>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.

It's anywhere someone can save money. We all use it, to save money why shouldn't others?

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.

They haven't gotten rid of the biggest tell though; the fact that it looks like mass produced AI art.

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.

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?

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...

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?

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.

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.

Nothing is attractive about AI art like shown in the article

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?

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.

Attractive? Have you ever seen one of these obnoxious food cart menus? Anything meat looks like a ton of puree'd maggots. Utterly revolting.

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.

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?

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.

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