I get the consumers' ick when I see an AI-generated menu, logo, or sign as much as the next person. Beyond that, there is an argument to be made about the discrepancy between the pictorial depictions of a food item and what you are actually served in real life. I wish something akin to Japan's strict food packaging laws existed for restaurants.
I wish something akin to Japan's strict food packaging laws existed for restaurants.
It’s just plain old false advertising, isn’t it? We already have laws about that.
https://xkcd.com/993/ A friend also called this the “Party Cannon effect”, in reference to black metal festival posters. When lavish detail is available at the push of a button, simplicity stands out far more.
That XKCD idea is basically the Swedish Blåvitt product line that existed during the 80s and early 90s.
I disagree, but it's also academic. Even if every single one of my assumptions is unfair, they're still being made by me and others. Restaurants need to consider the reputational risk caused by customer perception. There's a whole film about it [1]. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/
>Even if every single one of my assumptions is unfair, they're still being made by me and others. stomps feet in anger "Daddy, I want a squirrel! Get me one of those squirrels! I want a trained squirrel!"
Small businesses tend to be very clumsy with stuff like this. Here in Berlin it's very common for small restaurants and food places to have half broken websites with some pdf as their menu. Their online marketing is generally pretty poor. Some of the more clever places at least stay a bit on top of their Google Maps presence.
And menus are as much of an after thought. Some places have old printouts with faded pictures on the wall, unreadable specials on some chalk board, or just a cheap sheet of paper as a menu. There are exceptions of course. Some restaurants are clearly friendly with good designers. But mostly restaurants don't seem to overthink this.
The issue isn't AI but the simple fact that many small business owners aren't very good at this stuff to begin with. They never were.
Small businesses tend to be very clumsy with stuff like this. Here in Berlin it's very common for small restaurants and food places to have half broken websites with some pdf as their menu. Their online marketing is generally pretty poor. Some of the more clever places at least stay a bit on top of their Google Maps presence. And menus are as much of an after thought. Some places have old printouts with faded picture…
There are a lot of small businesses here whose online presence is a Facebook page last updated 10+ years ago.
I don’t understand this modern trend where people will put pictures of someone’s menu up, roast them, fall all over themselves talking about how over the food and still hit publish. What is the fucking point?
>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?
I think that many people are against toxic pesticides in food too, or meat that was inhumanely slaughtered, but there are few signals in the packaging to tell how things are made (besides labels that are dubiously trustworthy). So people might be against everything LLMs represents (bad for local and global environment, made with slave-labour, made by stealing material, removing jobs), without being able to tell something is LLM-generated. However, when they can tell, the gut reaction is disgust and the brand takes a big hit. I know when I notice something as LLM-generated, which I know I don't always do, I'm immediately disgusted by it and avoid it if I can.
>AI makes something seem very convenient so small business do it because they are resource constrained >It's either not as convenient as it seems or has other undesirable side effects >Repeat
>if you’re careless about one thing like that you’re probably careless about other things ah the inverse of the "i'm good at coding, therefore i am good at everything." I want my restaurants to have delicious food; I don't expect them to have (or hire) graphic designers. Every dollar spent on design is a dollar that is not going to the quality of my food. The hate on AI menus is irrational, unless eating at a specifi…
No, it's entirely rational to judge a service based on external signals. If you need medical treatment, will you go to a doctor operating out of an office, or a doctor operating out of their own garage? Theoretically, either one could be good or bad at medicine, but in practice, professionalism is a useful signal. An ugly AI-generated menu shows a naive disregard for the actual experience of your customers. This atti…
And the MS Word menu at least conveys human effort. I absolutely don't care if the menu is in one font and looks like an amateur did the layout. I don't expect restaurant owners to be accomplished graphic designers, I do like to see them appear to care and be personally invested in every aspect of their restaurant.
I hear more and more stories about people running into obviously AI-generated stuff whether it's menus, posters, news articles, music, or videos and they find it a turn-off. So if a small business is wanting to use AI, it's probably best to limit it to internal workflows, and not have it be too apparent in your public facing appearance.