@mellifluousbox There's a cafe in a park near me that's done a "get active" campaign, highlighting a 1-mile long route around some of the paths for people to use - starting and finishing outside the front of the cafe.

The map they've made of the park is just... off, in a bunch of weird ways. Some things like groups of trees are in the wrong place, while the playground and the other cafe are missing, and the roads around the park aren't quite right. Pretty sure it's GenAI slop. 🙁

@mellifluousbox You are correct to view AI using stores/restaurants as inferior quality.

On the one hand, use of AI generated illustrations indicates a lack of care of how they are perceived.

On the other hand, use of AI generated illustrations indicates that they are eager to change things up rather than stick to traditional ways that are proven and traditional standards of what quality is acceptable.

I mean, would you rather go to a kebab shop where the cook insists upon making gramma proud

@mellifluousbox Agreed. Personally, I will continue to avoid them in the offline world as much as in the online world for as long as I can. It is a sign of devaluating human labour and disrespecting visual artists in both worlds.

@mellifluousbox Anybody got good tools for identifying AI slop when I want to buy images from a digital artist? I do some low-key social media volunteering and one of the things I like to do is post celebratory images on holidays. The only actual artist among our 100% volunteer staff, is so underwater with volunteer work that I won't ask her. So I buy images ad hoc, but lately I don't know how to tell what I'm paying for.

@mellifluousbox A local restaurant published LLM generated picture of a today's menu yesterday. A vegetable and bean stew with enormous chunks of meat.
I read comnents below the post. People gave them quite a backslash.
Then the owner apologized and published a real photo of the dish. With normally sized chunks of meat.

@mellifluousbox I had lunch in a mob-themed sandwich shop yesterday where the walls were covered with clearly AI-generated "photos" of alleged "real mobsters". The sandwich was ok, but the fake pics were not a great look.

@mellifluousbox not wrong, and it is astonishing his uncritical "normal" people are in their use of it everywhere. Reflecting ethics, energy use, copyright and impact on artist's livings is very much a nerdy niche.

@mellifluousbox you're the customer. Every customer makes decisions about whether to use a product or service. This is just a new avenue. It's no more right or wrong than... well, anything.

@mellifluousbox If a business cuts corners on a basic sign with lazy AI generations, it usually tells you exactly how much care they put into their actual product

@mellifluousbox there’s a café in my neighborhood that has AI signs and menus but also the entire place feels completely ai generated somehow. The decorations are all like giraffe with sunglasses, astronaut heads idk. It’s weirder and more offputting than just bad taste. It’s like they asked ChatGPT “name 10 cool things” and then they went and got that

@mellifluousbox I just came home from buying a few cans of craft beer. While browsing through the selection, I skipped those with clearly AI made labels. I didn't even bother checking what they were, look at their price tag or scan with Untappd. Fortunately, it's (so far) a minority of the beers.

@mellifluousbox I've been noticing this for a few months.

@mellifluousbox Definitely makes me less excited to do business there, yeah. Especially if they’re doing well enough to pay a local artist.

Though I’m trying to temper my anger at the little guys who use AI and keep it directed at the AI companies. It’s hard to argue to some restaurant with razor thin margins who aren’t super plugged in why the free art machine is bad for lots of abstract reasons. I wish individuals would choose better, but the bulk of the blame isn’t on them.

@mellifluousbox I attempted to run a business offering e-marketing to small local businesses. I gave up. They have all the needs of a big chain and no budget for it. There's a reason they all have cheap sites running off godaddy or wix. Yes, they all use AI for graphic design now. Honestly, I don't mind. They typically are running a break even or worse budget and need to focus on their core business.