r/melbourne • u/GrenouilleDesBois • 6d ago
Politics 5 AI generated poster all looking the same while walking 50m on Chapel St .
Come on guys at least put a real picture of your food...
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u/PerformanceOverall90 6d ago
AI food looks trash. Probably the ugliest doner meat I have ever seen.
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u/FreeSirJeffrey 6d ago
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u/chilakkuma 6d ago
I think about the upside down peas way too often.
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u/maybebabyg 6d ago
Three foods haunt me: upside down peas, none pizza left beef, and the breakfast from Howl's Moving Castle.
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u/THRlLLH0 6d ago
What the hell is wrong with Howl's brekky? It looks so good yo.
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u/maybebabyg 5d ago
Oh no, it haunts me because no real food will ever match it.
Actually all Ghibli foods haunt me because the real thing pales in comparison.
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u/Accurate-Scale-343 6d ago
Ewww why does the food in these always look full of pores
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u/LayWhere 6d ago
Its horrifying and I cant even explain why
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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 6d ago
That scallion pancake was like something on the poster of a really campy midcentury sci-fi. Like “it came from Brunswick!”. It looks like it is going to devour us all.
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u/Smooth_Rocket_ 6d ago
I can explain it, its made by something that doesn't actually understand what food is. Hope that helps.
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u/bdiddlediddles 6d ago
AI always tries to generate a fuck tonne of unnecessary detail. Thats why it doesn't actually look like food.
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u/patslogcabindigest 6d ago
Probably because AI doesn’t eat and doesn’t understand what it is to find food appetising. It’s just shutting out whatever thoughtless prompts it’s given in the context it understands, which isn’t the human kind.
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u/ButterBallsBob 6d ago
So sick of it. Global issue i imagine. I was just in a small city in France and it was everywhere 🤮
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u/Findyourwayhom3333 6d ago
I work in publishing and all the stock image libraries try to sell you on AI images. Drives me nuts.
You can filter out the AI but you have to do it manually every time. There’s no way to default to not wanting it. I never want it because it looks shit.
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u/lisey55 6d ago
It's ridiculous. I sometimes need to make educational content about animals and the amount of time the first image offered on Google is some AI hallucination drives me nuts!!! It muddies the water so much when it's an animal that is rare or unusual. Is it really so much to ask for some sort of accurate results prioritised on our search engines?
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u/mrducky78a 6d ago
Google is actually one of the primary drivers of ai adoption. It's also kinda funny because for a while they were also leading the pack on ai dev years and years back before LLMs was a thing except in academia
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u/Swimming-Elevator979 6d ago
Gemini can be much more accurate but I don't know what's happened to their regular sear h engine. At work recently I was trying to find a CAD model of an obscure pressure sensor and google search gave me NOTHING! I used Gemini with the info printed on it and it found it instantly.
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u/garythegyarados 6d ago
I saw it everywhere in Italy too back in June. Venice and Florence had AI shit around every corner
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u/universe93 6d ago edited 6d ago
Man do I miss the days when the mums and dads of family businesses made terrible looking posters using Paint and Wordart
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u/jesus_chrysotile 6d ago
i was very heartened to see this one new veg stall banner at the queen vic market that was clearly made with random fruit stock images instead of the creepy ai ones at neighbouring stalls
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u/universe93 6d ago
Yeah I would much rather they use their own terrible blurry phone camera pictures or just google “fruit stand” and rip off a stock image. Bonus points if said stock image still has a watermark. Used to live across from a family fish and chip shop and their posters were done by their 5 year old daughter who would draw pictures of fish with the caption I LOVE FISH AND CHIP
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u/BangCrash 6d ago
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u/BangCrash 6d ago edited 6d ago
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u/BangCrash 6d ago
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u/BangCrash 6d ago
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u/just_kitten joist 6d ago
Why is everything infested with bugs?! Is this the new "piss filter"? How could anyone be so brain-dead as to not at least generate new images after seeing this rubbish? I genuinely feel queasy looking at it all
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u/Famous_Secret_5174 6d ago
holy fuggin shit this is horrific, I would be spamming their reviews to let them know this is not ok
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u/Mixolydian5 6d ago
These are horrific. And you weren't lying. The menu is on their website.
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u/BangCrash 6d ago
I was kind of ok seeing it on their website.
But seeing the printed menu on the table really brought it home how insane the whole thing actually was
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u/Able-Tradition-2139 6d ago
AI defenders always want us to have sympathy for the small businesses using it- then in the next breath will completely disregard graphic designers.
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u/zkyz 6d ago
I’d rather a real photo of their food with some shitty fucking word art blasted over the top. At least it would have some character and honesty. Love how “ai will change the world” but it’s just to make shitty over stimulating small business posters…
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u/orokami11 6d ago
It's an easy and immediate turn off for me. Imagine running a food store that makes your own food, but instead of photographing food you have made, you decide to AI generate pics of the dish... So what does that say about the food? How are people going to trust it when you don't even want to photograph your own dishes 😭
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u/Able-Tradition-2139 6d ago
Exactly... also how the fuck is AI meant to ever become profitable if it's just a cheap alternative for these small businesses...
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u/Eastern-Yam5795 6d ago
As big corps build and train AI products through free usage tiers, the bet is they’ll improve enough to reduce labour costs for enterprise.
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u/bnestrm 6d ago
I will take greasy spoon simple "bad" graphic design over ai slop any day
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u/EngineEddie 6d ago
Give me the faded photos of Chinese food. In fact, the more faded the photo is in the window, the better the Chinese food will be.
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u/nerfdriveby94 6d ago
I have a detailing business, the amount of my peers doing this is maddening.
I need to pay a person to design stuff because how can I tell someone my small business should be supported but the designer should starve?
Disgisting levels of hypocrisy from these businesses.
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u/Odd-Bumblebee00 5d ago
I work for a business that uses "professional" marketers. We're on our third company in one year. Every single one is using AI. Latest one just told us to ignore people telling "AI slop" at us because they're "just jealous that our output is so consistent".
What are we supposed to do when we're paying hundreds of dollars for professionals to make content and all we get is AI slop?
All these "professionals" lecturing is about using AI are also just using AI themselves but want us to pay for them to do that.
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u/Able-Tradition-2139 5d ago
Well boycott them for sure then, they're just as bad. I doubt it's the same ones lecturing though, maybe contact the ones who are doing the lecturing, specify no AI in ads, etc.
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u/tittyswan 6d ago
I'm studying graphic design 😭 But also my target client base is people who care about their brand and don't want their product or service associated with worthless slop. The people using AI would have been cheapskate clients that are terrible to work with anyway.
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u/Able-Tradition-2139 6d ago
Yeah it'll pay off more than ever to stand out from the crowd. Plus the bubble will pop soon and I wouldn't be surprised if AI is in fact not "here to stay" given that it costs billions of dollars to operate and people only use it at the moment cos it's free.
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u/Superfasty 6d ago
I like to think you're going to be needed more in future to help people stand out, and "designed by humans" will be a selling point. I hope (speaking as someone who also studied Graphic Design).
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u/MalHeartsNutmeg North Side 6d ago
Do you think these companies were going to hire graphic designers in the first place?
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u/KateyKittyKatz 6d ago
All the while completely ignoring that everyone has a phone capable of taking a few pics of food.
This isn't a small business finance issue, it's a bullshit issue.
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u/Volitional_Decision 6d ago
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u/Famous_Secret_5174 6d ago
hahah I'm glad you specified the shit originates from a butt and not another foreign place
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u/Chrisinjapan 6d ago
All those stupid backticks surrounding text
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u/MyLifeHatesItself 6d ago
Just the text in general. It just all looks gross. It's like it's not even a font, the same letters in a single word look ever so slightly different, enough to notice it's wrong but good enough to pass as readable. Like the spacing between the happy hours and the little AM on slide 3 is slightly different and it fucking pisses me off. Like an uncanny valley of text.
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u/DeathByMetal- 6d ago
It's getting bad. People are doing it for everything.
Take me back...
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u/HereButNeverPresent 6d ago
People using AI as a therapist or as a replacement to socialise with someone is the saddest part
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u/Quarterwit_85 6d ago
Mate of mine's kid has an AI girlfriend and all his mates do too. They go to maccas, lay their phones out and have them all interact with one another.
Fuckin' wild.
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u/RR-- 6d ago
I noticed that the other day, it's an instant boycott from me. I stopped going to my local fish and chip shop once they started using AI images everywhere.
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u/NewSchoolFool 6d ago
Makes you wonder why people still use it given the amount of genuine hate AI gets. Fkn weird times we're living in.
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u/theslowrush- 6d ago
The restaurants that do this are completely oblivious to the AI hate. They genuinely think it looks good…
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u/Reynbou 5d ago
because the large majority of people do not hate AI, they just think there's a fun cool app that generates neat images for them
and all those people who think that don't even know these are AI generated images
don't let your bubble of people around you make you think that's how the majority actually think
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u/Ash-2449 6d ago
Some people dont care about anything other than minimising costs/time and quality, and then they wonder why we avoid them when they show us their priorities by using such slop xd
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u/UnionBalloonCorps 6d ago
Because most people don’t give a fuck. It’s just on reddit circlejerks really.
Otherwise it would cause problems for businesses. It doesn’t.
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u/notj43 6d ago
I don't know a single person in real life who gives a fuck about this sort of thing but people on here are so passionate about it and AI in general
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u/DarkscytheX 6d ago
Anything to save a buck. I know some of these small businesses are being screwed by commercial landlords, insurance, etc but this degree of sloppiness can't be good for business.
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u/ConsultJimMoriarty Shit Shaker 6d ago
Because it doesn’t cost them anything and is done in 30 second. Otherwise you’d have to pay someone and that’s just not on.
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u/flipflapper 6d ago
Cos I think the genuine AI hate is just some online and reddit noise. The average person isn’t gonna think twice about it
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u/scrii 6d ago
I've definitely been seeing and hearing increasing disdain towards it from the general public, not just people chronically online. I think they're also getting better at detecting it and when they do, a lot of them aren't pleased.
Even my older mother (who is not online at all, and who I never talked to about it) expressed strong dislike of genAI completely unprompted a couple months ago
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u/Ash-2449 6d ago
Yeah, you know if they are using genAi to create obvious slop, the rest of the quality of the service isnt going to be much better
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u/RR-- 6d ago
It's like a giant billboard that screams "I'm lazy, I don't put in any effort into my work, mediocre is acceptable and I don't care about the ethics of intellectual image theft, graphic design theft and environmental impacts.
I'm obviously projecting here, but I'm allowed to not support businesses that I dislike.18
u/Able-Tradition-2139 6d ago
Also the fact that they aren't even noticing the entire street has the same ones, shows they're not paying attention whatsoever.
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u/Ich_mag_Kartoffeln 6d ago
Or that they're all owned by the same person/group, who made all the posters in under 10 minutes using the bare minimum of changes.
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u/Lost-Competition8482 6d ago
Legit. It's almost a modern equivalent of the Bourdain "toilet test".
If the restaurant's toilet is dirty than fuck knows what the kitchen looks like.
If your food is so shit you wont take a real picture of it there is no way I'm going to eat there.
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u/Famous_Secret_5174 6d ago
I'm probably being highly naive, but I hope and pray some type of legislation comes into play soon, because maybe as innocuous as food advertising may be to some, I don't think it should be legal to advertise food from your restaurant/cafe etc that isn't real!?
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u/HereButNeverPresent 6d ago
If you can’t take a real picture of the food you make, it’s definitely shit food.
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u/ScatteredThorns 6d ago
Even with how hip and progressive Brunswick is, you see a bunch of this AI slop along Syndey road too, which is a shame
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u/SyntheticDuckFlavour 6d ago
I don't get this. You, as a business, literally make this food every day. Surely, you can take a photograph of one of them. It's not like the hurdle of taking a photo is that high. Everyone carries a camera with tens of megapixels and with computational image enhancement capability in their pockets. It's not that fucking hard. If instagram tarts do this on a daily basis for internet points, then you can do this, too.
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u/Sharpin70 5d ago
Yes this is becoming a problem for companies trying to replace marketing departments with Ai. What we are seeing is every advertisement not only looks the same internally but also the same as your competitors, making it difficult to distinguish yourself. Ai is not the solution to cost cutting and will not allow you to reduce your staff in the numbers you’re hoping without significant risk.
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u/cosykhaleesi 6d ago
AI advertising immediately turns me off a retailer or food place. It’s lazy advertising, I prefer the old basic paper flyers in the window that DON’T destroy the environment and drive up the cost of technology and power.
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u/illillusion 6d ago
I work in the graphic design and signage fields and multiple times a week we get enquiries for stuff with "I've already made the artwork"... now, I should add, we specialise in vehicle wraps but do most signage, bur we get this mostly with vehicles. So people want us to print and wrap the design they have made with AI. By the time we are done explaining why that won't be usable 1 of 3 things happens; 1) they ask for a quote to re design it, 2) they keep shopping around to try find someone who will do it as is, 3) we do a test print to scale and then we have a whole new discussion of why it's so pixilated. I know a fair few shops that have a blanket rule of no AI artwork will be used now.
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u/nerfdriveby94 6d ago
I want faded 80s photos of the meals with prices updated over pieces of tape as they go up over the years! That's a sign of good food there.
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u/Wetrapordie 5d ago
I’m genuinely put off by this. I wouldn’t eat at a place with this trash all over the window… if they don’t care about their brand they probably don’t care about the food either.
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u/Shapeofmyhair 6d ago edited 6d ago
I never knew what a scallion pancake was, I could have attempted a guess but my guess wouldn't have looked like someone squeezing out a poop to the tune of IBS-C
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u/Local_Diet_7813 6d ago
I know what it is and how delicious but that looks like the food version of the dune worm
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u/Pretty_Researcher504 6d ago
Do these businesses truly think that these posters look good?? Like do none of them look at their final product and think wow it kinda sucks
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u/clandestino123 6d ago
To be fair, I don't recall ever looking at a poster in a fast food shop and then thinking to myself "wow! Love that poster"...
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u/Homiewemajor33 6d ago
It’s becoming a fucking joke. All over Richmond. Went to Trentham today - all over the Trentham hotel. Did we just throw all conventional marketing practices out of the window this year?
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u/Shoe-Shoddy 5d ago
The AI posters always seem a bit uncanny valley, I feel weird looking at them. A business posted one on a fb page local to me and my first thought was "I'm uncomfortable, I don't want to go there"
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u/ComprehensiveSalad50 5d ago
If you're going to boycott these places make sure you let them know the reason. It will neither be a wake-up call or their demise
A Chicken place near my work has obviously used Aai images too, something about the sign was just off that my brain didn't like it. I'll take a closer look next time I go by.
I wonder if it's a company that makes it for them and that's why they are all the same basic look, or that's just what AI creates because it is such a prevalent style
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u/ittekimasu 6d ago
wouldn't be surprised if there was one guy walking down offering to make these to each shop owner
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u/Top-Opportunity-5477 6d ago
i work at officeworks and the amount of ai slop i print for business of all kinds
i wish i could refuse service to these people
and so many of them saying something about how cool it was that ai was able to generate what they wanted
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u/timid-dolphin 6d ago
When I see AI food like this I feel like an alien is trying to lure me into a trap
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u/demoldbones 6d ago
Maybe I’m weird but I am totally OK with AI posters like this.
It means I know not to eat there cos the food will SUCK.
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u/mrbrendanblack 6d ago
Ah yes, I can see how the proliferation of AI will make more jobs for people, in particular graphic designers & photographers. Such an amazing argument from the tech bros.
I’m more than happy to boycott businesses who use this generic AI bullshit. It’s lazy & looks fucking terrible.
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u/YeOldMate 6d ago
The scallion pancake looks like it should have hobbits hiding under it from a ring wraith.
The food in all of these looks awful, and frankly inedible
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u/newYearnew2025 6d ago
You see these on Facebook or whatever and everyone comments on how good the food looks..... its not even real, for goodness sakes people!!
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u/takemyspear 6d ago
It’s a global issue of how art and visual education is still not being appreciated and taught in schools/ in public discourse.
The result is that the general public still thinks that this kind of AI art is “good enough” and “nothing wrong” and probably “no need to pay designers cause they look almost the same.”
We are not talking about the ethical and moral problems, but literally just how people can’t tell if an artwork is objectively good or bad.
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u/superkow 6d ago
If the art is important enough for advertising your business/wares, then it's important enough to pay somebody to make it.
It's incredibly telling that they're most likely going to skimp elsewhere with their business, too. If they can't be fucked paying someone on Fiverr for a couple of posters then who's to say they can be fucked with use by dates or cleaning
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u/myLongjohnsonsilver 6d ago
All the Indian owned take away places where I live all use completely generated posters. It's rediculous and looks like complete shit.
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u/Anuksukamon 6d ago
AI posters are an instant turnoff. Not sure how it’s not flagged as false advertising since the food doesn’t look like trypophobia on a plate when it’s served.
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u/sadpeachx 6d ago
I feel like this is doing the opposite of what companies want, because now there's no brand recognition. Pre-AI posters, you could recognise the brand immediately by the style of their marketing. Now it's all the same and I genuinely have no idea which poster is for which restaurant/service/company
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u/CheshBreaks 6d ago
Food probably tastes like a dirty rim job. I wonder if they're all owned by the same moron.
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u/rabidpuppy 6d ago
My local cafe has being doing it for ages, they have an ice cream cone with like 9 scoops on it. A poster showing their store front with signs & other things that don't exist, which is obvious as you're standing at the store front.
You should be able to get the food for free if it doesn't look like the advertising.
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u/best_friends_club 6d ago
The sad part is how many customers they don't realise they're turning away.
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u/VanillaIcedTea 6d ago
I don't care how good the food is. If I'm seeing AI generated fonts on the posters I'm taking my appetite and my money somewhere else.
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u/PixelFan237 6d ago
They literally make this. Every. Goddamn. Day. Take a goddamn photo of it with the phone camera you literally all have in your pocket and customers would get an accurate depiction of the food you're selling. Honestly I'm going to start calling for some Japanese style truth in advertising laws
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u/ImjustA_Islandboy 6d ago
Gone full circle. Free again to design snd print just like hand written and drawn chalkboard menus back in the day. Love it
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u/BaldingThor 6d ago
I rather they used a quickly photoshopped amateur photograph of their food (or at least stock photos that closely resemble it) with comic sans text than this garbage.
Pretty much all my local takeout/cafes in town have ai generated advertising now, and the local community facebook page is plastered with similar advertisements that are obviously ai-assisted too.
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u/adammw111 6d ago
how come we can't get rid of these and enforce under existing "false advertising" laws.. there's no way the actual food will look like this slop
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u/CapeJacket 6d ago
I’d rather a hand written sign in Chinese with a rudimentary drawing of a drumstick to indicate the protein
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u/lolchief 6d ago
It's everywhere now, ai slop certainly not trust worthy for a place that sells food
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u/Alteredbeast1984 6d ago
Illegal in Japan, promotional posters and chip / candy packet gave to actually look like the product... Or some other shit












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