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A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs
- nearlyepic 15d ago[flagged]
- nekooooo 15d agoher response to the dm about finding some cheap artists says it all. i'm sure she didn't give her employees payment for making the posters in the past either.
- sgerenser 15d agoOf course she paid them, it was just another task they did while on duty, like brewing coffee or taking out the trash. Surely you’re not expecting her to pay someone who is already on payroll and being paid for their time extra because they’re making posters?
- CocaKoala 15d agoIf making posters is outside of the scope of their normal job duties as it had previously been defined, then yes, absolutely I'd expect them to be paid extra. Just because they're on payroll and being paid for their time doesn't mean you can instruct them to do anything you ask.
- F3nd0 15d agoTrue. I can’t speak from experience, but this seems like it might often fall within the scope of normal job duties, though.
- sgerenser 15d agoI assure you, a retail workers job description includes doing all sorts of things, many much less pleasant than making signs. I guarantee you the employee assigned to sign making was happy to be doing that over cleaning the bathroom. And besides, this is the U.S. Unless you’re in a union, responding to legitimate, legal and business-related tasks from your employer (that don’t exceed your ability to accomplish, e.g. not lifting 100lbs or whatever) with “not in my job description” will get you canned.
- ratelimitsteve 15d agoif i'm expected to make coffee and art then it's perfectly reasonable to expect more money than if I'm merely expected to make coffee. whether that comes as part of base salary or as some contract-esque arrangement when art is required of me is the kind of detail we can figure out (or you can try to do it with AI and have a lot of people stop supporting you. your call.)
- free_bip 15d agoExtra responsibilities = extra pay 100% of the time. Just because it doesn't happen in practice all the time doesn't make it right.
- all2 15d agoThis is probably correct. But also par for the course. I bet there are coffee shops that give skill bonuses or something like that, but I'm betting most don't. Most folks who do stuff like this just assume it's part of the job and carry on.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- adriand 15d agoOuch. Have a little compassion. It is not easy running a small business, even less so when you've got a baby FFS! > "At 4 a.m., I was holding my pump on my lap and replying to this person, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it that way,'" she told me. "I was so into typing this message that I produced so much milk, it was dripping down my legs because I overflowed the pump." Also, it's one thing to dislike AI to the point where it "kills the mood" (for you) when you see an AI-generated poster, so you stop visiting that particular coffee shop. It's something else entirely to threaten the business owner.
- chungusamongus 15d agoThe thing about the customer always being right is, that becomes a big problem when the customer is an unhinged terminally online weirdo.
- wackget 15d agoThe actual saying is "The customer is always right in matters of taste." It is misquoted on a criminally large scale.
- optionalsquid 14d agoThe evidence seems to point to "in matters of taste" being a much later addition: https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-right-origin/ https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-ri...
- ChrisMarshallNY 15d agoThe customer is not always right: https://notalwaysright.com/newest/ https://notalwaysright.com/newest/
- TheSkyHasEyes 15d agoAgreed. A small business in my city made a poster using stick men and simple drawings(because of the topic at hand) and people loved it.
- chungusamongus 15d agoWho cares? It's a coffee shop ffs. People really have their priorities straight.
- izzydata 15d agoThreatening 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.
- garyfirestorm 15d agoi generally go to the store where the coffee tastes better
- Freedom2 15d agoAgreed. That's actually what OP said as well.
- seattle_spring 15d agoUsing AI to make a sign is likely a pretty good indicator as to the effort the owner puts into other aspects of their business.
- orangedog 15d agoIt only signals to me that they have other priorities.
- Draiken 15d agoCorrect, 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.
- JumpCrisscross 15d ago> The menu is definitely a significant part of it The overlap in skills between photographing your product and being a great barrista aren't obviously overlapping. The takeaway seems to be to remove images from the menu.
- nyc_data_geek1 15d ago[flagged]
- childofhedgehog 15d agohttps://archive.is/GSXl6 https://archive.is/GSXl6
- tolerance 15d ago> Then came a threat. An account with a much larger following DM'd her and told her to take down the sign, or they would post about it to their local artist community. The person offered to help her find an artist to pay to make a new sign, or else they would post about it. > They gave her a day to "think about it." 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.
- ratelimitsteve 15d agowhy is talking about this with their community a threat?
- Footkerchief 15d ago"Threat" is a correct term for an attempt to compel action via potential negative consequences.
- brandon272 15d ago"Nice business you've got here, shame if something happened to it"
- free_bip 15d agoBy that definition all laws are threats. And indeed, the fallacy here seems to be assuming that threat = bad.
- brandon272 15d agoLaws are threats. The difference is that we empower the government to threaten us to maintain social order, we do not empower individuals to threaten each other.
- chucksta 15d agoIts implied the talk is to rally the troops not gather general opinion
- cricketsandmops 15d agoIm shocked she spent so much to get it printed. The design looks so cheap
- Imnimo 15d agoI 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.
- ratelimitsteve 15d agoI 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.
- kbelder 15d ago"post about it in a local artist community" is not exactly "talk about it with their friends." It's bullying.
- AndrewDucker 15d agoIt's informing people that there is something a business is doing that they might not approve of and they might want to change their behaviour accordingly.
- joquarky 15d agoIn the same way that sealioning is just a debate strategy.
- miltonlost 15d agoImagine if it said "post about it on Hacker News". That's not bullying
- axus 15d agoAnd if the shop owner is Jewish, it would be anti-semitism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws I consider a boycott threat a non-violent threat; legal but an exercise of power that has moral dimensions.
- cmiles8 15d agoThe 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.
- orangedog 15d agoI 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.
- pixl97 15d agoMuch like CGI in movies, you only notice bad CGI.
- wackget 15d ago> "Endeladyze said she felt terrible that she had upset her customers, but she was also frustrated at the idea that she should have been paying a real artist. Making these signs was a job only she had done herself or with employees in the past, never hiring outsiders." 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?
- kevmo 15d agoSounds like she was undervaluing her previous employee's artistic skills.
- free_bip 15d agoIndeed, artists provide a very valuable service. It's a shame the AI industry feels they're replaceable when they're obviously not.
- Cider9986 15d agoTheir price is based on supply and demand just like everything. If AI decreases demand or raises supply then their price will go down.
- free_bip 15d agoBasic economic theory states that only holds if the goods / services being provided are equivalent in the eyes of consumers. It seems self evident here that consumers do not consider them equivalent.
- Cider9986 15d agoYou said that the AI industry feels they're replaceable. I'm not saying that AI does equivalent work, I'm saying that AI companies don't choose the prices for art, they just play in the market.
- Chance-Device 15d agoThis isn’t really about AI, it’s about a culture where threats and coercion in service of one’s own ideology have become normalised.
- sleepybrett 15d agoNo 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.
- Chance-Device 15d agoThat 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.
- tavavex 14d agoIt does make sense. Customers have always judged businesses on factors besides their direct output. If the coffee shop's customer base has a significant amount of artists and artists do not like AI aesthetic or are upset by seeing AI output getting into places they once frequented, they have every right to stop patronizing the business and tell their friends, even if the coffee is the same. Honestly this entire "businesses can't be criticized" theme of this comment section is ridiculous. So what, if a small business started draping themselves in Russian flags and painting Zs on their windows, would I also be panned as an insane culture warrior on HN because I'm "forcing my opinions on them" by refusing to be a customer of that business, even if I went there before the change?
- AlexandrB 15d agoDude, 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 that my plumber has bad logo, it saving money on a logo keeps him from selling to PE and enshittifying his business.
- sleepybrett 15d agoMy 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.
- nrmitchi 15d ago> 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' The issue comes when you (or someone, not you personally) dig way to deep into what "it" is, there is always something that someone was, to quote you, "too lazy to do yourself". You might not like the result, and that's fine, but you're phrasing it as if the other person is just being unnecessary-lazy. They probably bought their display stands instead of designing and building them themselves. They also probably bought the cheap ones from Amazon (instead of building them themselves, or hiring a local artisanal carpenter to build them). Do you refuse to engage with a pastry stand because the owner was "too lazy to do it themselves"? If you're at a friends house and they order food, do you refuse to engage with it because "they were too lazy to cook it themselves"? Where do you draw the line? Your point as it applies to something that takes a sufficient portion of your time is valid, but this conversation is literally about a menu sign at a coffee shop. If you spent substantial time engaging with a coffee shop sign, I have questions (and wouldn't want to be behind you in that line).
- AngryData 15d agoI would take those stances if they didn't spend any real time picking out or curating their furnature and goods. If they spent time more time curating better AI images or asked anybody with modern taste and style what they thought we probably wouldn't be talking about it.
- aogaili 15d ago
- HanShotFirst 15d agoI'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.
- sippingabonedry 15d agoI 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?
- JumpCrisscross 15d ago> How has AI art made your food meaningfully less delicious? If a menu has pictures, I expect the food to look like the picture. That said, this is really only a problem for the store in respect of returns. If nobody is returning the product because it didn't look as advertised, there probably isn't any harm being done.
- sippingabonedry 15d ago> If a menu has pictures, I expect the food to look like the picture. Has food ever looked like the picture, though? I find this position unrealistic outside of an Amazon return excuse.
- dwedge 15d ago> She was up during the night pumping for her three-month-old baby and was scrolling through the comments and DMs, horrified. "At 4 a.m., I was holding my pump on my lap and replying to this person, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it that way,'" she told me. "I was so into typing this message that I produced so much milk, it was dripping 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.
- mft_ 15d agoI 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.
- ajkjk 15d agoya it's cheap sympathy-raising and should be condemned
- jackb4040 15d agohttps://x.com/zackfox/status/1036389932854652928 https://x.com/zackfox/status/1036389932854652928
- donkey_brains 15d agoWell I for one found it quite titillating
- siliconpotato 15d agoThis reads like fetish fiction. Maybe it is.
- km144 14d agoWhen I read that, the only thing I could think was "holy shit get off your fucking phone". But I agree with you as well.
- k310 15d agoThe 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 https://x02.me/i/F7ZX6.jpeg
- duskwuff 15d ago> 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? Or, for that matter - skip the photos, just do text, maybe with a few bits of clip art if you're feeling daring. Photos are hardly essential for coffee drinks, which tend to all look the same in real life anyway.
- cowanon77 15d agoI 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.
- inoop 15d agoAs 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.
- rsrsrs86 15d ago[flagged]
- tomhow 15d agoPlease don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ssl-3 15d agoThat's certainly true. It is also true that as a consumer, I do have a right to feel contemptuous towards garish design and the freedom to spend my money elsewhere.
- sippingabonedry 15d ago[flagged]
- LollipopYakuza 15d agoI don't get why do you link scummy keyboard warrior behavior with being unemployed? These are hard times and job loss has become a widespread issue affecting people for all kinds of reasons beyond their control. Using that as a way to insult someone just isn't fair.
- gyanchawdhary 15d agohe's still got a point i.e. never let the mob win.
- mcbuilder 15d agoSomething makes me doubt her "coffee" is a dark roast that only loosely fits in the parameters of espresso.
- jackb4040 15d agoWait a minute. I thought when we didn't like liberals we scolded them for spending $5 on coffee at Starbucks. When did we switch to them being too poor to afford it?
- viktorcode 15d agoMakes 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.
- Chance-Device 15d agoYou have to wonder?
- AngryData 15d agoI wouldn't call pointing out a business's activities and shop features as much of a threat. You either live with your business choices or change them. Business is not entitled to people's patronage, they can refuse them for any reason. They are not and should not be shielded from public opinion.
- DerekL 15d agoNeither, the biggest danger is being a chiropractor (her main job), taking people's money and wasting their time with useless treatments.
- slibhb 15d ago"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.
- ssl-3 15d ago5 minutes? I'll have spent more time writing this comment and posting the image to imgur than I did having the bot produce that image in the first place. And here it is: https://imgur.com/6C3zWcD https://imgur.com/6C3zWcD It's not grand at all; just an informative sign about some fall specials that is direct and to the point. (Nothing about it was done by hand, but nothing about it would get people all torches-and-pitchforks, either.)
- nickthegreek 15d agoExactly. What we are really talking about is people lacking taste. People don’t want to see shit graphic design. At the state fair this year, all the food places and rides were covered an obvious low quality ai image work. The difference between acceptable and gross can be as simple as a prompt tweak.
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- ajkjk 15d agoThe 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 and degradation of their actions, nor what the alternative is. 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.
- boogieknite 15d agofirst ill address your point and anecdotally i think this is sort of how "normal" people apologize now. i find it gross, personally, but its so ubiquitous ive learned to tune it out why i actually replied: would have been an excellent punch line if the apology post was clearly ai gen chock full of clauddish. not sure if id come back around to respecting the owner, but id laugh for sure
- ajkjk 15d agoI think it is how people apologize normally because it's a norm, yes, but it's to everyone's detriment. They don't like it, the people receiving it don't care about it, it's not a real apology, it's just a sort of trapped norm that needs to change. That's why I bothered to point it out.
- javier_e06 15d agoHeard this morning on NPR show: The 3 areas were AI fails from the get-go. Creativity Taste Judgement
- graypegg 15d agoThe follow up instagram post, so the one after she showed off her awful looking sign: > I want to address the recent conversation surrounding our fall menu boards. > The design was created using gen AI. I want to be transparent about that. At the time, I genuinely did not understand the extent of the concerns surrounding AI-generated artwork, particularly the impact it can have on artists and the environmental concerns associated with it. > My intention was never to disrespect artists, take credit for someone else’s work, or diminish the value of human creativity. I was simply trying to put together our fall menu during an especially busy and demanding time for me and our small team. > That said, I have listened to the feedback. I understand why people have strong feelings about it, and I respect those concerns. Going forward, I have decided that Penny’s Coffee Shop will not be using AI for our menu artwork and promotional designs. > What has been difficult for me, however, is the amount of negativity, personal attacks, and messages that followed this situation. There is a real person behind this small business. I am doing my best to run a local coffee shop, support my team, serve our community, and navigate being a new mom at the same time. > I am always willing to listen, learn, and do better. I just hope we can have those conversations with kindness and respect. > To everyone who continues to support Penny’s, especially through a challenging time for our business, thank you. Your support means more than you know. Why does business insider make it seem like she's seething angry about this situation when the actual content of the response instagram post seems very level headed. (Rhetorical question, I know why.) - I'm sorry - I know my use of gen AI made it seem like I dislike artists - That's not a belief of mine - I'll prove that by not using gen AI at my cafe for this sort of thing ever again - Please be kind to me, this is a small business and I'm very stressed out Bam, perfect, hit everything a PR firm would tell you to say to make this go away as quickly as possible... Talking to business insider was exactly the wrong thing to do after that. Your sign looks bad. You've made the awful mistake of telling more people about your bad sign with the intent of making them feel sympathetic. Even if they feel sympathetic, people still look at the bad sign you made in desperation along with the framing from BI and think... "oh so maybe she shouldn't be running a cafe then. This seems like she's barely getting by at this point". On the flip side, telling someone "pay my artist friend or else I'll go out of my way to tell people primed to hate you based on a single detail, about only that 1 single detail" is actual old-school extortion. Everyone in this story is tiring and annoying.
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- specproc 15d ago"Endeladyze", "Endelaydsze". Painful to read this poor kartveli gogo's gvari being butchered like that. Get a proof-reader, people.
- semiquaver 15d agoReading headlines with this increasingly common format makes me irrationally angry.
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- janalsncm 15d agoThe relevant question is how much comments on Instagram actually translate to changes in sales. If I’m going to a coffee shop, I might not like the AI coffee sign, but it’s much more important to me how good the coffee is and how expensive it is.
- sashank_1509 15d agoAs a society we need to start seriously planning on how to ban AI in art. - I don’t want to listen music with AI generated vocals or tunes. - I don’t want to watch TV shows or movies with AI generated scripts. - I don’t want to read novels with AI generated text - I don’t want to see animations with any amount of AI in it. - I don’t want to play video games made by any amount of AI. (No FCKIN Blender models made with AI) - I don’t want any amount of my digital art or posters to be touched by AI. I think as a part of alignment all AI models above a certain size should refuse requests to generate stories, scripts any art object etc. text-to-image, text-to-music, text-to-videos should just be banned outright, I don’t see any good use case for them outside of art. If society cannot agree to do the above then at the very least, we should have a way to easily know if AI was involved in any of the art I interact with, so that I can avoid it with a ten foot pole. I say this as an early adopter and lover of technology in general, I bought the Vision Pro the day it came out, I bought experimental volumetric displays, experimental robot vacuums, I own 2 robot arms, LED panels etc. but generative AI in art just leaves me with disgust, I want no part of it.
- orangedog 15d agoIt seems like a ban would both be overreaching and won't happen. If your personal preference is to not engage with it, then don't.
- sashank_1509 15d agoI don’t see why a president can’t write a “No Generative AI in art” executive order, society has banned plenty of other pointless stuff, I would vote for them to ban this.
- orangedog 15d agoThey can do that but it would be a huge overreach. I guess you have strong feelings about it, but plenty of us don't want it banned.
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- timedude 15d agoI prefer to see the real actual food i am about to buy on menus. I hate when i get it and it looks nothing like the menu photo. But companies like mc donalds have been deceiving people for decades with help of pro photographers and designers. In this case the sign is pretty and it is clear the items are just drawings. I think it is cool for small biz owners to be able to help themselves with AI. It would probably be better if she used real actual pics of her products with a phone and asked AI to put those inbthe sign in the same stylized way.
- elicash 15d agoI have no problem with coffee shops intentionally using AI, that said... It's also worth keeping in mind that a shop owner might google "clip art cup of coffee" and the result was created by somebody who used AI, and the shop owner wouldn't necessarily realize it. At some point, 99% of clip art available online is going to be AI.
- Chance-Device 15d agoIt’s interesting you know, back when music piracy was first a thing online, there was a popular idea, even backed by some research I think, that music piracy didn’t impact sales because people wouldn’t have had the money to buy that music otherwise. The theory was that piracy might actually increase sales due to more exposure of the music to consumers. AI generated art, AI generated anything really, is very close to piracy, but nobody is making that argument anymore. I think this is because the positions are reversed - the general public were motivated to find and spread vacuous reasons that piracy was neutral to good as it benefited them. When the general public might be harmed, instead of corporate rights-holders, then it becomes an unambiguous moral wrong. So it’s never really been about right and wrong, it’s just about who benefits. Like everything I guess.
- AngryData 15d agoWhy should corporations be given rights equal to humans? I see no problem to okaying one activity for individuals but banning it from businesses and corporations.
- ChickeNES 15d agoBecause corporations are organizations of people?
- jackb4040 15d agoNo one actually has to care about the well-being of corporations. There are no corporations in the Bible. Decades ago when corporations were taking over the world, they used to justify it as a proxy for eventual benefits to the standard of living of regular people. I guess now we don't even bother.
- ChickeNES 15d agoDoesn't the bible treat collective institutions as moral actors all the time? And why are you using the bible as your grounding, not every one shares Christian morality
- twalla 15d agoPeople are bombarded with crappy genAI graphics and even if they can't articulate what about it they dislike aesthetically, I believe most are able to draw the short line from the bad, piss-filter, fake-ghibli slop they see to the social/environmental ills most associate with AI. I have mixed thoughts on shame as a tool for social cohesion but in my mind it's a positive that use of genAI for artistic purposes seems like it's nearly universally panned and people trying to pass off the output as their own are (rightfully) clowned. The text exchange in the article with the thinly veiled threat is exactly how you'd expect someone disempowered (and it's not like working artists pre AI times had a ton of capital to begin with) to act when they are given some power. As we continue displacing, or attempting to displace, individuals up the value chain, I think we'll continue to see echoes of this kind of behavior. When the luddites can't break into the factory to smash the machines, smashing the outputs and users of the machine seems like the obvious choice.
- sortoflog 15d agoI feel quite bad for her. If you aren’t in the know (chronically online), I don’t think it’s obvious whatsoever that using AI for a poster could be seen as unethical. I doubt she even expected anyone to point it out. At the same time though, even if time or budget is tight enough that you’d want to use AI, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t still use real photos for the menu items. This style that the AI apparently defaults to is kinda somewhat passable-ish, until you get to the food items which often look like they would inflict you with several status effects.
- doom2 15d agoI don't think it has to be about ethics at all. People might just be turned off by digital illustrations of food that could pass as creatures from a Ridley Scott film. I'm also a little surprised that this remains the aesthetic that AI continues to go with. With the top end being AI actresses giving major news outlet interviews, have basic free tier models not advanced beyond cosmic horror food?
- rsynnott 15d agoHave _any_ image generation models advanced beyond cosmic horror food? I don't think I've ever seen AI-generated food images that don't look severely off-putting. We're fairly attuned to food that looks _wrong_.
- sortoflog 14d agoAgreed. I was specifically talking about the one blackmailing message they got.
- accountrequired 15d agoThe sign looks awesome. haters gonna hate
- scotty79 15d agoHalf of anti ai bigots use ai chat every week. Internet morality is about seeking reasons to hate.
- skeledrew 15d agoThis ticked me off. People need to lay tf off the AI use bashing. If someone doesn't want to support a business or whatever because of X, then quietly take yourself and your negativity elsewhere. Don't make yourself a nuisance because people's choices don't line up with your bias.
- SaucyWrong 15d agoFor $150 or less, I bet they could have hired a fiverr person to come over for two hours and letter the chalkboard. This reads to me like a YouTube AI thumbnail. If you go to a lot of trouble to make a product and then you punt the last and probably easiest step in the process, makes me not want to engage with the product.
- quietsegfault 15d agoThis is so weird. Small businesses like delis and pizza parlors and Chinese food joints have been using stock photography and pre-made advertisements for decades. That ageless “GYRO” poster, FFS. People have lost their absolute minds over this. It’s disgusting and unhinged behavior to threaten and bully people about this. Who cares how a local cafe made their menu? I truly don’t understand what’s going through people’s minds who attack people like this.
- potsandpans 15d agoIt's not about ai anymore. This is the new culture war. As shitty as this is, I'm glad that it's happening because things like this erode the shamers credibility. There were plenty of histrionic COVID warriors that tried to ruin lives and businesses. I bet the venn diagram of those people is close to a circle.
- erelong 15d agoIt honestly sounds like a good filter if you don't want "crazy anti-AI people" at your shop
- steveBK123 15d agoA lot of this stuff again seems like labor augmentation not replacement, like in this article. She wasn't using professional paid artists previously, but a mix of her own extra labor (which she had less time for with a baby) & a barista who drew well (but had recently left). Most small businesses are like this. I'm not an AI booster, but I think GenZ particularly have really lost their mind with the anti-AI rage. I was handing out flyers at a fundraiser, for a charity to promote their next event. The flyers were made by a staff member using some AI art. Some GenZ kid started ranting to me about how the flyers were AI slop and how some artist would have been willing to do the job, blah blah blah. Kid, its a charity event that I'm volunteering for on a beautiful sunny summer weekend day for.. it's gonna raise like $10k if we are lucky.. no artist was going to paid with or without AI.
- fyredge 15d agoUsing this article as an example, there's a severed lack in intentionality in generative images. At a glance, a few questions already come to my mind: Why are lines coming out of the cups? Why are there coffee drip lines? Why is the pumpkin on the left but everything else is next to the mugs? Why are the mugs of slightly different shapes? (Excluding cold brew) Why are the descriptions of all four items of wildly different lengths? Generative is not attentive.
- Markoff 15d agoTLDR there is no threat mentioned in the article Someone else told her she can fix it with help of local comunity and if she doesn't fix it, they will publish facts about her AI usage. Judging by logic of some commenters if journalist ask someone questions, give them time to reply to give them opportunity to present their views and later publish it without them not meeting the deadline is now considered a threat. Btw. I am also sick of AI slop everywhere in magazines, ads, etc., so if I can choose with my wallet whether I spend my money in AI slop shop or shop not using AI, it's easy choice.
- YeGoblynQueenne 14d ago>> One of the duties she relished was photographing the drinks and menu items, including a few signature items like a cheesy bread dish from their native country, Georgia, for their social media channels and website. Khachapuri, I presume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khachapuri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khachapuri It looks delicious in pictures and I've heard about it from some Georgian friends but I never got to try it. But I did try satsivi and it was finger-licking good.
- sceptic123 14d agoPenny's Coffee Shop? Penny's Coffee Slop more like. I'll get my coat...
- dakial1 11d ago> Then came a threat. An account with a much larger following DM'd her and told her to take down the sign, or they would post about it to their local artist community. The person offered to help her find an artist to pay to make a new sign, or else they would post about it. Well here are the Luddites of modern age trying to put the genie back in the bottle. I wonder if all this AI backlash will reach the same civil unrest level as the Industrial Revolution.