonable to have taste and to rebel against all design and illustration being brought down to the level of obvious low-effort content. Just because you have no taste, does not mean that other people must have no taste, or that having taste is somehow elitist.
The tradeoff you gotta contend with is that by making AI-style art effectively zero-cost and everywhere, not only does it immediately signal zero effort/taste on the part of the people using it, it also makes everything look the same. Composition, color choices, and style of AI-generated art is so samey, and people respond to that sameness negatively, for good reason.
As an art teacher of mine often quipped, it does not matter if it took you five minutes to make it, it just can't look like it took you five minutes to make it. Art tickles the brain when the viewer perceives aesthetic choices being made -- interesting, sometimes surprising, or skillful ones -- and the choice of AI-generated art signals to the viewer that no such choices were made.
(If AI is used is actually ultimately irrelevant, it's whether something is crap and lazy people can tell it's crap and lazy.)
If we had the exact same technology in the 80s would we have had all the classics we do now or just a remix of things previously created?
>or just a remix of things previously created
This is a major complaint people have had with the TV and movie industry for most of the last two decades.
Cultural stagnation can exist without technology but technology can also contribute to it.
Jaws 3D says "hi".
There's actually rock-solid proof of this in the article:
> So, imagine my disappointment when I walked up to my first haunted attraction of the year and was immediately greeted by low‑quality AI art. One of the images was so bad that it even included the Gemini diamond in the lower‑right corner of the page.
The image in question is a sign or menu, the sort of thing that's usually neither good nor bad. Here it's exceptionally bad because it "included the Gemini diamond." In other words, it's exceptionally bad because it's AI, and for no other reason.
At this point, I don't know if it has much to do with quality...
What it had to do with quality is that nobody actually cared enough to review the art. No taste, no attention to detail, not even a basic walkthrough to evaluate whether anything breaks the 4th wall.
Since this is primarily still a programming site, consider mediocre code that looks like it works but clearly nobody actually made an effort to make sure.
So the problem is the people lacked attention to detail and failed to provide an immersive experience. That's a classic haunted house problem that goes way back before AI.
Yeah, and now there are a larger number of those.
In this case I think part of the "bad" was the clear lack of care shown by leaving in the AI "brand" in the end result. "Slop" is a perfect term to apply there.
Is leaving the AI logo necessarily a sign of lack of care? I kinda feel like cropping it out is worse, because it’s trying to hide the sauce.
Bastiat's "seen and unseen". You see the cheap-looking AI graphics. You don't see the extra rooms they could afford to build, the ticket that might be $5 cheaper, or the new haunted house in your area that only exists because a small operator can now open one without hiring a studio.
c'mon oli you can't really think that AI usage is reflected as customer savings or quality improvement for end users
Is the ticket $5 cheaper? Or are they just pocketing the difference?
Right? All the AI optimists here acting like the people running thee businesses wouldn't mix sawdust in with flour if given the chance to.
Well - not really though. AI is ruining everything.
The hypocrisy here is off the charts.
Most people in this thread probably use AI all day to do their job for them. But god forbid a haunted house not hand-craft their flyers.
How about we let this part time business focus on entertaining it's visitors rather than wasting time virtue signaling to hypocrites.
The problem is not that people aren't doing work, it's that everything starts to look and feel the same.
With code, that doesn't matter so much. We are using it to achieve real-world objectives. The creativity of the programmer is rarely at issue -- from the user's perspective, a programmer is more akin to a plumber or an electrician. What matters is the result, not the creativity of the code.
But it does matter when part of the point of an in-person event is to see and appreciate someone else's creativity and skill. There is a real difference when that creativity and artisanship is replaced with AI output.
If I want to see AI art, I can prompt a model all day long and see whatever art I want, customized to my preferences. It's freely available and easy to get, so it doesn't have a lot of value.
> How about we let this part time business focus on entertaining it's visitors rather than wasting time virtue signaling to hypocrites.
What do you think "virtue signaling" means?
Did you read the article and understand the author's dislike, or did you just come here to whine that if I think AI is a bad choice in one context, I can never complain about it in any context? I assume you're aware that is a trivially silly and childish position.
The context here is the same: using AI to optimize a job or task.
And yes, I read it and I stand by what I said. From TFA:
When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed. When I see an AI-generated flyer for an event, I’m annoyed and much less likely to go.
To me this is silly. The event is the draw, not the way the flyer was created or the amount of effort that went in to it.
AI hasn't ruined anything, it has merely enabled people to ruin things, and everyone is queuing up. We could decide not to create low-quality, low-effort things that jeopardize entire sectors for the sake of saving a few hours/bucks, but nah.
AI isn't ruining anything. AI is just a tool. Lazy people ruin things when they don't care about quality.
I’m on the fence reading the other comments. On one hand I hate stock AI art, it looks like crap and signals that someone didn’t care at all and has zero taste. On the other hand, most peoples Halloween decorations are dollar-store made in China garbage, it’s not like we’re retreating from a world of lovingly hand-crafted decorations towards AI hell. I think a lot of it is really the anger it inspires due to the connotations (for me primarily of low effort and ignorance) rather than anything objective. I still hate it.
I want a haunted house based on Harlan Ellison's "I Have no Mouth but I Must Scream", where they duct tape your mouth and torment you with AI generated attrocities.
Might be easier to list the things AI isn't ruining.
Is nothing sacred?
No. Halloween has long passed from being a pre-christian Celtic harvest feast day to a tacky plastic costume and kids sugar festival. Nothing sacred before AI about Halloween. And seriously, AI ruining Halloween is just silly.
I see this thread as a manifesting of fear that AI will inevitably own software engineering. We'll hang on to some of the peripheral areas for a few years but it's over. Seeing reminders of this in the AI images generated for decoration must be hard for some.
I feel you. This years Halloween is full of AI slop costumes
Q
AI art has made attractive graphic design available to the masses. I don't get the hatred for them since they both look good and wouldn't exist without AI.
Nothing is attractive about AI art like shown in the article
Is it worse than the usual fairground airbrushed abominations, though? Because that’s essentially what it’s competing with.
The "usual fairground airbrushed abominations" at least have a distinctive style and mean that someone cares enough to do more than type into a computer a few times and say "eh, good enough."
Why imagine the mental state of the person using the tool? You have no idea one way or the other how much a hypothetical person cared. Also, what does it mean to "care enough"? Can we measure and quantify caring? What if it turns out the AI user cared more under whatever metric you provide, would that change your mind about the quality of the output?
Yes, easily.
http://badfairgroundart.blogspot.com/2009/10/?m=1
really?
Like, it is definitely bad, but I'd still prefer that to AI generated images in most contexts
...how? The art in the article looks great.
A big part of the problem, in my view, is that the process of creating the art/graphic design/writing was to think and be creative. Having to do the work itself led to a wide variety of outputs that were interesting. Now that's often gone.
And if the work is an ad, a flyer, etc., the quality of the output used to signal something about the event or product. Not so much any more.
There is nothing to be done about it, but it's still a real tradeoff.
> wouldn't exist without AI.
Which would be good?
No, it means the promotion would suck and I wouldn't be interested in events that I would be interested in if marketed to me correctly.
I would be more interested in a flyer that was in rainbow comic sans, than one that just made up what it will look like because it can't see the actual event
People provide other images for the AI to integrate into the flyer. It doesn't make up everything.
You mean you've seen events than only caught your interest once they started using AI for promotion? Cause that wasn't my experience at all
For example if a shop is having an Independence Day sale, just saying that it's happening with text is not very attractive.
Like, less attractive than a slop image with stars and stripes and eagles and trucks loaded full or whatever?
I much preferred the fake photos—as in not photos of food served at that restaurant—than the AI generated images of food that doesn't exist at all on menus, as an example. I also hate that Etsy is now mostly an AI-image gallery.
First, most AI generated art and graphic design isn't attractive. It certainly isn't more attractive than what amateurs have always come up with. I know AI enjoyers don't want to admit it, or don't care, but where aesthetics are concerned it does actually matter what people think and most people don't like it.
Second, and more importantly, graphic design (like programming, game development, video production and everything else AI enjoyers claim to be "liberating" from "the gatekeepers") was already available to the masses. Often the only gatekeepers are imagination and effort, and if AI enjoyers don't want to put in either, it isn't surprising the results are so often ugly and mediocre.
>>It certainly isn't more attractive than what amateurs have always come up with.
These events(amateur ones anyway) usually have a comic sans flyer made in word with some clip art pumpkins, let's be realistic. The art and the flyers shown in the article look great.
Attractive? Have you ever seen one of these obnoxious food cart menus? Anything meat looks like a ton of puree'd maggots. Utterly revolting.
>>When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed.
Why. I literally don't understand it. Is the menu clear? Is the food good? Why would you be disappointed over a _menu_ of all things? I could maybe understand it if I went to a Michelin star restaurant for a £400/head tasting menu and they had an AI generated menu - purely because I'd feel like if I'm spending this much money, I expect you to actually have a silk wrapped menu written by hand, ideally. But at a local pizza place? Who cares?(I mean obviously you do, but I don't see why)
For me, it’s because I have no idea what I’m actually choosing from. The description of the burger says it has cheese, lettuce, and tomato. The picture shows pickles and mayo. The patty doesn’t even look like meat. I’m not expecting a professional menu when I go to a burger place, but I’m expecting accuracy. If there was a burger place next door that just had pics of food off a mobile phone printed on the wall, I’d choose there instead.
Does whole experience of having dinner at restaurant involve more than dropping some plates of food on the table and a finale of "Fuck you, pay me"?
If does, then: The menu is an important part of the experience. It's the first part of the experience that involves the food itself, and it leaves an impression just as every other aspect does.
Well no of course not, but I don't understand why an AI menu is automatically making OP disappointed about the experience. I know at least one local restaurant where the AI menu has improved my experience of dining there, it's just straight up better and more attractive than what they had before.
The food delivery services have begun replacing menu descriptions with LLM-generated text. This leads to some hilarious consequences. In all cases, there will be a disconnect between what the restaurant (I should say, Sysco foodservice) is serving up, and what the text says it's supposed to be.
An in-house menu is usually lovingly crafted by the marketing minds, and the glowing description of the food they're serving is at least... accurate, in terms of ingredients and presentation.
For a recent example, a Chinese menu listing egg rolls. The LLM summary says they "sometimes include meat". Well, what kind? And wouldn't it be a good idea to commit to a "yes" or "no" before I order the thing?
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"When I go to a new restaurant and see an AI-generated menu, I’m disappointed. When I see an AI-generated flyer for an event, I’m annoyed and much less likely to go."
This kind of anti-AI sentiment really is baffling to me, as baffling as anti-trans sentiment.
The two really have a lot in common if you look beneath the surface: both are instances of aggressive intolerance as a response to other people failing to live up to an arbitrary moral standard the aggressor has decided they have the right to impose on other people, whether or not those other people have any interest in the aggressor's arbitrary moral standard.
The response to the aggressor is the same in both circumstances: "but how does that affect you in any way?", with the honest answer being that it doesn't, and the more likely answer being some goofy rationalization invoking the rest of society's collective well-being, as the aggressor fantasizes everyone else as better off if they all also adhered to the aggressor's choice of arbitrary moral framework.
Anti-trans sentiment targets a population for who they are rather than what they do. It has also led to things like banning medical care for minors, banning trans people from accessing facilities safely, banning expressive entertainment like drag shows, banning trans people from joining the military, ending grants for studying gender identity, and banning discussion of gender identity even through undergraduate programs.
I am very sorry but these are not related at all.
My point isn't that the impacts are remotely similar, it's that the rationale for the aggression comes from the same place - enforcement of one's arbitrary selected moral framework on other people who don't share that framework and are just trying to live their lives. Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons, one's just more harmful than the other.
P.S. No need to apologize for politely expressing ideological disagreement :)
> Inside of the head of the anti-trans activist and the anti-AI activist, it's the same gears churning producing the same pattern for the same reasons
Only in the most abstract sense where virtually all criticism would fit. What you describe is not some unique similarity.
And the example here is how AI use harms the experience of a customer. This is distinct from "just trying to live their lives." If somebody is using AI at home to do whatever, fine. If somebody is using AI to produce low quality children's books to read to my child at day care, that matters to me.
The customer isn't compelled to transact with a business using AI any more than right wingers are forced to interact with trans people though. If you don't like a practice a business is doing, just don't do business with them. To that end, any "harm" suffered by a customer due to AI use by a business is essentially voluntarily chosen by the customer, no? Going to a daycare that gives children AI books and then being upset about it is like a bigot going to a trans pride convention and then being upset that there are trans people around them. It's like... you chose this, didn't you? If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to be there.
The tool is getting blamed here when it's people that are using it that are at fault.
When McDonald's uses 10s cooked patties with plastic and craft materials to make their fotos it isn't exactly any different then when a restaurant AI generates pictures of their menu's. The Burger at McDonald's has never looked like the pictures nor will it ever.
It's a choice the owner has and if they oversell expectations it's on them to deal with the consequences. At some point it also becomes fraud.
From what I recall talking to a photographer, the burger is all actual ingredients. They push everything to the front and angle the shot so it looks bigger than it is. That’s why you just see buns when you get yours, all the ingredients are in the center. But it’s possible to recreate the same pic with enough time and attention to detail. Lighting makes a huge difference as well.
Mcdonalds imagery at least matches the ingredients of the food actually being served, if i see a burger joint with a generic ChatGPT burger i have no idea if they actually have pickles on them or not
Right, I would consider that fraud. You can tell chatgpt to add or remove ingredients from a image.
i saw an image for a 4 way power extension for sale that look like it was made by MC Escher the other day. it would be simpler to just take a photo of the actual product rather than hallucinating an impossible thing.