- 14comments
- 21comments
- 138comments
- 3comments
- 46comments
- 3comments
- 169comments
- 230comments
- 60comments
- —discuss
- 3comments
- 27comments
- 165comments
- 177comments
- 26comments
- 100comments
- 302comments
- 185comments
- 7comments
- 88comments
- —discuss
- 41comments
- —discuss
- 91comments
- 155comments
- 199comments
- 339comments
- 19comments
- 48comments
- 470comments
Threatening people is unwarranted, but of course people are allowed to choose where they buy coffee for whatever reasons they see fit. If the market decides that stores with AI posters aren't the place to be then the business has to adapt.
i generally go to the store where the coffee tastes better
Agreed. That's actually what OP said as well.
Using AI to make a sign is likely a pretty good indicator as to the effort the owner puts into other aspects of their business.
It only signals to me that they have other priorities.
Correct, but they own a coffee shop, they aren't building rockets. The menu is definitely a significant part of it.
If they can barely do that, then I'm sure they're slacking off on more stuff too.
Unless they use the time they previously spent making a sign into making a better coffee.
How would a coffee shop spend an hour making their coffee better
Like you own a coffee shop and you’ve freed up one hour in the 12 weeks before you have to make a new sign, what do you do in that hour that makes the coffee better?
Spending the money you would have wasted on a flaky local artist to draw an overpriced disposable sandwich board on better coffee beans.
The entitlement is off the charts. The more I read this insanity, the more I hope she printed it at a Walmart with a discount coupon.
Yes. It's a sign they spend a lot of effort making good coffee and don't have a lot of effort left over to work on a sign.
They own the business, they don't make the coffee, nor did they make the sign they had earlier.
the only "threat" mentioned in the article is that someone said that if she didn't take the sign down they would post about it in a local artist community. Threatening people with violence is always unwarranted, but trying to portray talking with other people about what someone is doing as a "threat" is disingenuous.
Oh, please. You know what they're threatening: an internet mob. That's not just "talking".
It was literally just talking, though.
I think that issuing an ultimatum where if the person does not do what you want, that you will be sharing your concerns with likeminded people online, with the underlying implication being that the business owner will end up experiencing some kind of negative outcome from that, is absolutely a threat.
Nobody threatened the business owner. Somebody offered the business a chance to change up the ad (and help doing so) before it got shared, and the owner figured it would be better to go viral with the slop ad. Now there’s an article in Business Insider painting the business as the victim of mean customers that assaulted it by not liking the slop poster, so it looks like it all worked out for them.
Live by the slop, die by the slop.
https://archive.is/GSXl6
When this is sort of behavior that the "good guys" advance then it's hard not to expect a "bad guy" with money to show up on the scene and thwart it.
why is talking about this with their community a threat?
"Threat" is a correct term for an attempt to compel action via potential negative consequences.
"Nice business you've got here, shame if something happened to it"
Its implied the talk is to rally the troops not gather general opinion
It literally is not. You can maybe phrase it to sort of sound like a threat but “I’m going to share your public ad” is never a threat. It’s like if you angrily yell “I’m going to come to a complete stop at this upcoming stop sign!” in a threatening voice and then do that, it wasn’t a threat. Great. That’s what the sign is for. That’s what everyone wants you to do.
In the context of how it was done, saying that they would give them a list of people and a day to think it over, it really is a threat, it's a kind of extortion.
Im shocked she spent so much to get it printed. The design looks so cheap
I would definitely be less likely to buy food/drink from a place with AI ads (because I don't trust that what they're advertising would correspond to what they're selling), but I can't imagine threatening someone over it.
I would once again like to point out that the "threat" mentioned in the article is someone saying they'll talk about what the shop owner did with their friends.
"post about it in a local artist community" is not exactly "talk about it with their friends."
It's bullying.
The reaction folks had is OTT, but it does look like AI slop.
One group of folks is trying to say we basically have AGI. The other group is pointing to AI that remains very limited and where lowly humans can spot anything it’s created from a mile away. The evidence continues to point towards the later.
I mean there's a pretty big third group there which recognizes the good parts and the bad parts. Right?
For every person who can spot it a mile away I wonder how many false positives they have or simply aren't aware of it. If you're looking for it, with people using it a lot these days, of course you are going to have a high success rate.
But really I don't think it falls neatly into either of those categories.
Much like CGI in movies, you only notice bad CGI.
This seems like the wrong attitude to take after experiencing such a backlash. If she'd made the signs herself for years then why resort to using AI to produce what is so obviously a generic slop result?
The article says she paid $150 for printing and $200 for a stand. Why not throw another $200 towards an artist?
Sounds like she was undervaluing her previous employee's artistic skills.
This isn’t really about AI, it’s about a culture where threats and coercion in service of one’s own ideology have become normalised.
No it's about people thinking that I should care about their business when they clearly do not. When you use AI in these lazy ways it's clear that you just don't care.
That doesn’t even make sense. If you’re a customer before she puts up the sign it hasn’t magically made the coffee or the service worse. You want to force her to act the way you want, it’s that simple.
Dude, small business owners only have so much to spend on marketing. Before it was AI, it was stock images or Microsoft clip art. I don't care if my plumber has good logo, it saving money on a logo keeps him from selling to PE and enshittifying his business.
This has always been a thing.
Thats true. This story makes me think artists are spoiled and entitled little shits, which isn’t fair to all of them of cause.
I don’t think it’s the artists who are doing things like this. It’s usually people who aren’t directly impacted and are “working” on other people’s behalf who do this sort of thing. I suspect it’s power-seeking personalities using a socially acceptable excuse to exercise power over someone else.
My basic stance these days is 'if you were too lazy to do this yourself and handed it off to ai then why should i be motivated to engage with it'
This primarily, for me, has resulted in me ignoring a lot of long winded tickets.
the user a generate's email/documentation/whatever via claude > sent to user b > user b uses claude to summarize it ... loop is shitty.
This applies less to me for code as long as you are reviewing it throughly and 'sculpting' it throughly to make it readable/maintainable.
Care about your work if you want me to care about your work.
I've noticed a very sudden uptick in these AI designed signs and menus in my area. I fully understand why they are used by small business owners (fast and cheap), and I think getting angry at or threatening a business owner for using them is a huge overreaction.
That said, my own aesthetic sense is very much turned off by them. It is hard for me to articulate why, but I can name four reasons:
- The food never actually looks good, real, or delicious;
- The information is presented in a haphazard way, with text randomly thrown all over the place;
- There is really only one kind of "style" of these signs that I've seen, and it's sad to think that this style (or lack thereof) may become ubiquitous;
- In a world where AI feels increasingly shoved down our throats, it is unnerving to so suddenly see its rise manifested in the physical world.
I have some bad news for you:
• The pictures on cereal boxes aren't entirely real, either. They use school glue, not milk.
• Your burger has never looked like the one on the menu (see Falling Down)
• I've never eaten at a Chinese takeaway where the food looked like the light-up menu board, either.
How has AI art made your food meaningfully less delicious?
Articles like this always rub me the wrong way. I don't know the term for it, but I feel you should be able to make the point without making us picture a new mother getting stressed breast pumping in the middle of the night.
I agree to a degree - it feels manipulative on the part of the writer, trying to exaggerate any sympathy a reader might feel.
That said, I also feel that the level of negativity the lady suffered was a little out of proportion to her 'crime' - essentially amounting to bullying.
ya it's cheap sympathy-raising and should be condemned
The article contains a rather beautiful example done via camera (and product photography demands that you get the froth and lighting just in time and just right) decorated by an artistic employee.
The owner had to resort to her standby Canva when the employee left, but lacking time due to a newborn.
To me, having followed all kinds of embedded links over to Vermont and Germany, the latter example being extraordinarily unappetizing. [0]
Stepping back to get the big picture, it seems to me that small business owners have gotten spoiled by local artists and artistic employees who created really beautiful signs and brochures. Come crunch time, it's either pay a local artist or DIY. And to get "pretty" artwork, many resort to AI, which mostly ain't pretty, sometimes pretty grotesque.
But this seems to be a case of wanting things both ways. AI is famous for really bizarre food rendering, as exhibited below. Customers really want food and preparation to look real. So why not set up a simple grid (say, Pages on a mac or Libre Office or Scribus) and pair the best photo you can grab with a description opposite it, on a nice background?
Other than KISS, you can get excellent art for a price, or slop for cheap (or at least, artificial art that advertises itself as such).
Increasing costs affect not only businesses, but people needing work, some of whom have lost jobs and income, are understandably upset.
The workflow I described can be done for little cost if DIY is not suitable, perhaps even a local photography class (who would work for (coffee) beans?)
I refer friends learning photography, intrigued by their phone cameras, and wanting to expand their skill set, to community college and other classes. Maybe even one of those starving artists.
Businesses brag about sourcing locally. I see a way to do so, but good art requires good artists, just as product photography requires some skill.
You can't have it all, or damn cheap. You must choose wisely.
P.S. My Dad was a commercial artist and I am an amateur photographer. And I make my own coffee. Yikes, the cost. If it's atmosphere, do put some nice art on the walls and let the product speak for itself.
My two cents, or "Sixbucks" worth.
[0] https://x02.me/i/F7ZX6.jpeg
I do have compassion for people who are not tech oriented. AI art can seems a bit kitsch and novel at first, and they probably don't really think about ethical consequences very deeply.
The problem is it all looks the same, and those of us who are terminally online are exposed to it non-stop. AI slop seems to be poisoning every space that used to have quality conversations, and mass un-employing many creative professions.
People do have the right to vote with their feet though - it is perfectly ethical to support coffee shops that support the local artist community and avoid ones with AI "art". Too bad we've mostly lost the ability to rationally discuss things, instead of resorting to threats right off the bat.
As an artist, or software engineer for that matter, you do not have an inalienable right to be paid for something that can be automated through AI.
I'm willing to bet most of these people don't even patronize her store because they are terminally online unemployed losers who can't afford more than freeze-dried Folgers.
Never let the mob win. They don't deserve her coffee, good riddance.
If you are sending threats to strangers on social media you are at minimum mentally ill, she has something to gain by losing them as customers.
Small businesses barely get by. Someone with work as transient as "artist" should know better.
Makes me wonder what constitutes a bigger danger for the society: putting up a bad taste AI-generated menu poster, or threatening people’s businesses for that action.
You have to wonder?
"AI-generated" looks bad to a large minority of people. It is not clear if the majority notices, much less cares.
That aside, if you spend 5 minutes prompting AI, you can create an image that no one will clock as AI.
The owner's instagram apology post has a bunch of "I did not understand..."s and language about disrespect, etc-- which makes sense, they're trying to get out of trouble, but it is in a way dishonest. Things would be better if they felt they could write "I didn't realize you all hated this. Now that I know, I'll take it down. Sorry about that." because it avoids them feeling they were threatened into "falling into line". As it stands they were forced to lie to get out of trouble about something they didn't even realize was wrong (they don't actually care about AI, obviously, or they wouldn't have used it), and they are necessarily bitter as a result.
Not that they were in a position to figure that out, in the moment, but I think it is a good thing to take away from the story... The interpretation of transgressions as moral failures instead of mistakes has done a lot of harm to society in the past few decades, because it creates bitter people instead of resolving things cleanly. It's a failure of the whole norm around these things, rather than any individual per se; people are rarely in the position to realize their behavior is contributing to a toxic norm on a daily level.
Edit: even in this comment section there are a lot of people who are bitter about this (which showed up since I started typing this). Goes to show how important it is.
Personally I will not fault any individual for following a norm that they do not have the perspective to reject. So I think the coffee shop owner and the critics both screwed up here, by participating in shame-culture on both sides. However they did not know they could do differently---nobody has demonstrated to them the harm of their actions. But as analytical outsiders we can make that observation and put it to use later by not practicing that behavior ourselves, and by helping others learn to not practice it either.
Heard this morning on NPR show: The 3 areas were AI fails from the get-go.
Creativity
Taste
Judgement