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.
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.
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?
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.
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
If I see AI posters, menus, or signage, I don’t spend money. Period.
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.
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.
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.
Slapping some pics into a document and just printing that out has never looked good
Neither does AI slop
make it look more professional
It doesn’t make it look more professional. It makes it look like they’re cheapskates and assholes.
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
Same here
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 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 ;)
Damn I’m missing that “ugly” stuff made in Paint and typed in Comic Sans more and more every day.
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.
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.
Honestly a photo of a couple fruits in perfect condition is not an accurate representation either.
If it’s an actual photo of the actual product, it’s still far more accurate than some AI bullshit could ever be.
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
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.
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.
Or on the X Window System:
⇧ Shift+AltGr(aka. multi key), then--.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
I’m on an iPhone, which autocorrects two dashes (- -) to an emdash.
My bad! I learned something today
No wtf?
