8 ms·

AI poster wins Ohio State Fair contest

142 points by AlexAplin 2mo ago

cnobody 2mo ago
That would be enough for me to skip the fair. Money talks; AI in the arts needs to walk.
RugnirViking 2mo ago
extremely noticeably so, too. A shame that the judges arent equipped to notice this sort of thing: the winning entry is pretty clearly the sort of result you get with a first naive attempt of "make a poster" with no style guidelines at all.
- 20wenty 2mo ago
  It is very noticeable. Funny how it jumps right out when you've seen AI slop often enough. #5 is good and looks "real", whatever that means any more.
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    #5 was real winner of those shown. Rest weren’t as captivating as the sloppy grand prize poster.
- turzmo 2mo ago
  There are two number "1" pigs, and two of them have malformed tails. Sloppy even for slop!
  - DanHulton 2mo ago
    Not just malformed, they have MULTIPLE malformed tails!
- Barbing 2mo ago
  Nice the judges aren’t big users of image generators though? (Neutral they don’t read HN/Ars/etc. where they’d see examples as non-users.)
  - RugnirViking 2mo ago
    I considered writing some more about this but couldn't quite put it into words. Its amazing from my own position as someone deep in technology and the like that there are people so remote that they couldn't recognize this (and seemingly didn't consider this as a possibility) that are out there living life. I need to get off the internet more.
annzabelle 2mo ago
My workplace did a sweepstakes for the world cup and there were bonus prizes for decorating your desk. All three winners had simply uploaded photos of their desks to an AI image generator and had it add flags etc to decorate and submitted that. One person used AI to make it look like he was wearing the jersey of his assigned team. The person running the contest wrote up something about how impressed she was with the creative use of AI. The whole thing makes me sad - wouldn't the idea of this sort of thing be to scrounge up flags of obscure countries or make them out of paper and do a bit of arts and crafts to decorate your desk for the month? Instead people were just throwing 50 words into an AI system a few times and getting out a photo to submit.
- c0rruptbytes 2mo ago
  i think over time, the bar will rise, you’d have to imagine how low quality the submissions prior to AI would’ve been since most people aren’t that good at decorating nor have the time i think as the novelty wears off on the average person, it’ll probably be seen akin to stick figure drawings in the future
  - morkalork 2mo ago
    So it will be gauche for a while then when today's kids grow up, there will inevitably be AI-slop-nostalgia-core aesthetic the same way people now have a place in their hearts for shitty photoshops and ms-paint drawings?
- _kulang 2mo ago
  For whatever reason, the photo is point. People are only doing it for the photo and only doing the photo for the competition. I agree that we lost something, I just also think a majority of people don’t know what’s missing: they just put effort to make the photo, rather than to make the desk
  - RugnirViking 2mo ago
    I learned this lesson as a child, entering a painting competition handily to someone whose work was (in my opinion) not very good, but they had a much nicer camera, lighting, and a pleasant background. Though its often much, much more effort to have judges who are also experts in the relevant field and give them the time to inspect in person the things to be judged. I don't think competitions will ever escape this "studying for the test" aspect fully. Its less actively harmful at least than the worst behaviors ive heard of (sabotage etc) for a more programming related example, the sheer number of hackathons ive entered over the years where the winners had a relevant idea related to something in the news recently, and did basically nothing but a nonfunctional ui mockup of a crud app and won over teams that tried to make actually functional/fun things.
varenc 2mo ago
The poster: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Grand_Champion_Entry_-_Christin_Billips.png&cb=973a00a9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... Note the pigs are numbered 1, 2, 1. And the gondola with a floating cable and another that terminates at a tent top.
- AndrewKemendo 2mo ago
  It is full of obvious AIgen artifacts What’s more interesting is that whomever the judges were didn’t seem to notice or care. It was only until afterward were they upset
  - userbinator 2mo ago
    What’s more interesting is that whomever the judges were didn’t seem to notice or care. The implication is that all the other entries were even worse.
    - monk_grilla 2mo ago
      Did you look at the other four posters in the top five? They were all way better imho.
      - userbinator 2mo ago
        I'm saying that's what the judges thought, but either way, I wasn't a judge.
  - voakbasda 2mo ago
    And probably only after members of the public vocally complained.
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  or just look at the faceless and weirdly misshapen 'people' in the crowd. Genuinely who was judging this? Also I'm pretty sure Ohio isn't 250 years old, this is just crazy
altcognito 2mo ago
Maybe they were looking to generate publicity. There's no way they picked those over the 4th and 5th place.
ElProlactin 2mo ago
What's crazy is that the winning poster looks like one-shot AI output and probably was given the mistakes in it.
- smallerize 2mo ago
  That stood out to me too. This could have been a lot better with just a little actual work.
embedding-shape 2mo ago
I think this is the actual image: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Grand_Champion_Entry_-_Christin_Billips.png&cb=973a00a9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... Notably, the zipline is all wacky, and two piggies are #1, probably more things I didn't notice at a skim? I guess they didn't explicitly forbid AI, and it wasn't noticed until after the winner was selected, and now you can't "roll back"? It seems this was later added to the page: > [...] we recognize that the use of AI has changed greatly over the last few years in ways we didn’t anticipate, and will be reevaluating the rules and processes for 2027, which will include prohibiting the use of AI [...] July 7 2026 mirror of the page without that updated notice: https://web.archive.org/web/20260707145158/https://www.ohiostatefair.com/p/get-involved/arts/poster-contest https://web.archive.org/web/20260707145158/https://www.ohios...
- kazinator 2mo ago
  > they didn't explicitly forbid AI Yes they did; the contestants must be at least 18 years old and residents of Ohio. AI is neither. Would it be within contest rules if an 19-year-old resident of Ohio served as an artistic director, giving suggestions to a 12-year-old from Kentucky who does the actual work?
  - ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
    No they didn’t—from TFA: When the poster contest was originally formed in 2024, the use of AI was permitted if explained as a part of the application process. Since current US legal decisions indicate that genAI works are not copyrightable, this is troublesome for any organization that wants exclusive licensing for publicity. The State Fair would expect to incorporate their art winners into marketing, posters, and expect to strike down derivative works and other commercial uses. Not to mention that any Ai-entrant piece could be duplicated by any other entrant.
    - vkou 2mo ago
      Whether is not copyrightable is not relevant to this. The parent poster's point is just as salient. The creator, not the sumbitter needs to meet the criteria in question. A clanker isn't a resident of Ohio.
Nition 2mo ago
The other four top entries are all obvious human efforts as well. Must be annoying for them to lose to a blatant AI entry.
- dwaltrip 2mo ago
  #2 looks a little AI to me. I think #3 was maybe the best entry.
- no-name-here 2mo ago
  > The other four top entries are all obvious human efforts Creator of 2nd place said they used AI but then used photoshop etc for manual composition/paint over. https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/s/cJQqjC7C7q https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/s/cJQqjC7C7q
  - Nition 2mo ago
    Ah, #2 looked to me like they had done some manual Photoshopping on real photos. Sounds like it was more like manual Photoshopping on AI images. I suppose it's funny then that the winner is fully AI, second place is partial AI, and fully human creations are the losers.
donkey_brains 2mo ago
[flagged]
internet2000 2mo ago
People don't care and will continue not to care. I don't say that lamenting or with resignation. It's just a fact that we will need to accept. Think of all the poor typography around you. If you have a critical eye and care you can spot all sorts of bad choices: That's a preview of the future. AI-generated disposable art (posters, billboards, menus etc) that is orthogonal to the actual thing being sold will continue being the norm.
- breezybottom 2mo ago
  Enough people cared that they decided to ban AI submissions in the future. Did you even click the link before commenting?
- Barbing 2mo ago
  People don’t care means if every poster were labeled “AI generated” with a black banner at the bottom, people wouldn’t care. Most can’t _recognize_ GPT & Gemini posters. Good point on preview of feature.
  - krackers 2mo ago
    The nature of preference-ranking in LLM post training means that "slop" is something that the average person actually prefers. Maybe there's an argument that it's not intentional but just emerges as a form of reward-hacking (e.g. people like a little bit of slop or sycophancy but the model dials it to 11) but I imagine if the end result wasn't rewarded ultimately that would get penalized. The fact that a clearly sloptacular image won first place seems to corroborate that indeed people do like it. Until people's tastes change and they learn to recognize and immunize themselves against slop, the models will continue to generate it.
    - internet2000 2mo ago
      A parallel I like to draw is Thomas Kinkade and HDR photography. This style has always been popular, even pre-AI.
urams 2mo ago
Nikki Smetters got screwed. Clearly the best, imo.
- superhuzza 2mo ago
  Totally agree, it was a simple bold design that looks to done by hand. What a low bar we are moving to. On a positive note, I think I found her artistic portfolio online and it's absolutely beautiful. She can rest easy knowing she has 1000x the talent of the AI slop winner.
- ogou 2mo ago
  Yes. A much better poster. Less busy, reads quickly. Funny and relevant. Here is her website: https://nikkismetters.com/ https://nikkismetters.com/
Animats 2mo ago
Did they publish the prompt? It looks AI-generated. All that detail. Short words in decorative fonts. AI doesn't know what "Midway" means in a fair context.
dawnerd 2mo ago
People were submitting ai photos last year in the local fair for physical photography. Fairs really need to re think how they do these awards like requiring the photo negative to be submitted or the actual digital art files or something.
NDlurker 2mo ago
I just drove through rural Washington and Idaho and saw similar style flyers on all the boards at grocery stores and local businesses. Saw some AI image stickers for sale at an espresso stand in Idaho. USA 250 AI stuff all over northern Idaho. AI flags. Funny stuff. Love it
- Barbing 2mo ago
  New storefronts with AI logos, food with AI caricatures of the chef, small taxi companies with GPT’s handiwork wrapped right over the doors…
  - NDlurker 2mo ago
    The rural people have really embraced AI as a replacement for clipart and local semi-professional artists
1saadcodes 2mo ago
This is just sad
theturtletalks 2mo ago
There is a real lag between people who can leverage AI vs those who can't. People who code using AI have a real advantage of using AI in different contexts because they understand how powerful it is. It's very similar to when the internet got big and those who knew how to use it had a significant advantage over those who didn't. AI hasn't really diffused to mass audience yet, at least not to the point of using it to the extent coders do like making custom and even one-off apps, using CC or Codex instead of ChatGPT directly since giving it terminal access makes in 100x more powerful than the web interface.
- apical_dendrite 2mo ago
  It's really important to define what "people who can leverage AI" means. I've found that using AI judiciously with close human supervision provides an advantage, but using the latest models with the latest harnesses can look like it's giving you a huge advantage superficially while actually costing you more time in the long run.
  - theturtletalks 2mo ago
    That's hard to define, but I measure it as how quickly people reach for AI for complex, tedious tasks. Let's say you're doing market research for a car to buy. A person who doesn't use AI, might just ask ChatGPT, but many websites block searches like that now. Someone who uses CC or Codex could ask it and it will use curl to get the live data and make a HTML you can browse. Another is someone making a workout plan or a meal plan. Coders will ask AI to make a plan and add it to their calendar using GOG Cli. It's a fundamental shift in thinking and that hasn't diffused to the mass public yet. But just like the internet, it will get to them eventually. In the mean time, those who leverage AI like that will have an advantage.
  - CuriouslyC 2mo ago
    If you're already trending towards 10x developer status in a niche area of programming, sure, AI will secretly make you less productive (in that niche) while making you feel like you're going faster, for a little while. For everyone and every other situation, hard disagree.
jryan49 2mo ago
It's sad because the ai one is at least one of the worse of the set...
wxw 2mo ago
I quite like the 4th and 5th place posters. 4th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Fourth_Place_-_Lindsay_Boyd_(2026).png&cb=1b1aef66 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... 5th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Fifth_Place_-_Nikki_Smetters_(2026).png&cb=73e7e1c9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i...
- laaman02 2mo ago
  Those look so much better. I’m not even saying those are definitely hand crafted but they certainly don’t have the “slop” aesthetic.
- jere 2mo ago
  They look much better. I don't know if it's just my exposure to AI images but the first place one looks so obviously like AI slop.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  This is where the AI submissions get really sad. If everyone was competing based on their AI submissions then I wouldn’t care. It can be fun to have a slop-off where everyone competes to see what they can coax out of the LLM. When a contest is designed to get people to compete with each other, it’s just sad when the win goes to someone who did the least amount of work. In this case, the result isn’t even good. If the people judging weren’t familiar with AI they probably mistook the details and textures as evidence of high effort and skill input. If you didn’t know better about AI, some of the quirks like the messed up lines might look like someone’s awkward attempts at a unique artistic style.
- philsquared_ 2mo ago
  I disagree... while those are definitely better art-wise, they are not better marketing-wise. I imagine this is why the ai one won because the others do nothing to actually sell the fair.
  - archagon 2mo ago
    No fucking way, that rooster is awesome. The winner makes me want to avoid the slopfair at all costs.
petilon 2mo ago
In the 1990s there was a backlash against Photoshop. Traditional artists and designers viewed Photoshop as "cheating," "not real art," and a threat to hand-made craft. This story [1] from 17 years ago called for a ban on airbrushed photos. Today use of Photoshop and airbrushing is standard practice, and it is expected. In time we will come to accept AI art too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/19/liberal-democrats-airbrush-ban https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/19/liberal-dem...
- dqv 2mo ago
  Yes, just like we accepted steroids in sports.
  - sodapopcan 2mo ago
    Wish I'd thought of this one, lol.
- sodapopcan 2mo ago
  I'm hoping something of the opposite happens. I still see airbrushing, along with things like music quantization, auto-tune (and manual tuning), "perfect" design, etc etc, as hugely problematic (well, airbrushing is the worst with tangible social harms among the things I listed there). All of these things are possible to use artfully, but that they've become the norm is actually pretty gross, and many people haven't so much accepted them as they have been beaten into submission to stop complaining about them. I think this is really lost on anyone making the argument that "we've seen this before and everyone will just succumb." What I've noticed is how much "booster" types say that "This is unlike anything that has ever happened before" and yet somehow they think the general acceptance story is going to play out "like it always does." I'm getting into "vibes" territory here because I have no data, but the AI-backlash does feel much stronger than before. I feels like there are a lot more non-artists getting not-so-trivially pissed off about this bullshit. We'll see, I guess.
game_the0ry 2mo ago
Taste is not a moat, apparently.
r_lee 2mo ago
personally it's really interesting to see how older people just don't understand AI images, they seemingly can't spot it or understand what it is and how it all just looks like slop I'm not trying to be ignorant but I just can't imagine how it'd be in their shoes, I can't understand how AI slop still just works so many of these people, like it's been 3 years now, how is it possible that you'd be impressed or satisfied by this?
- crooked-v 2mo ago
  What baffles me isn't even the AI part, it's that the judges showed absolutely no taste and just picked the thing with the most pointless pixel-filling detail in it.
lvspiff 2mo ago
Art is in the eye of the beholder and If someone likes something AI generated and it still came from someone who had the idea did it not? What if the artist is blind or disabled? AI is now giving them a chance to express themselves as they otherwise might not have been able to.
bashtoni 2mo ago
I think the biggest issue here is that the judges clearly have no taste.
luciana1u 2mo ago
[flagged]
firefoxd 2mo ago
I would say the AI post doesn't look bad. But I also think it defeats the purpose of the competition. The goal was to make something for your community, and the process and effort shows your dedication to said community. Imagine everyone just prompts the same AI and and the judge uses the same AI to judge them all. Why make a competition in the first place? Just prompt and create the damn poster and leave the whole community thing behind.
- whimsicalism 2mo ago
  I actively think the AI poster looks bad and RLHF reveals the poor taste of the general public.
tracerbulletx 2mo ago
I would prefer to celebrate human art at a fair. Same as I still watch humans play chess and sport. Kind of defeats the spirit of having a contest.
dw_arthur 2mo ago
I have a feeling the winner didn't think they were going to win or maybe even submitted the poster as a joke.
9p 2mo ago
not sure what everyone's up in arms about. lgtm :^)
furyofantares 2mo ago
Looks like gpt-image-1 to me, from the piss filter to some of the mistakes. I mean, image-2 or nano banana also still would have been dogshit. But I find it curious that image-1 was used (if I'm correct), I guess it means it was generated over 2 months ago, or via API, since afaik it hasn't been available in chatgpt since 2 came out (I could also be wrong here I suppose.)
duxup 2mo ago
The Minnesota State Fair did a new poster every year, they picked local artists. They're great: https://www.mnstatefair.org/exhibits/art-and-garden/commemorative-art/gallery https://www.mnstatefair.org/exhibits/art-and-garden/commemor... Sadly they stopped doing them starting last year I believe :(
user00005 2mo ago
I create visual graphics for a living. I know my limits and stay in my lane. I wish AI would do the same because its style is vomit inducing. I like entry number 3 and number 5. Five has a great punch of color it just feels like the 'frame' needed a little more finish work.
magnetowasright 2mo ago
The fact that it's obviously AI sucks, but the fact that it also sucks on its own merits is extra frustrating to me. Choosing the jam-packed absolute nonsense with no attention to detail to the point of distraction, AI or not, over the other entries is ...bad. If someone had drawn this with pigs numbered 1, 2, and 1, or the crappy banners and typography, or the nonsense gondola lines, it'd still be a bad poster. I hate the AI cow in the runner up poster but it's at least a little more coherent a poster overall. Who the hell was judging this and by what criteria? I wonder what their 2027 entries are going to look like; I wouldn't be surprised if this disincentivised prospective entrants. Why bother submitting if something as lazy and poorly done (and, of course, obviously AI) as that wins?
djnendbcb 2mo ago
I don't think the poster is the problem. Sure it's awful, but why was it chosen as winner despite being obvious slop?
xtiansimon 2mo ago
Aesthetically it’s visually dense. A cornucopia of themes. Just the sort of thing a committee likes to pick. Ban committee juried art contests.
ChoGGi 2mo ago
I prefer #3, 1/2 just went with flag colors, and 3 doesn't look like AI slop.
mingus88 2mo ago
The fact that an AI work was selected says more about the judges than anything else I’m not an AI hater; I use it every day now at work. But the output is obviously not human expression. You can tell. That’s fine for what I use it for. For judges of artistic works to choose AI over other, actual creative works really devalues the judges. It tells me they don’t care if it’s good as long as it hits the expected notes. You can phone it in, whatever. Does it look the part? Great. An AI gave them an image composed of all the things they were looking for: check. Really embarrassing on the side of the judges. They shouldn’t be allowed to judge works of art.
nickthegreek 2mo ago
Winner won $1,0000 and I think that is where the real rub is.

142 points by AlexAplin 2mo ago

That would be enough for me to skip the fair. Money talks; AI in the arts needs to walk.

extremely noticeably so, too. A shame that the judges arent equipped to notice this sort of thing: the winning entry is pretty clearly the sort of result you get with a first naive attempt of "make a poster" with no style guidelines at all.

20wenty 2mo ago
It is very noticeable. Funny how it jumps right out when you've seen AI slop often enough. #5 is good and looks "real", whatever that means any more.
- Barbing 2mo ago
  #5 was real winner of those shown. Rest weren’t as captivating as the sloppy grand prize poster.
turzmo 2mo ago
There are two number "1" pigs, and two of them have malformed tails. Sloppy even for slop!
- DanHulton 2mo ago
  Not just malformed, they have MULTIPLE malformed tails!
Barbing 2mo ago
Nice the judges aren’t big users of image generators though? (Neutral they don’t read HN/Ars/etc. where they’d see examples as non-users.)
- RugnirViking 2mo ago
  I considered writing some more about this but couldn't quite put it into words. Its amazing from my own position as someone deep in technology and the like that there are people so remote that they couldn't recognize this (and seemingly didn't consider this as a possibility) that are out there living life. I need to get off the internet more.

annzabelle 2mo ago

My workplace did a sweepstakes for the world cup and there were bonus prizes for decorating your desk. All three winners had simply uploaded photos of their desks to an AI image generator and had it add flags etc to decorate and submitted that. One person used AI to make it look like he was wearing the jersey of his assigned team. The person running the contest wrote up something about how impressed she was with the creative use of AI. The whole thing makes me sad - wouldn't the idea of this sort of thing be to scrounge up flags of obscure countries or make them out of paper and do a bit of arts and crafts to decorate your desk for the month? Instead people were just throwing 50 words into an AI system a few times and getting out a photo to submit.

c0rruptbytes 2mo ago
i think over time, the bar will rise, you’d have to imagine how low quality the submissions prior to AI would’ve been since most people aren’t that good at decorating nor have the time i think as the novelty wears off on the average person, it’ll probably be seen akin to stick figure drawings in the future
- morkalork 2mo ago
  So it will be gauche for a while then when today's kids grow up, there will inevitably be AI-slop-nostalgia-core aesthetic the same way people now have a place in their hearts for shitty photoshops and ms-paint drawings?
_kulang 2mo ago
For whatever reason, the photo is point. People are only doing it for the photo and only doing the photo for the competition. I agree that we lost something, I just also think a majority of people don’t know what’s missing: they just put effort to make the photo, rather than to make the desk
- RugnirViking 2mo ago
  I learned this lesson as a child, entering a painting competition handily to someone whose work was (in my opinion) not very good, but they had a much nicer camera, lighting, and a pleasant background. Though its often much, much more effort to have judges who are also experts in the relevant field and give them the time to inspect in person the things to be judged. I don't think competitions will ever escape this "studying for the test" aspect fully. Its less actively harmful at least than the worst behaviors ive heard of (sabotage etc) for a more programming related example, the sheer number of hackathons ive entered over the years where the winners had a relevant idea related to something in the news recently, and did basically nothing but a nonfunctional ui mockup of a crud app and won over teams that tried to make actually functional/fun things.

varenc 2mo ago

The poster: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Grand_Champion_Entry_-_Christin_Billips.png&cb=973a00a9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... Note the pigs are numbered 1, 2, 1. And the gondola with a floating cable and another that terminates at a tent top.

AndrewKemendo 2mo ago
It is full of obvious AIgen artifacts What’s more interesting is that whomever the judges were didn’t seem to notice or care. It was only until afterward were they upset
- userbinator 2mo ago
  What’s more interesting is that whomever the judges were didn’t seem to notice or care. The implication is that all the other entries were even worse.
  - monk_grilla 2mo ago
    Did you look at the other four posters in the top five? They were all way better imho.
    - userbinator 2mo ago
      I'm saying that's what the judges thought, but either way, I wasn't a judge.
- voakbasda 2mo ago
  And probably only after members of the public vocally complained.
Barrin92 2mo ago
or just look at the faceless and weirdly misshapen 'people' in the crowd. Genuinely who was judging this? Also I'm pretty sure Ohio isn't 250 years old, this is just crazy

altcognito 2mo ago

Maybe they were looking to generate publicity. There's no way they picked those over the 4th and 5th place.

ElProlactin 2mo ago

What's crazy is that the winning poster looks like one-shot AI output and probably was given the mistakes in it.

smallerize 2mo ago
That stood out to me too. This could have been a lot better with just a little actual work.

embedding-shape 2mo ago

I think this is the actual image: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Grand_Champion_Entry_-_Christin_Billips.png&cb=973a00a9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... Notably, the zipline is all wacky, and two piggies are #1, probably more things I didn't notice at a skim? I guess they didn't explicitly forbid AI, and it wasn't noticed until after the winner was selected, and now you can't "roll back"? It seems this was later added to the page: > [...] we recognize that the use of AI has changed greatly over the last few years in ways we didn’t anticipate, and will be reevaluating the rules and processes for 2027, which will include prohibiting the use of AI [...] July 7 2026 mirror of the page without that updated notice: https://web.archive.org/web/20260707145158/https://www.ohiostatefair.com/p/get-involved/arts/poster-contest https://web.archive.org/web/20260707145158/https://www.ohios...

kazinator 2mo ago
> they didn't explicitly forbid AI Yes they did; the contestants must be at least 18 years old and residents of Ohio. AI is neither. Would it be within contest rules if an 19-year-old resident of Ohio served as an artistic director, giving suggestions to a 12-year-old from Kentucky who does the actual work?
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  No they didn’t—from TFA: When the poster contest was originally formed in 2024, the use of AI was permitted if explained as a part of the application process. Since current US legal decisions indicate that genAI works are not copyrightable, this is troublesome for any organization that wants exclusive licensing for publicity. The State Fair would expect to incorporate their art winners into marketing, posters, and expect to strike down derivative works and other commercial uses. Not to mention that any Ai-entrant piece could be duplicated by any other entrant.
  - vkou 2mo ago
    Whether is not copyrightable is not relevant to this. The parent poster's point is just as salient. The creator, not the sumbitter needs to meet the criteria in question. A clanker isn't a resident of Ohio.

Nition 2mo ago

The other four top entries are all obvious human efforts as well. Must be annoying for them to lose to a blatant AI entry.

dwaltrip 2mo ago
#2 looks a little AI to me. I think #3 was maybe the best entry.
no-name-here 2mo ago
> The other four top entries are all obvious human efforts Creator of 2nd place said they used AI but then used photoshop etc for manual composition/paint over. https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/s/cJQqjC7C7q https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/s/cJQqjC7C7q
- Nition 2mo ago
  Ah, #2 looked to me like they had done some manual Photoshopping on real photos. Sounds like it was more like manual Photoshopping on AI images. I suppose it's funny then that the winner is fully AI, second place is partial AI, and fully human creations are the losers.

donkey_brains 2mo ago

[flagged]

internet2000 2mo ago

People don't care and will continue not to care. I don't say that lamenting or with resignation. It's just a fact that we will need to accept. Think of all the poor typography around you. If you have a critical eye and care you can spot all sorts of bad choices: That's a preview of the future. AI-generated disposable art (posters, billboards, menus etc) that is orthogonal to the actual thing being sold will continue being the norm.

breezybottom 2mo ago
Enough people cared that they decided to ban AI submissions in the future. Did you even click the link before commenting?
Barbing 2mo ago
People don’t care means if every poster were labeled “AI generated” with a black banner at the bottom, people wouldn’t care. Most can’t _recognize_ GPT & Gemini posters. Good point on preview of feature.
- krackers 2mo ago
  The nature of preference-ranking in LLM post training means that "slop" is something that the average person actually prefers. Maybe there's an argument that it's not intentional but just emerges as a form of reward-hacking (e.g. people like a little bit of slop or sycophancy but the model dials it to 11) but I imagine if the end result wasn't rewarded ultimately that would get penalized. The fact that a clearly sloptacular image won first place seems to corroborate that indeed people do like it. Until people's tastes change and they learn to recognize and immunize themselves against slop, the models will continue to generate it.
  - internet2000 2mo ago
    A parallel I like to draw is Thomas Kinkade and HDR photography. This style has always been popular, even pre-AI.

urams 2mo ago

Nikki Smetters got screwed. Clearly the best, imo.

superhuzza 2mo ago
Totally agree, it was a simple bold design that looks to done by hand. What a low bar we are moving to. On a positive note, I think I found her artistic portfolio online and it's absolutely beautiful. She can rest easy knowing she has 1000x the talent of the AI slop winner.
ogou 2mo ago
Yes. A much better poster. Less busy, reads quickly. Funny and relevant. Here is her website: https://nikkismetters.com/ https://nikkismetters.com/

Animats 2mo ago

Did they publish the prompt? It looks AI-generated. All that detail. Short words in decorative fonts. AI doesn't know what "Midway" means in a fair context.

dawnerd 2mo ago

People were submitting ai photos last year in the local fair for physical photography. Fairs really need to re think how they do these awards like requiring the photo negative to be submitted or the actual digital art files or something.

NDlurker 2mo ago

I just drove through rural Washington and Idaho and saw similar style flyers on all the boards at grocery stores and local businesses. Saw some AI image stickers for sale at an espresso stand in Idaho. USA 250 AI stuff all over northern Idaho. AI flags. Funny stuff. Love it

Barbing 2mo ago
New storefronts with AI logos, food with AI caricatures of the chef, small taxi companies with GPT’s handiwork wrapped right over the doors…
- NDlurker 2mo ago
  The rural people have really embraced AI as a replacement for clipart and local semi-professional artists

1saadcodes 2mo ago

This is just sad

theturtletalks 2mo ago

There is a real lag between people who can leverage AI vs those who can't. People who code using AI have a real advantage of using AI in different contexts because they understand how powerful it is. It's very similar to when the internet got big and those who knew how to use it had a significant advantage over those who didn't. AI hasn't really diffused to mass audience yet, at least not to the point of using it to the extent coders do like making custom and even one-off apps, using CC or Codex instead of ChatGPT directly since giving it terminal access makes in 100x more powerful than the web interface.

apical_dendrite 2mo ago
It's really important to define what "people who can leverage AI" means. I've found that using AI judiciously with close human supervision provides an advantage, but using the latest models with the latest harnesses can look like it's giving you a huge advantage superficially while actually costing you more time in the long run.
- theturtletalks 2mo ago
  That's hard to define, but I measure it as how quickly people reach for AI for complex, tedious tasks. Let's say you're doing market research for a car to buy. A person who doesn't use AI, might just ask ChatGPT, but many websites block searches like that now. Someone who uses CC or Codex could ask it and it will use curl to get the live data and make a HTML you can browse. Another is someone making a workout plan or a meal plan. Coders will ask AI to make a plan and add it to their calendar using GOG Cli. It's a fundamental shift in thinking and that hasn't diffused to the mass public yet. But just like the internet, it will get to them eventually. In the mean time, those who leverage AI like that will have an advantage.
- CuriouslyC 2mo ago
  If you're already trending towards 10x developer status in a niche area of programming, sure, AI will secretly make you less productive (in that niche) while making you feel like you're going faster, for a little while. For everyone and every other situation, hard disagree.

jryan49 2mo ago

It's sad because the ai one is at least one of the worse of the set...

wxw 2mo ago

I quite like the 4th and 5th place posters. 4th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Fourth_Place_-_Lindsay_Boyd_(2026).png&cb=1b1aef66 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i... 5th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i=Fifth_Place_-_Nikki_Smetters_(2026).png&cb=73e7e1c9 https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i...

laaman02 2mo ago
Those look so much better. I’m not even saying those are definitely hand crafted but they certainly don’t have the “slop” aesthetic.
jere 2mo ago
They look much better. I don't know if it's just my exposure to AI images but the first place one looks so obviously like AI slop.
Aurornis 2mo ago
This is where the AI submissions get really sad. If everyone was competing based on their AI submissions then I wouldn’t care. It can be fun to have a slop-off where everyone competes to see what they can coax out of the LLM. When a contest is designed to get people to compete with each other, it’s just sad when the win goes to someone who did the least amount of work. In this case, the result isn’t even good. If the people judging weren’t familiar with AI they probably mistook the details and textures as evidence of high effort and skill input. If you didn’t know better about AI, some of the quirks like the messed up lines might look like someone’s awkward attempts at a unique artistic style.
philsquared_ 2mo ago
I disagree... while those are definitely better art-wise, they are not better marketing-wise. I imagine this is why the ai one won because the others do nothing to actually sell the fair.
- archagon 2mo ago
  No fucking way, that rooster is awesome. The winner makes me want to avoid the slopfair at all costs.

petilon 2mo ago

In the 1990s there was a backlash against Photoshop. Traditional artists and designers viewed Photoshop as "cheating," "not real art," and a threat to hand-made craft. This story [1] from 17 years ago called for a ban on airbrushed photos. Today use of Photoshop and airbrushing is standard practice, and it is expected. In time we will come to accept AI art too. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/19/liberal-democrats-airbrush-ban https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/19/liberal-dem...

dqv 2mo ago
Yes, just like we accepted steroids in sports.
- sodapopcan 2mo ago
  Wish I'd thought of this one, lol.
sodapopcan 2mo ago
I'm hoping something of the opposite happens. I still see airbrushing, along with things like music quantization, auto-tune (and manual tuning), "perfect" design, etc etc, as hugely problematic (well, airbrushing is the worst with tangible social harms among the things I listed there). All of these things are possible to use artfully, but that they've become the norm is actually pretty gross, and many people haven't so much accepted them as they have been beaten into submission to stop complaining about them. I think this is really lost on anyone making the argument that "we've seen this before and everyone will just succumb." What I've noticed is how much "booster" types say that "This is unlike anything that has ever happened before" and yet somehow they think the general acceptance story is going to play out "like it always does." I'm getting into "vibes" territory here because I have no data, but the AI-backlash does feel much stronger than before. I feels like there are a lot more non-artists getting not-so-trivially pissed off about this bullshit. We'll see, I guess.

game_the0ry 2mo ago

Taste is not a moat, apparently.

r_lee 2mo ago

personally it's really interesting to see how older people just don't understand AI images, they seemingly can't spot it or understand what it is and how it all just looks like slop I'm not trying to be ignorant but I just can't imagine how it'd be in their shoes, I can't understand how AI slop still just works so many of these people, like it's been 3 years now, how is it possible that you'd be impressed or satisfied by this?

crooked-v 2mo ago
What baffles me isn't even the AI part, it's that the judges showed absolutely no taste and just picked the thing with the most pointless pixel-filling detail in it.

lvspiff 2mo ago

Art is in the eye of the beholder and If someone likes something AI generated and it still came from someone who had the idea did it not? What if the artist is blind or disabled? AI is now giving them a chance to express themselves as they otherwise might not have been able to.

bashtoni 2mo ago

I think the biggest issue here is that the judges clearly have no taste.

luciana1u 2mo ago

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firefoxd 2mo ago

I would say the AI post doesn't look bad. But I also think it defeats the purpose of the competition. The goal was to make something for your community, and the process and effort shows your dedication to said community. Imagine everyone just prompts the same AI and and the judge uses the same AI to judge them all. Why make a competition in the first place? Just prompt and create the damn poster and leave the whole community thing behind.

whimsicalism 2mo ago
I actively think the AI poster looks bad and RLHF reveals the poor taste of the general public.

tracerbulletx 2mo ago

I would prefer to celebrate human art at a fair. Same as I still watch humans play chess and sport. Kind of defeats the spirit of having a contest.

dw_arthur 2mo ago

I have a feeling the winner didn't think they were going to win or maybe even submitted the poster as a joke.

9p 2mo ago

not sure what everyone's up in arms about. lgtm :^)

furyofantares 2mo ago

Looks like gpt-image-1 to me, from the piss filter to some of the mistakes. I mean, image-2 or nano banana also still would have been dogshit. But I find it curious that image-1 was used (if I'm correct), I guess it means it was generated over 2 months ago, or via API, since afaik it hasn't been available in chatgpt since 2 came out (I could also be wrong here I suppose.)

duxup 2mo ago

The Minnesota State Fair did a new poster every year, they picked local artists. They're great: https://www.mnstatefair.org/exhibits/art-and-garden/commemorative-art/gallery https://www.mnstatefair.org/exhibits/art-and-garden/commemor... Sadly they stopped doing them starting last year I believe :(

user00005 2mo ago

I create visual graphics for a living. I know my limits and stay in my lane. I wish AI would do the same because its style is vomit inducing. I like entry number 3 and number 5. Five has a great punch of color it just feels like the 'frame' needed a little more finish work.

magnetowasright 2mo ago

The fact that it's obviously AI sucks, but the fact that it also sucks on its own merits is extra frustrating to me. Choosing the jam-packed absolute nonsense with no attention to detail to the point of distraction, AI or not, over the other entries is ...bad. If someone had drawn this with pigs numbered 1, 2, and 1, or the crappy banners and typography, or the nonsense gondola lines, it'd still be a bad poster. I hate the AI cow in the runner up poster but it's at least a little more coherent a poster overall. Who the hell was judging this and by what criteria? I wonder what their 2027 entries are going to look like; I wouldn't be surprised if this disincentivised prospective entrants. Why bother submitting if something as lazy and poorly done (and, of course, obviously AI) as that wins?

djnendbcb 2mo ago

I don't think the poster is the problem. Sure it's awful, but why was it chosen as winner despite being obvious slop?

xtiansimon 2mo ago

Aesthetically it’s visually dense. A cornucopia of themes. Just the sort of thing a committee likes to pick. Ban committee juried art contests.

ChoGGi 2mo ago

I prefer #3, 1/2 just went with flag colors, and 3 doesn't look like AI slop.

mingus88 2mo ago

The fact that an AI work was selected says more about the judges than anything else I’m not an AI hater; I use it every day now at work. But the output is obviously not human expression. You can tell. That’s fine for what I use it for. For judges of artistic works to choose AI over other, actual creative works really devalues the judges. It tells me they don’t care if it’s good as long as it hits the expected notes. You can phone it in, whatever. Does it look the part? Great. An AI gave them an image composed of all the things they were looking for: check. Really embarrassing on the side of the judges. They shouldn’t be allowed to judge works of art.

nickthegreek 2mo ago

Winner won $1,0000 and I think that is where the real rub is.