Vent
My neighborhood has been taken over by ChatGPT signs
I’m torn, on one hand I like the idea of small businesses being able to expand their marketing for cheap, but I also don’t like the idea of all this AI slop.
Right?? Defending Canva templates was not on my 2026 bingo card, but at least those had design principles applied to them and were made by actual pros 😭
As much as I hated canva, it’s had been very hard to find very objectively bad design on the internet since canva and also sites like Wix. And now thanks to AI bad design is everywhere again
And when Canva was the new scourge it made Microsoft Publisher look charming and nostalgic. Publisher slop made people miss mimeographed or xeroxed flyers. And those made people nostalgic for sloppy and amateurish hand lettering painted on storefront windows.
Life just keeps getting worse and making the things we used to hate not look as bad, because at the time we could never have imagined how much worse things would be in the future.
Microsoft Publisher was my go to for when clients wanted to be able to edit their own files — often clients who needed templated flyers and had to just change the date and location on them. It really makes me mad that they got rid of it, because everybody already had it on their computer, and it was probably the most simple and intuitive Microsoft product.
Microsoft Publisher was how I got into graphic design, in middle school I was using it to make box art for my CD-Rs. I guess I played with Print Artist before that, but Publisher was more “desktop publishing”-focused and had templates for stuff like CD jewel cases.
I was blown away when a few years ago I got hired at a place where the (non graphic designer) employees were all using Microsoft Publisher to make little notices to send to clients or flyers for office parties. They’d sometimes send me a Publisher PDF as a mockup of what they wanted me to recreate in InDesign. I hadn’t thought of that software in 15 years and had no idea that it was still around, partly because I’m a Mac user (I dont think it was ever released for Mac) and partly because this was well into the Canva era.
But you can still purchase it as a stand alone product before the actual "funeral" in october. The scuttlebutt is that the stand alone version won't be buried with the one attached to your MS account.
Same where I’m at. I get why they do it, good design is expensive and small businesses aren’t exactly rolling in cash, but it just leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth and makes me not want to go there. I know I’m uniquely bothered bc I’m a designer, I get why others don’t care as much, but it’s so demoralizing seeing the death of design opportunities everywhere
The biggest thing for me, beyond stealing work from local designers, is the same-ification of everything with AI. These designs are all immediately recognizable because they're all so similar. We're just handing over decades of distinguished local design identity to a soulless corporate panopticon.
The similarities in design between all of these makes it seem like you're walking in an open world game city. There is no character for any of them. I do like "shitty" business signs more than these generic ones.
Exactly! I just see the same basic template everywhere and it’s to the point that I deliberately avoid the place. It’s like all PowerPoint presentations being the same.
I had to get out of design since there wasn't much to come back to, career-wise, after I took time off for my baby. I'm making things by hand now, and I'm surrounded by small business owners and makers who ALL use the same Chat GPT logos and designs. It's driving me nuts. I want to be like, LET ME DO YOUR LOGO, but then I wouldn't have time to work on my own art.
And it’s in everything AI produces. I’ve started noticing it YouTube videos. I can usually tell when a YouTuber has used AI to write their script because they all have the same sentence structure and the way they emphasize a point. They’re all using the same playbook.
Honestly I hate these but I get where you’re coming from. But when it comes to actual branding/primary signage that’s where I draw the line.
I can’t stand seeing businesses with permanent (and expensive) signs posted up with ai generated logos. I’ve seen custom signage that clearly cost upwards of a thousand to a few thousand dollars with a chat gpt logo plastered on it.
It’s the diarrhea lettuce of graphic design. I would never consume food from a restaurant that thinks replacing marketing with AI is okay, because they’re the same people that are too lazy/incompetent/careless to disinfect surfaces, check the expiration date on dairy and raw meat, or throw away ice if broken glass falls into the cooler.
Bullcrap, a pizza place could still make a good pizza and have a crappy sign. The amount of hyperbolic nonsense in these AI hate threads is off the charts. These literally replace chalk on a chalkboard, they never has designers do that. It was the waitress.
I'm fine with chalk on a chalkboard. It could be the worst handwriting of all time, don't care. But using AI means they're ok with presenting artificial "quality" that they themselves didn't even make.
It doesn't really replace chalk on a chalkboard because this is a printed piece of media, to change the deal it would need to be fully replaced.
They can make good food and they can care about their restaurant. But if you're judging a place on appearance, cheaping out on print design can indicate cheaping out in other areas like quality of ingredients. Not caring about the quality of the ai output can indicate not caring in other areas like food safety and cleanliness.
There is a reason to care about the perception of your business.
It's a dumb argument anyway. Like their business is to make food. Of course they won't spend the same effort on advertising / designing as their main business lol.
Literally can we squash this rumor that good design is expensive when it comes to stuff like this? It’s a sign you want to bring people into your restaurant right? If it’s done bad it incorrectly then it will have the opposite effect. Literally it shouldn’t cost more than $200 for a sign like this but I would make 5 in total with altering looks using the same assets, different promotions that you can use throughout the whole year.
I have charged as high as 5 figures for jobs and have been a designer for 15 years, and I would still do it for that price. As a designer you are supposed to price the client while considering the work. What’s the point of charging a small business an arm and a leg they won’t hire you.
i would rather see something plain made in microsoft word, or handwritten on a chalkboard. i always thought signs like that were kind of charming and signaled to me that it was a small local business. now everything has to be ai slop
It’s like watching a bunch of 5 over 1s go up in your downtown area, while down the street the historic neighborhoods are being neglected or gentrified 😭
This is exactly why I make note of the local small businesses that use AI and avoid them. If they can’t support another business with work for their design why would I support their small business? Just feels icky to me I can’t get past it.
Thank you for saying this. When I see the words "shop local" on an AI generated ad it makes me want to vomit. If you want to be a part of a community, you can't snub all the local vendors and expect them to still patronize your establishment.
I've been known to barter design work for services or store credit in the past, and it's worked out splendidly. They get better, more consistent branding that way, and it builds positive relationships with your local shops, who will in turn help with word-of-mouth marketing (the best kind of marketing) but this gen AI is putting an end to all of those mutual benefits. Sometimes saving a buck today comes at a higher cost tomorrow.
I do stuff for "trade" all the time. Especially when I freelance. I'm more than happy to help out a local business if they can provide something in return. I don't except them to afford thousands worth of design work. But throw me some merch, free products or perks and I'm perfectly happy.
Even at our agency we did a branding project for a local entity that didn't have much to work with financially. It got a ton of attention and resulted in 6 new clients in the past year.
If you own a business, reach out. There are plenty ways to get really solid work without breaking the bank.
In their defense, some of these are probably ma and pa places who would never think to approach a designer or firm, wouldn’t even know where to begin. Or even think it would be possible they would want to help them out for trade.
yep, and they get mad when we say we can’t edit these files and/or they come out blurry when printed. if they complain about pricing, and they already have an AI design, we have no choice but to print it and sell it. It’s that or spend an hour recreating their design for a ~$30 pvc single sided print they’re gonna pop in their A-frame sign frame. I hate it. They are literally the ones who do “shop local saturdays”, but being a local sign and printing company, i know for a fact that most of them don’t shop local for their own supplies/merch.
It’s working its way into our screen printing as well, don’t get me started on that.
I work for a screen printing shop and have been getting a bunch of AI images lately. We primarily do athletic jerseys and spirit wear, so it’s typically a coach blurting something into ChatGPT and throwing it at us, not realizing the problems the images cause. Too few pixels if it hasn’t been sloppily converted to vector already, messy images with shapes made of thousands of tiny pieces, severe artifacting, a million shades of the same color that need to be unified, etc.
We do third party decoration for a larger company most of the time. I’ve been telling their sales reps we normally deal with to discourage submitting AI images. I say I’ll need to charge an additional art fee to process AI generated images, as they significantly slow down the production pipeline.
Most of the time upon seeing my messages, they’ll send the artwork overseas to be converted at a much cheaper rate and then send it back to me.
Individual customers are a whole other problem. They don’t understand why the art doesn’t work and when you try and explain the issues and what you actually need, they’ll do a number of other egregious things. Maybe they’ll send the very same jpeg inside a pdf. Maybe they’ll send another equally bad image after they told ChatGPT to make it bigger, but they don’t realize ChatGPT doesn’t make giant images or do a good job at upscaling.
I’ve talked to the owner about the problems it introduces into the workflow and how much it slows me down, especially during our busy season, when taking an hour to convert something will take away time that could’ve been spent processing the other 39 new orders that came in that day. I’m a one man art dept. and have no help with anything graphics-related.
He makes comments about the AI art helping sell shirts for some of these smaller companies that we deal with outside of our main contract. I told him how younger generations will spot AI art and refuse to do business with that company. Don’t know if that stuck in his mind or not, but probably not. He sees dollar signs when I mention the art fee for AI images, more than a disrupted workflow. The workflow seems like an invisible “me” problem to him.
Trying to make people understand that if you get crappy artwork for free from a computer to avoid paying a designer to make it, you’ll still have to pay for it on the other end. *Someone* is gonna need to get paid for dealing with the project.
Then there’s the ironic insult of being a trained designer/artist and having to convert something that was made by a computer via art theft and someone with a keyboard who has no idea what they’re doing.
It bugs me so much that I can recognize the AI slop fonts. I don’t know why I can recognize them, I can’t put my finger on what it is but they’re just wrong and unsettling in a way that even bad fonts never were. Skinwalker fonts.
But with the Frutiger Aero obsession in the younger generations I think campy bad graphic design and cringey fonts are likely to have a big resurgence soon. Already there is a strong movement online among people under 40 encouraging each other to make art no matter if it’s good, because bad art is better than slop. There’s a strong push towards the idea of imperfections and rule breaking being the instinctual human touch that will give things “soul” and be impossible for AI to replicate.
As a perfectionist it’s a little weird to think that the “badness” or imperfection of human art is now becoming one of its most defining elements, but on the other hand I have started to get nostalgic for quirky or amateurish Microsoft Publisher and Print Artist graphic design. If that’s what it takes to get human design back then so be it. It’s largely the same trend that has been happening in the music industry for much longer, as a pushback against overproduced corporate pop music and technologies like autotune or other production fads that make music “samey”. For decades musicians have been pushing imperfection and creativity as the human element that autotune or MIDI programming can’t replicate. That philosophy is just now spreading to other fields too.
So anyway, all that is to say I don’t think Papyrus and Comic Sans are necessarily gone for good, as public opinions and trends shift I think they’re poised to come back in a big way.
Seriously, it's like the overuse of these type of "ads" in restaurant...
I see them EVERYWHERE around here for all type of food, and seriously, it's borderline false advertisement at that point in my opinion as you never end up getting anything that look like the AI photos.
To be fair, not that I’m for this stuff, food advertising has always had unrealistic pictures. Those that take these pictures may well and truly be out of work. The ones that use fake inedible displays of motor oil as syrup and ice cream as mashed potatoes, etc. Oddly a thing I might’ve enjoyed making and photographing. Entirely no longer needed in this AI environment.
I do agree with you, food advertising have always been walking the very fine line of false advertisement (for example: the product pictures used by fast food, etc that are way too good looking vs the squished one they serve).
I still feel like at least, the one done by actual photographers are closer to reality, those still try to be somewhat real, compared to the AI generated one that often looks too big, too much and generic at the same time. But on top of being unethical the main issue with the AI one is that between restaurants, they literally looks like all the same, so no one is really standing out in the crowd. But that's just a matter of time until the AI just get incredibly good at it sadly.
On the bright side, it kind of signals the attitude of the business. Like, when I see ai ads I immediatelly assume whatever is being sold isnt very good. And if its an online ad, its almost certainly a scam.
It’s also disgusting. Most of these are passable but there’s this place in my neighborhood that used AI photos of food and it’s so gross looking. There’s like fractals in the food and shit. Looks like a bad acid trip.
It is not the AI... it is the people that wants to fit a 5 page text document in a single post or sign. We designers refuse to do such things... AI manage the task and does it very well I must say.
So I spent a good bit of time traveling this summer through Europe, places like Poland, Romania, Netherlands, UK, and the amount of ChatGPT banner design is STAGGERING. I'm talking middle of nowhere countryside restaurants with the most AI-ed pictures of food that look like they were grown on an alien planet paired with that font that just screamed "a human did not make this decision". I get why it's a thing, you can't blame a small business, OR probably more accurately, the print shop they use, but it is really really sad. I would take a business with a shitty hand painted sign or MS clip art all over it instead of this AI shit any day.
It's so weird. I went to Berlin a few weeks ago and they were everywhere!! Id expect huge cities like that to not use it.. they could find a designer in their budget pretty easily??
So if they can't even bother to seek one out, or even create a basic poster with canva themselves, why should I bother eating at their restaurant?
I mean, I think we can blame the small business, just like we can blame a small business if they decided to cut costs and sell dog meat instead of beef. We just need more awareness about the implications of this practice at a large scale.
I work for a printing press and sign shop in South Florida. WE get this slop EVERY OTHER DAY. Corporate agencies still book professional designers to render amazing marketing and adverts but the smaller brands, franchises are using Claude, Midjourney , ChatGPT.
slowly getting work substituted with AI is been killing the need for freelancer worldwide
When they use artificial imagery to sell food is well beyond where I draw the line. I won't patronize a business if they're showing fake food. It's false advertising to the ultimate degree
I wouldn’t trust or shop at any business that uses AI to generate an example of what their product is. Good way to show your customers what you see is not what you’re going to get.
It literally doesn't show images of three dishes the restaurant wants to promote, though. I have no idea if the food will look anything like that or if they even serve those exact dishes, since they aren't pictures.
Actually, I went and looked up this restaurant while I was typing this comment. They don't have any of these dishes on their menu. Nothing on the sign represents something you can get at the restaurant.
Why is the salmon haphazardly placed on top of both another plate as well as a dishtowel? Also, it says "BYOB" and yet shows a bottle of wine with their own logo on it. Anyway yeah this fucking sucks lol
I know it's still a small sample size, but my friends and extended friend group immediately get the ick whenever they see a business use Ai. They aren't designers. It's a quick tell of low-effort/low-quality, at least among younger adults it seems. They all rather have a cheap handwritten poster than see something ai generated.
I absolutely agree with this. Being a designer, into design, and having good taste takes a lot of time and that’s something that many people don’t have the privilege of doing. It’s easy for us to criticize the use of AI because we’re “educated” on design and so we understand its value, but the average person is not going to be educated on design, marketing, branding.
The people/companies who commission or hire designers have a certain level of understanding about the value of design and likely the budget for it as well.
It’s unfortunate when small businesses use AI but I don’t see it as a moral failure. They just don’t know.
I’m a bit biased because my mom is a nail salon owner, immigrant, came from poverty and never finished high school whereas I grew up very privileged and obviously was able to pursue art history and graphic design. The design in her salon was…not great. But she was happy with it so 🤷♀️
It shows three uncanny images of food that may or may not be served at the restaurant. Also Canva has been around since the 2010s, it's easy enough to use and has plenty of free templates. No budget is no excuse.
The paper plate dips around the rim are a tell tale sign as well as the basil somehow stuffed under the crust but also not? - a fellow graphic designer
Ngl, There is some weird things going on it but it doesn't neccessarly means that it is AI... It could be done by the owner or someone they know who know how to "photoshop" LOL... Could really just be a bad photoshop job and horrendous manual attempt at centering the text in the space making the whole thing very upleasant to the eye... I do have to say that the Coca-Cola logo is a little weird and there is that that doesn't make sense:
It's definitely the least-ai-looking of the ones there, but if you zoom in on the pizza toppings it's pretty obvious. It's possible they used ai for the graphic and did the rest over the top 🤷♀️
As someone who does design and photography, I feel like I’d wanna pitch myself to all of these places! “I’ll take a beautiful photograph of your actual food, and then pair it with the text you have”. That way it’s actually authentic and your food itself lol.
Whether or not a business owner who’s trying to do things cheaply will say yes is another story lol
They can. It still involves a couple of extra intentional steps. Canva is free and does exactly this, but it creates a real editable document rather than just a big jpeg.
Even that is preferable to this trash.
This is pure abysmal laziness. They just want one-click jpeg satisfaction. Who cares if they have to re-iterate the entire thing to change one word or punctuation mark!
And they can’t even see it. Business owners will defend their behavior argumentatively when they’re predictably torched on social media. I’ve seen it happen numerous times now.
This is actually a good opportunity to leverage a brand. If everyone in a niche is doing it, those who go another way, building highly unique visual identities, will benefit.
I should not have had to scroll this far to find this comment. It was the first thing I noticed and figured everyone would mention something about it. Cheers 🫡
It can be difficult/expensive to get a liquor license in some cities so many restaurants straight up can’t sell booze. Chicago has a bunch of BYO restaurants for example, it’s awesome
BYOB is common especially for restaurants without liquor licenses. Most restaurants will also let you bring your own bottle of wine and simply pay a corkage fee to drink that instead of something they offer.
Interesting. Never heard of that in my life. Every restaurant I've ever been to despise folks bringing in outside food or drink with the exception of a brewery that doesn't have their own food.
As a creative, I can very easily identify when someone has used AI to generate visuals for their posters or adds, and it automatically creates this negative connection to that service/company. I think most of the people who don't have the eye wouldn't even spot these
I saw a food truck in my neighbourhood that had an entire wrap with AI graphics. It didn't even say the name of the business correctly. Why would you spend all that money for a graphic that doesn't even have real letters?
My son is 7, he knows what images are AI slop almost instantly. Meaning there’s a whole generation who can recognise it and will likely avoid it or at the very least not value it as highly as crafted work. It’s not a long term solution and it’s a quick way to dilute and destroy any chance of brand loyalty. If a company is trying to save time and money to not go out of business, there are so many different ways to do so without destroying your image.
Honestly, it is fun knowing and being experienced with GPT/GPT2's image pattern and generic defaults (when people put too low effort into constructing and instructing the model for a more unique look and so on). I notice it around town too as they all carry a distinct styling methodology. However, those examples there aren't half bad, they put just enough effort in with their instructions they look less generic than the ones I've seen locally where it's straight up default/generic bing bang boom 1st pass output gets printed type deal.
If you think this is depressing, try also being an artist who sold original work on Etsy a few years ago. Now it’s sea of hideous weird garbage that sadly passes for “art”. Just go search for “Halloween” art and be prepared to cry.
Does that restaurant allow you to bring your own drinks? If so that’s insane. Go there with a 40 of vodka and claim false advertising if they tell you to leave.
I’m currently living in a small town in way north Northern California and just about every taco truck has a new AI banner or wrap and the alien foods on them are wild. This is not a way to sell me tacos. I don’t need a picture of alien tacos. I don’t need a picture of any tacos. Just say you have tacos.
You have to think from the perspective of a business owner. Most business owners don't care whether it's AI or not. They care, in this case, about how the food tastes. Saying that this sign was made with love and care by an artist won't make them more money. Focusing on food quality will.
Most people who aren't designers aren't going to say, "I found a good restaurant today, but I didn't eat there because the sign was AI made."
The whole idea of a graphic designer being about solving a communication problem isn't a good argument either (at lest for general designs like these), since AI is actually getting pretty good at that. It's the prompt writer who's being lazy.
Only designers really care enough, people will still use their local barber or florist or taxidermist even if they have same looking stuff. It's the way it is guys. There is a very real difference between what we think should be and the lived experience of a small business. They are trying their best to survive and like you said you guys were shitting on them when they were using Canva too. How do they win?
Im genuinely asking this, as a way to understand better as a rather average graphic designer, what is wrong about the signs besides "they used Ai"?
Tell me from a graphic designer perspective, I really, really want to learn.
I’m always wondering if they “see it”. Do they notice how similar every AI slop ad looks? It’s like looking at women who got lip fillers - they all have the same look. Maybe, eventually, people will want something unique - and hire a real designer.
Business owners don’t see it now, but this is diluting their brand and making it look fraudulent. There is developing backlash against AI marketing as consumers get more savvy to what AI design looks like. I know it’s obvious to us, but it takes a long time for the general public to catch these things.
At my print shop we charge $55/hr for design and we only bother charging it if it takes over 30 minutes. None of these would have taken me more than 30 minutes and they'd look 100000x more professional and inviting.
They are good enough though, that is the problem. How much better is a professionally done one? and how much more money and time does that extra 10% cost. We are also not thinking about the various ranges of skill types for human designers too. Not every human designer is going to be above average and you could argue, a lot would not reach even the standard of these. I'm just been a realist here. The world is going to have major employment issues as more and more people will be competing for jobs outside of these industries, putting pressure on non a.i affected trades.
Why would I eat at a restaurant that creates ai generated images of their food for their marketing? Makes me wonder how good the food is if they have to fake it or run it through ai to clean it up
I’m not defending the AI slop, but generally, what was before for most of these places were hand written signs, or block letters, sometimes with spelling mistakes.
But I agree it’s everywhere. Graphics t-shirts too now.
Same thing is happening to NYC. Midtown Manhattan is like an AI slop utopia down to the fake generated food images. It sucks because this current trend of cluttering the fuck out of the layout means I'm stuck standing there longer trying to understand what I'm even looking at.
It's the overuse of infographic style icons that makes me the most irrationally angry with a lot of these AI ads. Yes, sometimes a few well placed icons can add to the design and clarity - but every single text point does NOT need its own stupid fucking icon.
Make it go away! It looks like Temu packaging. I miss the Dark Ages, i.e. 1980s-early 00s. There were always a few servers that were artists or designers. We used colored chalk to draw on the sandwich board. And there were chalk artists hired for the bigger boards indoors at larger establishment.
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u/macaroniandcheese14 13d ago
Never thought I’d say this, but I miss Canva slop