And their prices are 15-30% higher than any place else. And their customer service sucks. And the only employees are high school kids because they only pay minimum wage. And their hours are 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, Mon-Fri, so you have to take time off work just to go there.
At least that's how it is for me where I live. It's a wonder any of them are still in business. The saddest part is, most of them say shit like, "Well at least we don't have Bidenomics to worry about anymore. Things were way worse then."
I expect higher prices when I'm trying to shop local. I know they can't compete on price. I'm willing to pay the premium specifically to support small business.
Sure, restricted hours kind of suck, but like...I'm not going to hold wanting to find work/life balance against them.
Customer service is hit or miss anywhere. Really, I think the idea of customer service has mostly gone out the window everywhere. It sucks because HS kids (and anyone else working these jobs) aren't being taught these skills. With a small business, at least I can have a nice little conversation with the owner even if they're socially awkward. People skills are hard. Obviously there is a line in there somewhere that goes into shitty service or bad attitude.
I do plenty of shopping at chains, but it's important to me to throw money at small businesses. I've watched my city grow a lot in the last 30 years and the only thing keeping it interesting are the local businesses.
I've seen some places being more self conscious about this lately and no longer do the tip prompt (or literally pick up the thing themselves and hit "no tip" before handing it over).
Which goes to show that shame can still move the needle sometimes.
The best pizza I ever had was from a hole-in-the-wall place in Montreal with a layer of grease in the windows, thick cobwebs covered in dead flies, and an air-conditioner black with mold.
If anyone cares, or remembers, it was Rock And Roll Pizza on Bleury, where the Spectrum used to be. In front of the NYKS.
It was a Persian guy running the place. One day I convinced a Persian co-worker to eat there. I guess he gave shit to the owner because the next day the place was a lot cleaner.
Basically they made some kind of shawarma pizza that was out of this world.
Oh and the business next door sold sex dolls, there was a fully inflated transexual doll in that window.
I miss that Montreal. I don't like the crappy generic condo abomination that's there now.
So anyways, if greasy windows and dead spiders didn't turn me off, what does it say that seeing some generic gross AI art turns me off?
(I just remembered another MTL pizza place with greasy windows and dead flies that was so amazing a guy drove from the South Shore just to eat there.)
There's a place near me that made amazing chicken parmigiana, pasta, and pizzas. Went back recently and they've replaced their entire menu with nonsense ai slop. Got a pizza anyway and it was awful, literally had a chunk of bone left in the toppings.
Instant walkout. If they’ve already started a dialogue, I (respectfully) let them know why I’m not buying—otherwise I don’t bother. I’d literally rather see a shitty MS Paint drawing than an AI generated picture.
Dude... alt-gr+dash, or cmd+dash or alt+dash depending on your flavor of OS/keyboard layout.
The whole em-dash = ai is so annoying to me cause I've been using em-dashes way before LLMs came to spoil the fun.
forreal, it's one of my favorite ways to break up a sentence. it's also stupid to accuse of Ai for one piece of grammar, when there's typically multiple tells to pay attention to when it comes to Ai.
let's not forget that llms were originally trained on human-made text too. we are the ones who made the patterns first. llms simply regurgitate it
Back before llms poisoned it (and I still used Windows), I had the alt code for em dash memorized (prob still have the muscle memory to do it, but not currently at a numpad) because I really liked using them in papers I had to write for school. I read lots of books back then, and recognized how much I preferred using em dashes to commas in specific cases.
I hate that I can't use them anymore lest I be mistaken for someone who uses llms
It's worse when their menu pictures have the glitch where it makes things look like triptaphobia? I forget how it's spelled and I'm not going to look it up for obvious reasons...
Trypophobia?
Went to a restaurant that had ai menu pictures that looked like everything was made of bugs. They looked absolutely disgusting.
At that point it wasn't even about not liking ai, i simply lost my apetite looking at it.
Yeah. Reminds me of this place that tried to advertise their opening on a small sub on Reddit. So they're opening in six months, have entirely generated website, and have the gall to put two posts on the front page. Like I said this was a very small sub. So of course we roasted the shit out of them. I think my favorite was, anyone want to place bets on how fast they'll close?
Oh yeah like it generates the images all roughly textured? I think it's like a reaction to generated images usually looking too smooth, but they just ended up deep frying them in uncanny.
If they generate AI slop, they're supporting the big corporations.
Edit: damn, that's a lot of AI bros trying to make themselves feel better with "nuance" and "lesser evil" arguments down in the comments. I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.
If they use AI for a few posters, where's the guarantee that they will actually put effort into their main job? The kind of person that cheaps out by using AI is not the one I want to be paying.
They may or may not be accurate assumptions, but if they change your decision making to instead shop at mega-corp instead of local, they're ultimately harmful assumptions imo.
Believe it or not, not everyone is keen on sloppifying everything they do. Local businesses that don't use AI exist. And you can help by not normalizing the slop.
Yeah so small business without AI slop is clearly better, it's just that small business with AI slop still supports big business less than you supporting big business directly.
My reasoning was that when you buy from a big business, then 100% of what you spend goes there, while less than 100% of your spending go to big business if you buy from a small business that supports big businesses itself.
It doesn't make sense to compare the total amount a small business contributes to a big business with the total amount an individual person contributes, unless you have some further factors you think I have failed to take into account.
Why wouldn't it make sense? If I want to minimize the amount of support corporate LLMs get, it absolutely makes sense to stop endorsing other businesses that use it.
The original claim I made was that supporting small business is better than directly supporting big businesses. You are 100% right about minimising the amount corporate LLMs get, it's just that your responding to my comparison of small business vs big business. What you want to do is to support neither of them, so I wouldn't really spend more time analysing what I said since I don't think it's relevant to you.
Yes, I don't really support this "lesser evil" type argument, since both options in the end proliferate corporate slop. If a business can't exist without using corporate LLMs, it shouldn't exist.
Either you support small business directly and large corporations indirectly or you just support large corporations directly or you walk out in to the middle of the woods, withdraw from society, and homestead. There is not way to participate in today's society without indirectly supporting corporations.
Sure, feel free to go in to every small shop and argue with them why they should not use AI. But supporting a multiple small shops that use AI for posters is better than giving all your money to Walmart.
This statement is the correct option.
Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation.
You get to pick the hill that you die on, but what I am saying is even if they don't use AI - they still use bookkeeping software, they still file taxes, they still order supplies, they have an email, website and someplace they store documents.
So AI can be your hill that is fine, but you are still picking the lesser evil in other ways. As you said, "I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say."
Took me a bit to realize multiple of my comments are getting lengthy replies by the same person, and that said person isn't either of the commenters I was replying to.
You, of course, get to pick whatever criteria you want for supporting or not supporting businesses. But I don't appreciate walls of text trying to shame me into supporting AI slop.
As I've said before (as you've surely seen since you've seemingly scoured this entire thread to find people who disagree with you), there are businesses that don't support big corporations in their operations. And if you can't find any in your local area (presumably the US?), then you can live with the knowledge that your "lesser evil" slop-normalizing rhetoric helped make that happen.
Creating an AI Poster might literally just be one month of some $5 AI sub or a free trial.
There's no way to verify how much they're actually supporting the AI Company.
And while your second point is valid, if you really cared about supporting local you'd simply do some research on which local businesses are running with a community-centric approach. Which ones are run by decent people. Etc. That will likely but not definitely exclude businesses that use AI anyway.
I'd also just rather support a local shithead than a billionaire shithead 🤷
The worst is food places. Motherfucker, I don't need to see a representation of what pepperoni pizza looks like. I already know what pepperoni pizza looks like.
I want to see what your pepperoni pizza looks like.
I did let a place I go semi regularly know that I choose not to eat dessert recently because their dessert menu had all AI images. The next time I was there the specials were just text (like their standard menu)
This is voting with your wallet. I don't see how this is significantly different from boycotting a company for any sort of reason, aside from the difference in scale.
The company was advertising the product in a way this person disagreed with, this person informed the company that they were not going to purchase said product for said reason, then the company seemed to value them and/or others like them enough to change their advertising.
I hate even more that I get there and they tell me "you know you can get it cheaper on Amazon" or "we no longer stock it but you can get it on Amazon". Bud, I can get every single thing in your store on Amazon and yes, it is often cheaper but I am trying to keep local stores and local jobs alive.
This happened to me a few weeks ago when I was looking through thrift shops to put together a Halloween costume. I went looking store to store for overalls, asked the employees if they had any suggestions. The elderly ladies had legit suggestions (that simply didn’t work out for me), but the young staff just went, “Try Amazon?”
The sad truth is, the youngin’s never lived in a world without Amazon. They don’t know the local stores like the older folks do. Perhaps they’ve never gone from thrift store to thrift store looking for treasures (even if they work in a thrift store.) It’s possible the idea of “avoiding Amazon” has never occurred to them.
and small businesses typically abuse their employees far worse than mega corps which is saying something in a world of Walmarts and Amazon's
the sweet spot is a company that's small enough to maintain a culture and the owners still have a vision but big enough they have to follow the rules pay taxes and have an hr department
of course there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism but I didn't create this world just suffering along with everyone else
Some stores don't understand that they can't just sell the high margin stuff. They have to also sell the high volume/low margin stuff that generates the foot traffic.
If I stop going to your store for 98% of my shopping, why would I go there for the last 2%?
But not to the point of withdrawing my support, assuming their business has nothing to do with IT and AI otherwise.
Doing your posters with AI nowadays is the same as using ClipArt+ComicSans in days of yore.
OK, it's not exactly the same. So then I'd have explain it to them. "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
That said, I rarely support business just because it's local and small. There needs to be at least one more reason. I have seen too many local & small businesses & owners that exploit and pollute and corrupt just like their big counterparts.
They never built a clip art data center in my backyard.
Plus you still had to creative use the clip art. So there was human assembly there. Plus a human most definitely created the clip art in the first place.
There needs to be some respectful images that you can reply with on social media when you see local businesses using AI images just to make the point that if they wont hire local for their advertising why should I shop local to keep them in business.
If we talk about groceries - from my experience there’s no reason to shop at big chains if there is a farmers market nearby. I bring my own reusable packaging for solid stuff and bottles for milk and juice. And people who run it are usually chill and just doing their thing.
But as we venture into tech territory - it becomes really muddy, many of people running small IT businesses in here are pompous arses. Like dude runs some musty basement and thinks of himself a Bill Gates.
milk seems to be much cheaper and available in skim varieties from the big chains as opposed to smaller stores, I still mostly shop at the smaller store though because it has cheaper vegetables and better meat
Well, we here have a situation, where giving soapy baths to pigs (yes, that’s the job) at local farm may earn one 3 times the salary of entry IT job. Simply because it’s that hard to find workers these days, and don’t get me started on actual technical jobs - it’s near impossible to find a lathe machinist today.
So yeah, it all… depends… And yeah, there is one local business that I avoid, because it’s run by a guy associated with local conspiracy theorist clown. So yeah, I do little investigations to make sure I don’t give money to people who will then use it to make world a worse place.
There's a shop near me that has one of those sandwich board signs on the sidewalk with some sort of "fuck the billionaires, support small businesses" messaging, but for some idiotic reason, it has the faces of those billionaires on it, so every time I see it, I just get angry.
It’s like when I go to vendor halls at conventions and half the vendorsany store that's not a mega-department store all the items are repackaged aliexpress/temu items
ftfy
TBH, the US has been middle-manning economically depressed labor for cheap goods for decades. It just turns out that China is way better at it than we are.
Alibaba/express just made it a marketplace where companies could do it with zero friction.
I'm fine with the massive Chinese booths like that at our flea market. We get some useful stuff for cheap. But in general it turns me off. Our local Goodwills now sell bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese imports for the same prices as the next better sort of thing.
At the risk of being down voted to oblivion, I don't mind if they use AI to touch up actual photos of their food, like improve background , lighting etc.
Note the photo has to be original though.
However, if they use AI to generate the whole photo, that's a problem.
Eh. They think it's much better than what they had, and probably can't tell it's AI generated. They paid a local "graphic designer" or even had their kid do it.
The more "mom and pop" they are, the more I forgive them.
Local chain restaurants should know better than to use AI images on their menu, though. Not that I eat out anymore.
Recently saw an AI photobooth. No one was using it, they were taking their own pictures instead.
Why the fuck would I pay you to stick a prompt in when I could do it myself if I really wanted an AI generated picture? You may have cut some of your costs, but now your final product has no value to it.
What's an AI photobooth? I'm just imagining a booth where you have your photo taken and it prints a totally unrelated AI-generated photo. Like, you go for a passport photo and get a picture of Marie Curie and the Hulk windsurfing on the Moon.
A lot of marketing material for a product is provided by the manufacturers of a product. Small shops, at-least from my knowledge, don’t have the resources to create marketing material. So blaming them doesn’t really work unless they are making their own products (like restaurants, hand-crafted items, etc).
went antiquing recently. store was large and had dedicated vendor booths. half of them had shitty AI generated "vintage" art.
I was thoroughly disgusted.
though, there was a large booth filled with books going back to the early 1800s and woodworking tools in reasonable condition. most books were poetry, but there were some first edition engineering code books there as well.
If you're a regular there, I think it's reasonable to contact them and say that you go there often and are bothered by the AI. "I started coming here regularly because it felt authentic". "You guys don't feel authentic anymore, and I'm disappointed" or more strongly "and I'm thinking of taking my business someplace that cares enough about their customers to put in the effort." "I wish you'd go back to the way you used to do things." Etc.
Assuming we're really talking about a small business, it's very possible someone will listen.
I reach out to small businesses all the time working on OpenStreetMap, and (obviously with selection bias for the ones who respond) they're usually just pretty nice-seeming people trying their best with what they have.
Edit: One thing I think I should've emphasized isn't just to say "please stop using AI" but that specifically "I liked it better the way you used to do it." or outright, with no comparison, "I liked the way you used to do it". "It made you unique." That is, give them a concrete alternative. For a lot of people, AI, like plagiarism (because it is), is a tool used when someone thinks their voice isn't good enough. It helps to try to convince them that it is enough and that they not only don't need AI but that it's harming the unique identity you enjoyed by making them blend in with everyone else.
Edit 2: I didn't think to include this before, but like obviously, be honest. If it won't upend your business there, don't say that it will; consider real effects it'll have, like "I don't know that I want to recommend this to friends anymore." If you've only been there five times, don't be afraid to say that; "I've shopped/eaten/whatever at your establishment several times, and [...]". If you're asking somebody to be authentic, you not only owe it to them to do the same, but it's probably a more effective strategy. They'll probably be more moved by Bobby Jones (43) who likes to come in for a burger every couple months after work and just doesn't like the vibe anymore than their biggest fan they've never seen, the oilman in from Dallas who spends $20,000/month at their establishment and is so simply appalled that they cannot in good conscience return until the Burger Shack de-lobotomizes their mascot design.
I recently saw a local store with "we have the best fruit" handwritten on a piece of paper. I don't think the alternative of AI poster is a poster designed by a local artist for them. It's AI poster or no poster at all. You may prefer no poster but I'm not bothered by AI in such cases.
It’s AI poster or no poster at all. You may prefer no poster
I'm also on team 'no poster'.
I'm far more likely to buy fruit from that place with a handwritten sign on a piece of paper than I am from someplace with a shitty AI slop picture of what a robot thinks fruit looks like. If you're going to have pictures of your product, it had better be actual pictures of the product I'm actually buying. I don't want to see some AI idealized picture of it -- I want to see what it actually looks like. And, no, you don't need to hire a local artist for that. You've got product to sell? You've got a phone in your pocket? Take a fucking photo of it. Put that photo on your poster. Done. No money spent on artists.
Honestly a photo of a couple fruits in perfect condition is not an accurate representation either. It gives the same amount of information as an AI poster: zero. You're getting lies either way. Perhaps best to just accept that filler images on advertising material is always going to be inaccurate, whether it's AI or not.
I will never understand thr people that think artists are going to be paid by small businesses thst are using AI, it seems as idiotic as the antipiracy laws that think everyone thst pirates is a lost sale
Im with you! Unfortunately, a lot of small business owners are the most capitalist minded people around. That was a very sad revelation for me in my earlier adulthood. Just gotta keep searching for the good ones because they are around.
Surely, these small business owners won't throw a fit when consumers choose Amazon over their shop. After all, it's cheaper and more convenient, right?
Artists use technology?! Surely you must be mistaken! I thought they were all cave dwellers, frightened by electricity and the ghosts that must be haunting all machines.
Oh, wait, no. That's the Amish. We're both thinking of the Amish.
The Amish use plenty of modern tech (vaccines and fridges for insulin are great examples). They merely reject modern tech when they perceive it divides their community. They aren’t afraid of technology, they resent technology that isolates people. We could learn from this.
I was really disappointed. Since I'm probably losing my job, I basically don't go anywhere any more, but went out for wife's birthday. The place we went started selling pizza and, from a distance, the small poster looked fine. I got closer and it was disgustingly unnatural (and also had "eastablished 1859" (I forget the exact date, but mid-19th-century) for the place that was like 6 years old). We decided to have dinner elsewhere.
It's not hard! They need only take some decent pics and throw em into a document. Hell they can even put some text to remind people that the picture is authentic rather than AI trash from their competitors.
Most customers are not Lemmy users. Slapping some pics into a document and just printing that out has never looked good. That was more acceptable for small businesses in the past, but now it's so cheap and easy to make it look more professional using some AI prompts. Skipping that step looks like much lower effort.
It's fine to hate AI, but when someone has a family to feed and employees to pay, it's understandable if they have to be a bit more open-minded.
I don't think the AI prompt is the issue. The problem with these shit posters is using fake food or fake pictures. I want authenticity and refusing to show it over some disingenuous CGI slop is just plain bad.
It's perfectly fine for menus not to have any pictures at all, so I really don't see the point in fake pictures since it gives me the same information.
I can't afford to pay twice as much locally because it comes out of my grocery budget. If I find a good deal locally, that's nice. If I find it online only, well, it's necessary.
You can get principled on that but then also walk out if they have a phone.
You're not using one are you?
Do they know where those precious metals come from and how they're mined? No.
Most of these people are also blissfully unaware of any AI problems except them possibly taking over the world.
They don't even need to understand it, It's just some cool thingy computers do these days.
Then back to their administration or the facebook.
Average shopkeepers are busy running their shop.
They're not having ethical debates on Lemmy.
My main concern is the fact that if they use AI for themselves, they will cut every corner known to man when they provide their service to me. I can't expect an AI slop user to provide me with something of quality, if they can't even make their slop not look awfully like slop. At least I shouldn't be able to tell it's slop.
I find that a bad argument.
They are not designers, it is not their field.
If anything it might be that they are too busy with getting better at what they do to waste time on trivial stuff.
It's like saying this or that famous actor must be shit at his job because he's out in a track suit and crocs.
It's still a local business so why abandon that because no one there has the creative ability to make "cool" looking ads?
AI for the masses means they can "draw" stuff, even without any artistic ability.
You might mention your dislike of their using AI - and offer your artistic services instead. Shunning business because of their lack of creative ability is kind of silly... made even worse if their product is good and what you want.
In the instance of a restaurant, "market research" consists of eating there. CGI (AI's public interface; menus, advertisements, menu displays (as have been in fast food chains for decades) - none of that matters if the food is inedible.
That's kind of where I was coming from. I give a shit if they've got god fucking a unicorn, AI style, in the front window if their flautas and tamales are GOOD. Or their Bün is good. Or their chili cheese dog with pickles and jalapenos is delicious. Or they are the only place to get a Hang Ten with a pocket. Or ALL the Vans. etc.
Mention it to them. Tell them your opinion. Do it correctly, expound on the excellence of their product - some of the best you've ever had - and opine to them you feel AI involvement in their establishment lessens the establishment while the food remains excellent or the product quality remains.
Diplomacy. At the local level. If you're on about homie depot or ded lobsters or wallymart - fuggitabout. If you're going to shop there - deal with it. Think of that slop as pablum for the droolers. Well, maybe not all droolers, but you get the idea.
Nah, it's a testament to no matter what you do, some people would rather be miserable and "make a statement" than to just forget the damn ai art and go inside the damn restaurant.
Why doesn't the owner just forget the AI AND TAKE A FUCKING PICTURE OF THE FOOD THEY'RE MAKING ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I've been to plenty of restaurants THAT TAKE PHOTOS OF THEIR FOOD and it's just as capable of being bad than if it was ai. Stay mad though, I'm sure it'll change because of your anger.
While I agree with the whole ai is ruining shit argument, I'm just saying I'm not going to punish a LOCAL MOM AND POP SHOP for using AI. Instead of boycotting them, why not talk to them about why AI is bad and offer to make their damn menu for them. Instead you pack up your chairs and say Nope! And then go complain about it behind a screen. DO SOMETHING rather than SAYING SOMETHING.
...also, your image of others as "people who prefer to be miserable" rather than people who prefer hand made art, or art that hasn't been stolen and used for profit by billionaires, or art that wasn't created by polluting the planet... Is it's self, a miserable illusion of others.
So you, yourself are choosing the miserable viewpoint.
Personally I'm glad people have a sense of justice, and pay attention to the news and care about issues of morality and climate survival.
I like people fighting billionaires, and fighting for the environment. I think they're great, and that your view point - is the flawed and weaker one.
Miserable meaning you just HAD to post something about it. I'm all for fighting billionaires, BUT TYPING IN ALL CAPS AT AN ONLINE STRANGER ISN'T FIGHTING BILLIONAIRES.
That wasn't the order of events, you spoke up on behalf of AI and models trained by billionaire companies destroying the planet THEN you (gasp) got an all caps response (the pain!).... Telling people to just accept it.
Now you're pretending like that was the start of it, or the part that has harmful or world scale implications.
It's not. The support for AI companies does.
P.S I didn't all caps you, I'm not the same person, so stop saying "YOU just had to ALL CAPS ME".
If you're too lazy to photograph the food you produce day in and day out, I don't wanna find out where else you'll cut corners. It doesn't take much effort to pop a plate on a cutting board or white poster board and snap a shot with your phone.
Because in addition to already running your own business, you should also be a ad exec and a artist.
That’s what running your own business is. You do as much as possible by yourself so you don’t have to share the profits. What would these people have done before AI? They would have had to figure it out. And their solution—whatever it was—would have been more tasteful than AI slop.
The slop poster isn't really replacing an 'ad exec', so it's about 'artist'.
A common scenario people have posted is when they GenAI up some food pictures. Given they could have snapped pictures of the food they cook with a cell phone pretty much instantly, this particularly doesn't inspire confidence in their food.
Related is if they GenAI up their menu, then it can get confusing/weird as the content sometimes doesn't quite match what the restauraunt actually does. Which makes me realize how lazy they are about accuracy.
The other case I've seen is them using image gen to put out a 'mascot' character. I suppose this is less critically on point, but compared to someone who skipped the 'mascot' gimmick altogether or someone who at least charmingly made an attempt, it's a bit of a turn-off.
To me, this is a valid use for AI. You can get a decently professional looking poster made inexpensively. Inexpensive is what small businesses need, and this way, they can compete with the big guys. Their only other options are to pay big bucks that they might not be able to afford or make their own, which will likely look crappy. I'm fine with it.
Our local high school uses AI to make posters for sports events and I'm cool with that too. I'd rather they use AI to make posters than to use their budget on someone to make it professionally.
But it's not. Posters for a high school don't need to look professional. They need to be done by someone learning to use their skills to make cool looking posters. AI poster look fucking ass.
Except they're not doing this. They're using the first piece of crap that ChatGPT spits out and throwing that up, and it's clearly, obviously AI-generated, which is incredibly off-putting.
The reality is that knocking a mom & pop for using ai generated junk is fucking stupid. They're not a corpo mega giant like walmart that could afford a graphic designer. Get off your fucking high horse.
Great job! I think i'll join so that every mom and pop goes out of business and then we're left with massive mega corps who again, wil just use ai slop. What a plan!!! Every main street in the US will go under because grandma used AI to make a flyer. Stupid dipshit.
You're using a piece of software in 2026. I can guarantee you that lemmyworld uses AI in some section of it's stack and I'd be willing to bet that bakery uses ai for accounting. So it's okay for you to use AI developed software but not for a mom and pop? Go delete your account and get out of here with this bullshit.
Yes, it's stupid to make a judgement on a store based on the use of AI marketing materials. The AI hate game has officially reached poser status, people jumping on the bandwagon for clout.
I reject the idea that shopping at a business is "support". Like buying chicken nuggets at the gas station is some kind of civic responsibility; I'm a patron.
Capitalists have actually convinced people that shopping is a moral act. In America, we don't protest in the street. We burn our Nikes in a Tic Tock.
Actually wtf lmao. Capitalists just want your money, they don't give a fuck about morals.
By purchasing a product, you are directly financially supporting whoever you purchase said product from. The profits from that transaction will contribute to them being able to continue their business.
This is like, really incredibly basic shit. Are you real??
We live in a capitalist society. Money equals power. Giving a place your money effectively contributes to their power. Unfortunately that means it's not entirely unreasonable to equate patronage with support and it's generally reasonable to draw moral conclusions based on what people support.
Obviously it shouldn't be the only or primary way we engage in activism, but boycotting or shifting patronage is a reasonable part of a political movement under capitalism. Sometimes patronage cannot be helped, but we should do what we can to support places (sometimes financially) that best align with our morals.
Local is still better than giving your money to evil corp.
And honestly, local shops struggle against bigger corps. They don't have graphic design artists on hand to make posters. What are you expecting them to do.
The shops that don't have AI generated posters usually have menus and posters that are years out of date because it costs too much to update them.
Couldn't they simply take some pictures of the items/services they provide? Then PowerPoint all that shit together in a pleasing format? You dont need to hire Picasso for fucks sake.
Powerpoint isn't free. And using it is not simple. Small busniess owners often work substantially more than 40 hours a week. Looking down on them because they didn't want to spend another 5 or more hours learning powerpoint seems pretty entitled.
Right, but asking a local business owner, like a mom and popwho run a restaurant to even know what powerpoint is... is pushing it. Expecting them to know there is a free alternative is very unlikely.
Have you ever met someone who doesn't work on a computer all day?
Here is a link to the us census data showing that 1 in 7, or over 18 million people don't have a laptop or pc in their house. Not everyone lives and breathes by computers.
I'm bothered, but i can't fully blame them, as they probably have someone else did it for them. I've seen a lot of sign/poster/banner designer these day used AI to do the graphic and print, they stopped offering designing since they've figured out they can do this easily. So people who need stuff made and printed either have their stuff made with AI, or they have to do it themselves.
I've seen designer made a simple "now hiring" sign with AI, which result in shit silhouette that isn't readable far, instead of simply "NOW HIRING" with whatever design software. Design is dead.
I'm not bothered. They are small local shops. The owners are shopkeepers and not graphic designers. Graphic design is hard, not everybody can do that on their own. Many of them have trouble maintaining even a basic website with their opening hours. Many shops do not have the budget to hire a graphic designer for every task.
There now is a tech that allows them to create reasonably good looking signs. And that is fine.
Not sure why you were downvoted, when what you said is true.
Many small businesses ride the razor's edge in finances, and if AI can help even just a little, I see nothing wrong with it.
Edit after a few days:
All these downvotes, yet no discussion. Nothing to back up the reasons.
Is it really as simple as, "wahhh, AI bad, me no like comment"?
Listen, do I like that AI data centers are chewing up resources left and right, and is sucking in everything anyone has ever done online in past 30 years since the Internet went public?
No, of course not.
Large companies need to put some serious brakes on expansion, and should scale back what is already in place.
But do I also see some good that AI can deliver? Yes I can.
If some medical company comes out tomorrow with a novel new drug that could safely eliminate the autoimmune disease that I, and thousands of others, suffer with, and they said, "This new drug was created and successfully tested by AI, and has been 100% peer approved.", am I going to turn it down solely because AI was involved?
Not a chance.
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And their prices are 15-30% higher than any place else. And their customer service sucks. And the only employees are high school kids because they only pay minimum wage. And their hours are 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, Mon-Fri, so you have to take time off work just to go there.
At least that's how it is for me where I live. It's a wonder any of them are still in business. The saddest part is, most of them say shit like, "Well at least we don't have Bidenomics to worry about anymore. Things were way worse then."
I expect higher prices when I'm trying to shop local. I know they can't compete on price. I'm willing to pay the premium specifically to support small business.
Sure, restricted hours kind of suck, but like...I'm not going to hold wanting to find work/life balance against them.
Customer service is hit or miss anywhere. Really, I think the idea of customer service has mostly gone out the window everywhere. It sucks because HS kids (and anyone else working these jobs) aren't being taught these skills. With a small business, at least I can have a nice little conversation with the owner even if they're socially awkward. People skills are hard. Obviously there is a line in there somewhere that goes into shitty service or bad attitude.
I do plenty of shopping at chains, but it's important to me to throw money at small businesses. I've watched my city grow a lot in the last 30 years and the only thing keeping it interesting are the local businesses.
I mean, I still shop those places when I can. But it's usually extra effort for a worse experience.
And the checkout system is an iPad. With tip prompt, even if it’s just a store.
I've seen some places being more self conscious about this lately and no longer do the tip prompt (or literally pick up the thing themselves and hit "no tip" before handing it over).
Which goes to show that shame can still move the needle sometimes.
Restaurants using AI for food menu is a sign of bad quality.
The best pizza I ever had was from a hole-in-the-wall place in Montreal with a layer of grease in the windows, thick cobwebs covered in dead flies, and an air-conditioner black with mold.
If anyone cares, or remembers, it was Rock And Roll Pizza on Bleury, where the Spectrum used to be. In front of the NYKS.
It was a Persian guy running the place. One day I convinced a Persian co-worker to eat there. I guess he gave shit to the owner because the next day the place was a lot cleaner.
Basically they made some kind of shawarma pizza that was out of this world.
Oh and the business next door sold sex dolls, there was a fully inflated transexual doll in that window.
I miss that Montreal. I don't like the crappy generic condo abomination that's there now.
So anyways, if greasy windows and dead spiders didn't turn me off, what does it say that seeing some generic gross AI art turns me off?
(I just remembered another MTL pizza place with greasy windows and dead flies that was so amazing a guy drove from the South Shore just to eat there.)
I also miss when cities weren't condo oblivions and had character. I really felt this. And the pizza sounded amazing BTW.
Montreal is just becoming a densified condo tower hellscape.
There's a place near me that made amazing chicken parmigiana, pasta, and pizzas. Went back recently and they've replaced their entire menu with nonsense ai slop. Got a pizza anyway and it was awful, literally had a chunk of bone left in the toppings.
Why? Do you assume that means there are robots in the kitchen?
I think it's a sign that they don't have their own marketing department.
Instant walkout. If they’ve already started a dialogue, I (respectfully) let them know why I’m not buying—otherwise I don’t bother. I’d literally rather see a shitty MS Paint drawing than an AI generated picture.
Are you using ai to write this??
Edit: asking because of the emdash but I respect that the op is not an AI. I just had to ask 🤣
I’m using i to write this.
FN A BROTHER
Just checking because of the emdash 🤣
Dude... alt-gr+dash, or cmd+dash or alt+dash depending on your flavor of OS/keyboard layout. The whole em-dash = ai is so annoying to me cause I've been using em-dashes way before LLMs came to spoil the fun.
forreal, it's one of my favorite ways to break up a sentence. it's also stupid to accuse of Ai for one piece of grammar, when there's typically multiple tells to pay attention to when it comes to Ai.
let's not forget that llms were originally trained on human-made text too. we are the ones who made the patterns first. llms simply regurgitate it
That's why I ask! I respect that real people use it. It's a valid punctuation
Back before llms poisoned it (and I still used Windows), I had the alt code for em dash memorized (prob still have the muscle memory to do it, but not currently at a numpad) because I really liked using them in papers I had to write for school. I read lots of books back then, and recognized how much I preferred using em dashes to commas in specific cases.
I hate that I can't use them anymore lest I be mistaken for someone who uses llms
Or on the X Window System:
⇧ Shift+AltGr(aka. multi key), then--.I’m on an iPhone, which autocorrects two dashes (- -) to an emdash.
My bad! I learned something today
No wtf?
It's worse when their menu pictures have the glitch where it makes things look like triptaphobia? I forget how it's spelled and I'm not going to look it up for obvious reasons...
Trypophobia? Went to a restaurant that had ai menu pictures that looked like everything was made of bugs. They looked absolutely disgusting. At that point it wasn't even about not liking ai, i simply lost my apetite looking at it.
That's the one. Same reaction. They're lucky I didn't puke lol
It's like they all use one model that can't figure out french fries, hash browns, or lettuce.
This place has a $35 crab cake sandwich on the menu and can't manage to take a picture of the fucking thing.
Yeah. Reminds me of this place that tried to advertise their opening on a small sub on Reddit. So they're opening in six months, have entirely generated website, and have the gall to put two posts on the front page. Like I said this was a very small sub. So of course we roasted the shit out of them. I think my favorite was, anyone want to place bets on how fast they'll close?
Waffles. AI waffles always looked so cursed.
Oh yeah. I think that was the place I had in mind. Some sort of breakfast place and I had to just close it.
Oh yeah like it generates the images all roughly textured? I think it's like a reaction to generated images usually looking too smooth, but they just ended up deep frying them in uncanny.
That's what you get when you use ai to upscale ai images.
Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation
If they generate AI slop, they're supporting the big corporations.
Edit: damn, that's a lot of AI bros trying to make themselves feel better with "nuance" and "lesser evil" arguments down in the comments. I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.
You can get an AI Poster created for negligible amount of money. Maybe even a free trial.
Unless you've verified somehow that that company uses AI in abundance and not just a few posters, you're just making assumptions.
If they use AI for a few posters, where's the guarantee that they will actually put effort into their main job? The kind of person that cheaps out by using AI is not the one I want to be paying.
Again, you're just making assumptions.
They may or may not be accurate assumptions, but if they change your decision making to instead shop at mega-corp instead of local, they're ultimately harmful assumptions imo.
Believe it or not, not everyone is keen on sloppifying everything they do. Local businesses that don't use AI exist. And you can help by not normalizing the slop.
Yeah so small business without AI slop is clearly better, it's just that small business with AI slop still supports big business less than you supporting big business directly.
Does it, though? Small business still has more money to throw to corporations than individual people.
A small business with an AI poster is still better than a big business with an AI poster.
And you czn be sure those big businesses are using way more AI
Yes, getting stabbed in the arm is better than getting stabbed in the throat. Doesn't mean I should go and get stabbed in the arm.
My reasoning was that when you buy from a big business, then 100% of what you spend goes there, while less than 100% of your spending go to big business if you buy from a small business that supports big businesses itself.
It doesn't make sense to compare the total amount a small business contributes to a big business with the total amount an individual person contributes, unless you have some further factors you think I have failed to take into account.
Why wouldn't it make sense? If I want to minimize the amount of support corporate LLMs get, it absolutely makes sense to stop endorsing other businesses that use it.
The original claim I made was that supporting small business is better than directly supporting big businesses. You are 100% right about minimising the amount corporate LLMs get, it's just that your responding to my comparison of small business vs big business. What you want to do is to support neither of them, so I wouldn't really spend more time analysing what I said since I don't think it's relevant to you.
Yes, I don't really support this "lesser evil" type argument, since both options in the end proliferate corporate slop. If a business can't exist without using corporate LLMs, it shouldn't exist.
Either you support small business directly and large corporations indirectly or you just support large corporations directly or you walk out in to the middle of the woods, withdraw from society, and homestead. There is not way to participate in today's society without indirectly supporting corporations.
Sure, feel free to go in to every small shop and argue with them why they should not use AI. But supporting a multiple small shops that use AI for posters is better than giving all your money to Walmart.
This statement is the correct option.
Or I find a small shop that doesn't use AI and support them. And if you think they don't exist any more, well, you helped make that happen.
You get to pick the hill that you die on, but what I am saying is even if they don't use AI - they still use bookkeeping software, they still file taxes, they still order supplies, they have an email, website and someplace they store documents.
So AI can be your hill that is fine, but you are still picking the lesser evil in other ways. As you said, "I guess if you don't see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say."
Took me a bit to realize multiple of my comments are getting lengthy replies by the same person, and that said person isn't either of the commenters I was replying to.
You, of course, get to pick whatever criteria you want for supporting or not supporting businesses. But I don't appreciate walls of text trying to shame me into supporting AI slop.
As I've said before (as you've surely seen since you've seemingly scoured this entire thread to find people who disagree with you), there are businesses that don't support big corporations in their operations. And if you can't find any in your local area (presumably the US?), then you can live with the knowledge that your "lesser evil" slop-normalizing rhetoric helped make that happen.
I didn't realize I was also replying to you over and over. I also understand that you are purposely missing the point. So I'll leave it at that.
If your "point" is defending slop, then yes, let's leave it at that.
You helped make that happen by walking away from small shop and walking directly to a corporation.
You must have been replied to the wrong person, or else blatantly making shit up. Maybe stop using LLM to generate comments.
No, if they are using AI then what is wrong with the actual item? They are either lazy (not someone I want making food, or service, or item.)
Or they are committing fruad by creating a image that doesn't match what they are selling...
That is also valid.
Why? Isn’t the small business supporting a big AI corporation? So a big corporation is getting supported either way?
Small businesses aren’t inherently cool and good, many of them would prefer to be large corporations, they just don’t know how to get there.
Creating an AI Poster might literally just be one month of some $5 AI sub or a free trial. There's no way to verify how much they're actually supporting the AI Company.
And while your second point is valid, if you really cared about supporting local you'd simply do some research on which local businesses are running with a community-centric approach. Which ones are run by decent people. Etc. That will likely but not definitely exclude businesses that use AI anyway.
I'd also just rather support a local shithead than a billionaire shithead 🤷
The worst is food places. Motherfucker, I don't need to see a representation of what pepperoni pizza looks like. I already know what pepperoni pizza looks like.
I want to see what your pepperoni pizza looks like.
I did let a place I go semi regularly know that I choose not to eat dessert recently because their dessert menu had all AI images. The next time I was there the specials were just text (like their standard menu)
That's sad. You criticized them into submission.
This is voting with your wallet. I don't see how this is significantly different from boycotting a company for any sort of reason, aside from the difference in scale.
The company was advertising the product in a way this person disagreed with, this person informed the company that they were not going to purchase said product for said reason, then the company seemed to value them and/or others like them enough to change their advertising.
They shared an opinion, businesses typically value customer feedback, get over yourself
Sad? I could come up with dozens of words to describe the situation. Sad ain't one of them.
I hate even more that I get there and they tell me "you know you can get it cheaper on Amazon" or "we no longer stock it but you can get it on Amazon". Bud, I can get every single thing in your store on Amazon and yes, it is often cheaper but I am trying to keep local stores and local jobs alive.
This happened to me a few weeks ago when I was looking through thrift shops to put together a Halloween costume. I went looking store to store for overalls, asked the employees if they had any suggestions. The elderly ladies had legit suggestions (that simply didn’t work out for me), but the young staff just went, “Try Amazon?”
The sad truth is, the youngin’s never lived in a world without Amazon. They don’t know the local stores like the older folks do. Perhaps they’ve never gone from thrift store to thrift store looking for treasures (even if they work in a thrift store.) It’s possible the idea of “avoiding Amazon” has never occurred to them.
That's crazy. But on the bright side, that means they're not poaching all the good shit as soon as it arrives lol
employees justifiably hate their employers
and small businesses typically abuse their employees far worse than mega corps which is saying something in a world of Walmarts and Amazon's
the sweet spot is a company that's small enough to maintain a culture and the owners still have a vision but big enough they have to follow the rules pay taxes and have an hr department
of course there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism but I didn't create this world just suffering along with everyone else
Sweet spot is shops that require staff with some level of skills or knowledge which makes them a bit more difficult to replace.
Some stores don't understand that they can't just sell the high margin stuff. They have to also sell the high volume/low margin stuff that generates the foot traffic.
If I stop going to your store for 98% of my shopping, why would I go there for the last 2%?
It would bother me too.
But not to the point of withdrawing my support, assuming their business has nothing to do with IT and AI otherwise.
Doing your posters with AI nowadays is the same as using ClipArt+ComicSans in days of yore.
OK, it's not exactly the same. So then I'd have explain it to them. "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
That said, I rarely support business just because it's local and small. There needs to be at least one more reason. I have seen too many local & small businesses & owners that exploit and pollute and corrupt just like their big counterparts.
They never built a clip art data center in my backyard.
Plus you still had to creative use the clip art. So there was human assembly there. Plus a human most definitely created the clip art in the first place.
So overall, not really the same
There needs to be some respectful images that you can reply with on social media when you see local businesses using AI images just to make the point that if they wont hire local for their advertising why should I shop local to keep them in business.
If we talk about groceries - from my experience there’s no reason to shop at big chains if there is a farmers market nearby. I bring my own reusable packaging for solid stuff and bottles for milk and juice. And people who run it are usually chill and just doing their thing.
But as we venture into tech territory - it becomes really muddy, many of people running small IT businesses in here are pompous arses. Like dude runs some musty basement and thinks of himself a Bill Gates.
milk seems to be much cheaper and available in skim varieties from the big chains as opposed to smaller stores, I still mostly shop at the smaller store though because it has cheaper vegetables and better meat
Well, we here have a situation, where giving soapy baths to pigs (yes, that’s the job) at local farm may earn one 3 times the salary of entry IT job. Simply because it’s that hard to find workers these days, and don’t get me started on actual technical jobs - it’s near impossible to find a lathe machinist today.
So yeah, it all… depends… And yeah, there is one local business that I avoid, because it’s run by a guy associated with local conspiracy theorist clown. So yeah, I do little investigations to make sure I don’t give money to people who will then use it to make world a worse place.
There's a shop near me that has one of those sandwich board signs on the sidewalk with some sort of "fuck the billionaires, support small businesses" messaging, but for some idiotic reason, it has the faces of those billionaires on it, so every time I see it, I just get angry.
It’s like when I go to vendor halls at conventions and half the vendors are repackaged aliexpress/temu items
ftfy
TBH, the US has been middle-manning economically depressed labor for cheap goods for decades. It just turns out that China is way better at it than we are.
Alibaba/express just made it a marketplace where companies could do it with zero friction.
I'm fine with the massive Chinese booths like that at our flea market. We get some useful stuff for cheap. But in general it turns me off. Our local Goodwills now sell bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese imports for the same prices as the next better sort of thing.
Damn I'm missing that "ugly" stuff made in Paint and typed in Comic Sans more and more every day.
At the risk of being down voted to oblivion, I don't mind if they use AI to touch up actual photos of their food, like improve background , lighting etc.
Note the photo has to be original though.
However, if they use AI to generate the whole photo, that's a problem.
If I see AI posters, menus, or signage, I don’t spend money. Period.
You are not alone. Its a surefire way of telling me they do not give a shit about their business. Its honestly nice that AI makes it easier to spot ;)
Eh. They think it's much better than what they had, and probably can't tell it's AI generated. They paid a local "graphic designer" or even had their kid do it.
The more "mom and pop" they are, the more I forgive them.
Local chain restaurants should know better than to use AI images on their menu, though. Not that I eat out anymore.
Recently saw an AI photobooth. No one was using it, they were taking their own pictures instead.
Why the fuck would I pay you to stick a prompt in when I could do it myself if I really wanted an AI generated picture? You may have cut some of your costs, but now your final product has no value to it.
What's an AI photobooth? I'm just imagining a booth where you have your photo taken and it prints a totally unrelated AI-generated photo. Like, you go for a passport photo and get a picture of Marie Curie and the Hulk windsurfing on the Moon.
Your imagination of it is pretty spot on tbh
That's the thing that really gets me about these folks.
You slop up something for yourself and you are happy with it, ok.
But then you expect me to engage/pay for your zero-effort AI output that I could have just gotten myself direct from the same place you did? Why?
Yup, I genuinely refuse to support businesses actively using AI.
I have way more respect for chicken scratch drawn with a Sharpie on a piece of cardboard than AI “art.”
I’m mostly bothered that they for some reason always have that unsettling trypophobia filter.
A lot of marketing material for a product is provided by the manufacturers of a product. Small shops, at-least from my knowledge, don’t have the resources to create marketing material. So blaming them doesn’t really work unless they are making their own products (like restaurants, hand-crafted items, etc).
went antiquing recently. store was large and had dedicated vendor booths. half of them had shitty AI generated "vintage" art.
I was thoroughly disgusted.
though, there was a large booth filled with books going back to the early 1800s and woodworking tools in reasonable condition. most books were poetry, but there were some first edition engineering code books there as well.
it was my happy space.
Unfortunately the percentage of average people who are bothered this is pretty low.
Most people just view it as a cost-saving measure, which small businesses tend to do.
You can always go to big corporation who has plenty of money and can hire a painter.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
By people not supporting businesses who use AI instead of creating jobs for humans? No I'm not bothered by that at all.
Anything bigger than A2 is obnoxious
Yeah, using AI art for advertisements etc is lower bar than amateur throwing stuff together in paint, gimp, inkscape or some random office software.
You're not the only one bothered by this. But I'm having a hard time drawing a line in the sand for some of my favorite places.
If you're a regular there, I think it's reasonable to contact them and say that you go there often and are bothered by the AI. "I started coming here regularly because it felt authentic". "You guys don't feel authentic anymore, and I'm disappointed" or more strongly "and I'm thinking of taking my business someplace that cares enough about their customers to put in the effort." "I wish you'd go back to the way you used to do things." Etc.
Assuming we're really talking about a small business, it's very possible someone will listen.
I reach out to small businesses all the time working on OpenStreetMap, and (obviously with selection bias for the ones who respond) they're usually just pretty nice-seeming people trying their best with what they have.
Edit: One thing I think I should've emphasized isn't just to say "please stop using AI" but that specifically "I liked it better the way you used to do it." or outright, with no comparison, "I liked the way you used to do it". "It made you unique." That is, give them a concrete alternative. For a lot of people, AI, like plagiarism (because it is), is a tool used when someone thinks their voice isn't good enough. It helps to try to convince them that it is enough and that they not only don't need AI but that it's harming the unique identity you enjoyed by making them blend in with everyone else.
Edit 2: I didn't think to include this before, but like obviously, be honest. If it won't upend your business there, don't say that it will; consider real effects it'll have, like "I don't know that I want to recommend this to friends anymore." If you've only been there five times, don't be afraid to say that; "I've shopped/eaten/whatever at your establishment several times, and [...]". If you're asking somebody to be authentic, you not only owe it to them to do the same, but it's probably a more effective strategy. They'll probably be more moved by Bobby Jones (43) who likes to come in for a burger every couple months after work and just doesn't like the vibe anymore than their biggest fan they've never seen, the oilman in from Dallas who spends $20,000/month at their establishment and is so simply appalled that they cannot in good conscience return until the Burger Shack de-lobotomizes their mascot design.
The first mistake was going to a local business. #fsmallbusiness
I recently saw a local store with "we have the best fruit" handwritten on a piece of paper. I don't think the alternative of AI poster is a poster designed by a local artist for them. It's AI poster or no poster at all. You may prefer no poster but I'm not bothered by AI in such cases.
I'm also on team 'no poster'.
I'm far more likely to buy fruit from that place with a handwritten sign on a piece of paper than I am from someplace with a shitty AI slop picture of what a robot thinks fruit looks like. If you're going to have pictures of your product, it had better be actual pictures of the product I'm actually buying. I don't want to see some AI idealized picture of it -- I want to see what it actually looks like. And, no, you don't need to hire a local artist for that. You've got product to sell? You've got a phone in your pocket? Take a fucking photo of it. Put that photo on your poster. Done. No money spent on artists.
Honestly a photo of a couple fruits in perfect condition is not an accurate representation either. It gives the same amount of information as an AI poster: zero. You're getting lies either way. Perhaps best to just accept that filler images on advertising material is always going to be inaccurate, whether it's AI or not.
If it's an actual photo of the actual product, it's still far more accurate than some AI bullshit could ever be.
How so? Just because the store was able to procure one good fruit means nothing about the quality of the others.
It's still an actual image of an actual fruit, which they (presumably) did actually sell after taking the picture of it.
It may not be a very representative sample, but it least it is a sample, not a figment of a robot's imagination.
I'd argue that 0.0001 information is not meaningfully bigger than 0. So at least in that regard, I couldn't care less if they used AI
I will never understand thr people that think artists are going to be paid by small businesses thst are using AI, it seems as idiotic as the antipiracy laws that think everyone thst pirates is a lost sale
This is just another thing on the list of thigs that I dont like business doing.
Slop advertising itself is not enough to stop me supporting local business, but it is a mark against them should competition ever arrive.
It depends on the store. Small places run by one person, maybe I’d still go.
Big places, absolutely not. I saw an advertisement for a large law firm that was made with AI and that’s a big hell no from me.
Im with you! Unfortunately, a lot of small business owners are the most capitalist minded people around. That was a very sad revelation for me in my earlier adulthood. Just gotta keep searching for the good ones because they are around.
Surely, these small business owners won't throw a fit when consumers choose Amazon over their shop. After all, it's cheaper and more convenient, right?
Went to a festival recently, and nearly all pictures of food were AI, but what got me were the artists with AI signs.
Artists use technology?! Surely you must be mistaken! I thought they were all cave dwellers, frightened by electricity and the ghosts that must be haunting all machines.
Oh, wait, no. That's the Amish. We're both thinking of the Amish.
The Amish use plenty of modern tech (vaccines and fridges for insulin are great examples). They merely reject modern tech when they perceive it divides their community. They aren’t afraid of technology, they resent technology that isolates people. We could learn from this.
I was really disappointed. Since I'm probably losing my job, I basically don't go anywhere any more, but went out for wife's birthday. The place we went started selling pizza and, from a distance, the small poster looked fine. I got closer and it was disgustingly unnatural (and also had "eastablished 1859" (I forget the exact date, but mid-19th-century) for the place that was like 6 years old). We decided to have dinner elsewhere.
it's a vicious circle.
Same here
It's not easy to own a small business. Sometimes they just have to try whatever fits within the budget.
They got by until now.
Most of them didn't. Most still don't.
AI is not going to help them survive, and the attitudes people are expressing in this thread are part of why.
It's not hard! They need only take some decent pics and throw em into a document. Hell they can even put some text to remind people that the picture is authentic rather than AI trash from their competitors.
Most customers are not Lemmy users. Slapping some pics into a document and just printing that out has never looked good. That was more acceptable for small businesses in the past, but now it's so cheap and easy to make it look more professional using some AI prompts. Skipping that step looks like much lower effort.
It's fine to hate AI, but when someone has a family to feed and employees to pay, it's understandable if they have to be a bit more open-minded.
Neither does AI slop
It doesn't make it look more professional. It makes it look like they're cheapskates and assholes.
They're the same picture dot jif
I don't think the AI prompt is the issue. The problem with these shit posters is using fake food or fake pictures. I want authenticity and refusing to show it over some disingenuous CGI slop is just plain bad.
Also, I don't want to see what this dish/product looks like in theory, I want to see what I'm about to buy
I live in a rural town and 100% this is true. Gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, they all use AI for everything.
This is the way.
Agreed
There were food trucks at a street event here a few weeks ago and some of them had AI menu art. There is no less appealing menu than that.
It's perfectly fine for menus not to have any pictures at all, so I really don't see the point in fake pictures since it gives me the same information.
Gonna be every single one very soon. No one has PC skills anymore to make photos. Sad but hey, signmakers are all long dead now too.
Unless it's a shop that sells advertising posters I would not mind.
yes, you're the only one. not a single soul has ever complained about AI before you did with this post, OP.
Who the fuck is complaining about llms with words and not pitchforks
I complain by spending all my employers tokens on memes to post in teams.
Yep, I’d bail too. Support no one that uses AI where a human could have done the work. Local or not- fuck them.
Their artistic skills have nothing to do with their culinary skills.
Then don't put up ai art. Just put up a text menu.
Or marketing skills, or getting a feel for the room.
Can I pay with an AI picture of a credit card?
Willingness to put time and effort into understanding the experience the customer wants.
I am too
The "shop local" thing is just a bullshit attempt to prey on people's emotions and ethics.
I can't afford to pay twice as much locally because it comes out of my grocery budget. If I find a good deal locally, that's nice. If I find it online only, well, it's necessary.
Instant walk out, never again
You can get principled on that but then also walk out if they have a phone.
You're not using one are you?
Do they know where those precious metals come from and how they're mined? No.
Most of these people are also blissfully unaware of any AI problems except them possibly taking over the world.
They don't even need to understand it, It's just some cool thingy computers do these days.
Then back to their administration or the facebook.
Average shopkeepers are busy running their shop.
They're not having ethical debates on Lemmy.
The ethics is only one side.
My main concern is the fact that if they use AI for themselves, they will cut every corner known to man when they provide their service to me. I can't expect an AI slop user to provide me with something of quality, if they can't even make their slop not look awfully like slop. At least I shouldn't be able to tell it's slop.
I find that a bad argument. They are not designers, it is not their field.
If anything it might be that they are too busy with getting better at what they do to waste time on trivial stuff.
It's like saying this or that famous actor must be shit at his job because he's out in a track suit and crocs.
If they sell groceries they arent a distributor either. Or a producer. Or a transport company.
Point is, they hire someone that gets the job done right for all of us.
The minimum they can do is hire a beginner artist with no career to design their posters and other stuff. These guys take pennies anyway. Jesus.
What a pointless talking point.
It's still a local business so why abandon that because no one there has the creative ability to make "cool" looking ads?
AI for the masses means they can "draw" stuff, even without any artistic ability.
You might mention your dislike of their using AI - and offer your artistic services instead. Shunning business because of their lack of creative ability is kind of silly... made even worse if their product is good and what you want.
or, and hear me out, do market research to identify if what you're planning to do is a good idea.
when you're running a business, no matter the size, making decisions based on gut feeling is a terrible idea.
In the instance of a restaurant, "market research" consists of eating there. CGI (AI's public interface; menus, advertisements, menu displays (as have been in fast food chains for decades) - none of that matters if the food is inedible.
That's kind of where I was coming from. I give a shit if they've got god fucking a unicorn, AI style, in the front window if their flautas and tamales are GOOD. Or their Bün is good. Or their chili cheese dog with pickles and jalapenos is delicious. Or they are the only place to get a Hang Ten with a pocket. Or ALL the Vans. etc.
Mention it to them. Tell them your opinion. Do it correctly, expound on the excellence of their product - some of the best you've ever had - and opine to them you feel AI involvement in their establishment lessens the establishment while the food remains excellent or the product quality remains.
Diplomacy. At the local level. If you're on about homie depot or ded lobsters or wallymart - fuggitabout. If you're going to shop there - deal with it. Think of that slop as pablum for the droolers. Well, maybe not all droolers, but you get the idea.
Nah, it's a testament to no matter what you do, some people would rather be miserable and "make a statement" than to just forget the damn ai art and go inside the damn restaurant.
Why doesn't the owner just forget the AI AND TAKE A FUCKING PICTURE OF THE FOOD THEY'RE MAKING ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I've been to plenty of restaurants THAT TAKE PHOTOS OF THEIR FOOD and it's just as capable of being bad than if it was ai. Stay mad though, I'm sure it'll change because of your anger.
????
Baffling response. The point is none of this AI cancer is necessary.
While I agree with the whole ai is ruining shit argument, I'm just saying I'm not going to punish a LOCAL MOM AND POP SHOP for using AI. Instead of boycotting them, why not talk to them about why AI is bad and offer to make their damn menu for them. Instead you pack up your chairs and say Nope! And then go complain about it behind a screen. DO SOMETHING rather than SAYING SOMETHING.
Ahh "the customer is always wrong" motto...
...also, your image of others as "people who prefer to be miserable" rather than people who prefer hand made art, or art that hasn't been stolen and used for profit by billionaires, or art that wasn't created by polluting the planet... Is it's self, a miserable illusion of others.
So you, yourself are choosing the miserable viewpoint.
Personally I'm glad people have a sense of justice, and pay attention to the news and care about issues of morality and climate survival.
I like people fighting billionaires, and fighting for the environment. I think they're great, and that your view point - is the flawed and weaker one.
Miserable meaning you just HAD to post something about it. I'm all for fighting billionaires, BUT TYPING IN ALL CAPS AT AN ONLINE STRANGER ISN'T FIGHTING BILLIONAIRES.
That wasn't the order of events, you spoke up on behalf of AI and models trained by billionaire companies destroying the planet THEN you (gasp) got an all caps response (the pain!).... Telling people to just accept it.
Now you're pretending like that was the start of it, or the part that has harmful or world scale implications.
It's not. The support for AI companies does.
P.S I didn't all caps you, I'm not the same person, so stop saying "YOU just had to ALL CAPS ME".
Lmfao. My God. You win bro 👍
Because in addition to already running your own business, you should also be a ad exec and a artist.
Listen fuck the ai industry and what its doing, but can we fuck off with hating on the people who use it for what its worth right now?
Edit, to be clear, fuck off and suck a dick to everyone who replied to me.
No, we cant. I would rather see just plain times new roman text than that slop. Especially if its food related
If you're too lazy to photograph the food you produce day in and day out, I don't wanna find out where else you'll cut corners. It doesn't take much effort to pop a plate on a cutting board or white poster board and snap a shot with your phone.
That’s what running your own business is. You do as much as possible by yourself so you don’t have to share the profits. What would these people have done before AI? They would have had to figure it out. And their solution—whatever it was—would have been more tasteful than AI slop.
Everyone has like some of the most powerful cameras you can get in their pockets at all times.
There's no excuse, especially with restaurants. Just take a fucking photo before sending the food out for fuck sake.
The slop poster isn't really replacing an 'ad exec', so it's about 'artist'.
A common scenario people have posted is when they GenAI up some food pictures. Given they could have snapped pictures of the food they cook with a cell phone pretty much instantly, this particularly doesn't inspire confidence in their food.
Related is if they GenAI up their menu, then it can get confusing/weird as the content sometimes doesn't quite match what the restauraunt actually does. Which makes me realize how lazy they are about accuracy.
The other case I've seen is them using image gen to put out a 'mascot' character. I suppose this is less critically on point, but compared to someone who skipped the 'mascot' gimmick altogether or someone who at least charmingly made an attempt, it's a bit of a turn-off.
If they were using it for what it's good at, we wouldn't be upset.
This is french fries and coleslaw and crab cake sando with lettuce.
A business can log into the free version of Canva, type in what they want and come out with 90 different templates for their marketing and flyers.
To me, this is a valid use for AI. You can get a decently professional looking poster made inexpensively. Inexpensive is what small businesses need, and this way, they can compete with the big guys. Their only other options are to pay big bucks that they might not be able to afford or make their own, which will likely look crappy. I'm fine with it.
Our local high school uses AI to make posters for sports events and I'm cool with that too. I'd rather they use AI to make posters than to use their budget on someone to make it professionally.
But it's not. Posters for a high school don't need to look professional. They need to be done by someone learning to use their skills to make cool looking posters. AI poster look fucking ass.
In my experience school posters are made by the one person in the front office who knows a few basic bits of MS word.
I think the students should be making that? Isn't there an arts department? Or a student government?
Except they're not doing this. They're using the first piece of crap that ChatGPT spits out and throwing that up, and it's clearly, obviously AI-generated, which is incredibly off-putting.
OP needs to get off their high horse and join reality.
What reality? If its AI generated it has no value.
The reality is that knocking a mom & pop for using ai generated junk is fucking stupid. They're not a corpo mega giant like walmart that could afford a graphic designer. Get off your fucking high horse.
Don't care, not going to pay for it.
Great job! I think i'll join so that every mom and pop goes out of business and then we're left with massive mega corps who again, wil just use ai slop. What a plan!!! Every main street in the US will go under because grandma used AI to make a flyer. Stupid dipshit.
Plenty are not using AI too.
Bakery round the corner from where I work doesn't use AI or even poster. To advertise they fill the wall with bread, buns, pastries and cakes.
You're using a piece of software in 2026. I can guarantee you that lemmyworld uses AI in some section of it's stack and I'd be willing to bet that bakery uses ai for accounting. So it's okay for you to use AI developed software but not for a mom and pop? Go delete your account and get out of here with this bullshit.
Less bothered when its in the background. But when its the product or blatantly plastered over everything? Fuck that. It looks cheap and shit.
Yes, it's stupid to make a judgement on a store based on the use of AI marketing materials. The AI hate game has officially reached poser status, people jumping on the bandwagon for clout.
They love it here. It's like a past time. Hating AI is the closest thing Lemmy has to a sports team.
The lemmy luddites are my favorite squadron
Go ahead and keep your money as you see fit. The vast majority of people do not donate to Lemmy or their instance.
You're going to be increasingly bothered by everything going forward. Best to just let it go
I reject the idea that shopping at a business is "support". Like buying chicken nuggets at the gas station is some kind of civic responsibility; I'm a patron.
Capitalists have actually convinced people that shopping is a moral act. In America, we don't protest in the street. We burn our Nikes in a Tic Tock.
Actually wtf lmao. Capitalists just want your money, they don't give a fuck about morals.
By purchasing a product, you are directly financially supporting whoever you purchase said product from. The profits from that transaction will contribute to them being able to continue their business.
This is like, really incredibly basic shit. Are you real??
We live in a capitalist society. Money equals power. Giving a place your money effectively contributes to their power. Unfortunately that means it's not entirely unreasonable to equate patronage with support and it's generally reasonable to draw moral conclusions based on what people support.
Obviously it shouldn't be the only or primary way we engage in activism, but boycotting or shifting patronage is a reasonable part of a political movement under capitalism. Sometimes patronage cannot be helped, but we should do what we can to support places (sometimes financially) that best align with our morals.
Local is still better than giving your money to evil corp. And honestly, local shops struggle against bigger corps. They don't have graphic design artists on hand to make posters. What are you expecting them to do. The shops that don't have AI generated posters usually have menus and posters that are years out of date because it costs too much to update them.
Couldn't they simply take some pictures of the items/services they provide? Then PowerPoint all that shit together in a pleasing format? You dont need to hire Picasso for fucks sake.
Powerpoint isn't free. And using it is not simple. Small busniess owners often work substantially more than 40 hours a week. Looking down on them because they didn't want to spend another 5 or more hours learning powerpoint seems pretty entitled.
I honestly had no idea apparently some people pay for PowerPoint. 🤣
I'm sure there is an open source equivalent.
Right, but asking a local business owner, like a mom and popwho run a restaurant to even know what powerpoint is... is pushing it. Expecting them to know there is a free alternative is very unlikely.
You're coming up with bullshit excuses for peoples failings now.
Have you ever met someone who doesn't work on a computer all day?
Here is a link to the us census data showing that 1 in 7, or over 18 million people don't have a laptop or pc in their house. Not everyone lives and breathes by computers.
https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST5Y2024.S2801
How many of those people are business owners who can't design a fucking menu?
Maybe they should ask ChatGPT what powerpoint is.
Hey, that actually was funny.
I'm bothered, but i can't fully blame them, as they probably have someone else did it for them. I've seen a lot of sign/poster/banner designer these day used AI to do the graphic and print, they stopped offering designing since they've figured out they can do this easily. So people who need stuff made and printed either have their stuff made with AI, or they have to do it themselves.
I've seen designer made a simple "now hiring" sign with AI, which result in shit silhouette that isn't readable far, instead of simply "NOW HIRING" with whatever design software. Design is dead.
Seeing as you didn't make the meme and it's been around for a while, obviously not
I don't like it, but big corps are already getting away with it so I'm not judging too harshly.
Life is binary there can be no nuance
ohnoaihowterrible
get over yourself
I'm not bothered. They are small local shops. The owners are shopkeepers and not graphic designers. Graphic design is hard, not everybody can do that on their own. Many of them have trouble maintaining even a basic website with their opening hours. Many shops do not have the budget to hire a graphic designer for every task.
There now is a tech that allows them to create reasonably good looking signs. And that is fine.
There already was
Yeah and people have always bitched about handwritten signs. Signs made with a typewriter. Signs made with MS Publisher or Word Art and Comic Sans.
Not sure why you were downvoted, when what you said is true.
Many small businesses ride the razor's edge in finances, and if AI can help even just a little, I see nothing wrong with it.
Edit after a few days:
All these downvotes, yet no discussion. Nothing to back up the reasons.
Is it really as simple as, "wahhh, AI bad, me no like comment"?
Listen, do I like that AI data centers are chewing up resources left and right, and is sucking in everything anyone has ever done online in past 30 years since the Internet went public?
No, of course not.
Large companies need to put some serious brakes on expansion, and should scale back what is already in place.
But do I also see some good that AI can deliver? Yes I can.
If some medical company comes out tomorrow with a novel new drug that could safely eliminate the autoimmune disease that I, and thousands of others, suffer with, and they said, "This new drug was created and successfully tested by AI, and has been 100% peer approved.", am I going to turn it down solely because AI was involved?
Not a chance.