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Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

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Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#61

Post by mablopoule »

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…

Because the AI one are soul-less, and the badly drawn ones are not, simple as that.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#63

Post by huhkerrf »

ghostly_s wrote: post #33
biophysboy wrote: post #25

Low effort products will be used by low effort companies. In the case of restaurants, this might not necessarily be bad - I’ve been to amazing taco/burrito shops w abysmal menus. But if I went to a “high end” place with an AI menu and instagram decor - bad, bad sign. I genuinely think AI companies need to worry more about their brand. Just through how their products are used, they are perceived as a marker for low qu…

Anthropic has been running the exact same video ad in my youtube feed for months showing a guy making the tackiest "impossible" coffee table hanging from chains that I wouldn't even bother clicking on if it were a thumbnail from a favorite woodworker. I'd think if ChatGPT were such a great creative tool they could use it to create more than one ad....

Are you implying that Anthropic is using ChatGPT internally?

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#64

Post by simonw »

tgv wrote: post #49
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.…

> how AI poster designs have taken over local advertising Tale as old as time: a race to the bottom. Businesses trying to cut corners, thinking they can offset it against losses from exiting customers. If it wasn't, a lot will just cut more corners.

I don't think it's a corner cutting thing though.

These businesses weren't paying someone to make a flier. The business owner was sweating for an hour in Microsoft Word and producing something that looked terrible.

I expect they are now investing approximately the same about of time iterating in ChatGPT and producing something that genuinely looks like a huge improvement to them.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#65

Post by mathw »

joshstrange wrote: post #54

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 (especia…

Everything looks brown, it's crammed together, those not-photos make it feel really cramped in the third column, it looks like every other AI-generated menu and it's lost the clarity the old menu had.

And yes, there's a very long history of food places using unrealistic images of someone else's version of the food on the menus. That doesn't mean that it's okay to now use LLM versions of the food, because I never thought it was okay to use those stylised photos either.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#67

Post by joshstrange »

oeitho wrote: post #40

I'm starting to see more and more generated images of food at restaurants where I live, but I'm happy to say that its still somewhat rare. My partner and I usually just give a one star review each on Google when we pass by a place like this and then carry on.

Just so I have this clear, you rate a restaurant badly based on the pictures of the food and not the taste/flavor/etc?

These places are doing their best to compete in a cutthroat environment with often razor-thin margins but you are willing to write them off and actively try to harm them for reaching for a tool to try and meet consumer's ever-increasing expectations?

Just like in the native vs electron debate it's not "Beautiful hand-crafted native app" or "Electron wasteful trash", it's "Electron or nothing".

I don't begrudge people at all for reaching for LLM/AI to help cover over what they are incapable of doing or unable to pay other people for. And while "anyone can take a picture" taking good food photography is difficult.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#68

Post by mathw »

ivan888 wrote: post #39
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #34

Clocked this a while ago, crazy how the smell of the same model they're using is so distinct that entire areas of town are starting to look homogenous. Someones definitely going to write a think piece about how this erases aesthetic identity of cities and cultures. Looks like absolute ass too, easily beaten even by something designed by someone completely naive to design/art, good sign of a place to avoid.

But consider how, in just a short few years, tools will have changed so much that even achieving this specific look will not even be possible (everything is in the cloud and normal users can’t even run them locally) We’ll inevitably end up feeling nostalgic for these mid-2020s AI slop menus, much like how graphic design of the 90s and 2000s is revered (see other comments on this post) even while during its making was…

No we won't.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#69

Post by simonw »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #41
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.…

>But is that a widespread feeling, are the vibes bad for regular people, or is this effectively just old man shouting at clouds? A cursory glance at YouGov strongly suggests that people have bad vibes about AI in basically every territory where they're asked about it, and for basically every use-case

How many of the people who answer polls like that also have the ability to look at a poster and instantly clock that it was AI-generated?

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#70

Post by vkou »

jodacola wrote: post #60
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 l…

A high degree of polish was tangible evidence that someone in the organization gave a shit about their work.
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