Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

blog.fiddery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 322 posts

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#51

Post by fwip »

floatrock wrote: post #20

We always expect what was promised to be different than what was delivered to some degree, but I'm not sure restaurants have fully weighed the expectations-vs-reality backlash this may cause... uncannily-wrong details aside for a sec, the AI pics always set michelin-level presentation expectations. The final promise-vs-plate pics in this post were pretty dramatic. There's always a class of restaurants where they don'…

I actually had the opposite reaction - the AI image looked grotesque, and the the real food was like "oh damn this looks like good food."

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#52

Post by boonzeet »

It doesn't seem to be as much a trend in the UK - fast food, takeaways etc have some leaking in of AI - but when I went to Korea I was blown away by how many restaurants had these AI style menus.

It's a shame because it takes away the choice of either seeing the real product, or imagining it - I'm left with this shitty generated impression of what the food won't look like.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#54

Post by joshstrange »

Ok, I'll say it. I like the new menu better.

I do not understand the author's aversion. Sure we can talk about "picture of food" vs "what was served" but have you been... anywhere? This is the reality of all food advertisement. I've never in my life been served a plate of food that perfectly matched the picture unless it was a user-uploaded image. Getting a decent idea of what the dish looks like is valuable (especially for unfamiliar cuisine, obviously not unfamiliar to the author but I'd wager unfamiliar to most patrons).

Being anti-LLM/AI for the sake of it is boring. Show me mistakes on the menu or a level of unreality higher than the food industry at large and I'll care but I'm not seeing the problem here.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#55

Post by mathw »

dev0p wrote: post #48

The loss of personality is real. The most heartbreaking ones I've seen are in schools, or anywhere that children are involved. For example, at my local preschool there was a wall flyer with information about what to bring the swimming pool. It had the most crudely drawn fishes and crabs and seahorses that I had ever seen. It was clear that whoever drew that had no prior experience with anything even remotely resembli…

Also why do they have sea life in it at all, surely that's not something that's meant to be in the pool.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#56

Post by square_usual »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #4
gegtik wrote: post #3

I do think that AI signage/advertising is the new signifier of low-effort, low-skill output and that is how it will be perceived by clientele. Similar to someone just scrawling a sandwich board sign in chalk (which at this point I would prefer). Businesses will stand out from a taste perspective by continuing to hire human effort to make recognisable human output.

Writing in signs and menus in chalk has been a signal for a high quality restaurant for as long as I can remember. With photos of the food, and/or ring bound menus being the worst.

Photos of the food, at least in the US, started with "immigrant" restaurants. When Thai/Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants started opening up in areas without high concentrations of those people, they'd put photos in the menu so you could see what you were getting since that wouldn't be clear from the names or descriptions in the menu. A lot of these restaurants were cheap, which is why I think you associate it with low-quality restaurants.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#57

Post by [deleted] »

mathw wrote: post #55
dev0p wrote: post #48

The loss of personality is real. The most heartbreaking ones I've seen are in schools, or anywhere that children are involved. For example, at my local preschool there was a wall flyer with information about what to bring the swimming pool. It had the most crudely drawn fishes and crabs and seahorses that I had ever seen. It was clear that whoever drew that had no prior experience with anything even remotely resembli…

Also why do they have sea life in it at all, surely that's not something that's meant to be in the pool.

[deleted]

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#60

Post by jodacola »

simonw wrote: post #30

I'm fascinated by how AI poster designs have taken over local advertising in seemingly just the last six months - presumably because ChatGPT Images and Gemini Nano Banana finally got good enough at outputting text without obvious defects in the typography. The posters all look good - much better than their desktop publishing predecessors. And yet they also eat away at the credibility of the event or business for me.…

My perspective on this, as someone skeptical of (but also bullish on) AI, is complex and I haven't completely nailed it down.

My knee-jerk reaction is instant credibility loss for the business/person/thing.

Follow-on is sadness (what are we losing in society because of this?), and curiosity: if a polished appearance (even if it is mega plastic) is no longer a sign of quality, then what is? What signals do I need to look for now?

But, wait! Was a high degree of polish ever truly a sign of quality? I've certainly had experiences where a place made every effort to look polished and professional (and generally did a good job at it), but quality missed the mark. In the case of restaurants, a common refrain of mine used to be, "they're trying too hard in the wrong places." Now, I guess, they don't have to try too hard... but they're still not focusing in the right places.

I don't know what to make of it and I go back to still trying to figure out new (or old?) signals for quality.

Post reply on HN