Just a note about language: when folks say they "don't have the money" or "don't have the time", it's almost never the case that they don't have any of the resource in question...it's about priorities. What they are saying is that there are far more effective ways to spend their money than incidentals like this, especially when cheap alternatives exist.
> Just let your kid draw something for your small restaurant.
Wait, we've gone from "pay the local artists" because AI shows you're "lazy and cheap" and "don't care about your brand".
And now whatever my 7-year-old draws is good enough.
My only conclusion reading these threads is that folks come in with their mind made up, and will argue absolutely anything so long as it amounts to "AI bad".
the point of advertising is to communicate something. If your kid draws your menu, you signal family values. If you pay a local artist, you signal investment in the community.
If ChatGPT churns out your ad you've signaled nothing. And that's obviously why you can criticize AI for every imaginable reason. That's indeed the difference and why people, regardless of how 'good' your AI art will be, will attempt to hide it, because it defeats the purpose of advertising as such.
They're not saying they can't live without it, they're saying it's helpful. If you've been walking to the well for years to get buckets of water, and suddenly have running water in your kitchen, going back to trudging buckets doesn't sound very appealing.
The analogy holds perfectly well. We can "no true Scotsman" this all day long.
Any "real" artist could dunk on PS: "Oh, you didn't have to go out and buy a canvas and paint and brushes. Hell, you probably don't even know how to properly mix paint on a palette! Not only do you not to clean your brushes, you don't even have brushes!"
And the right response is: "Who gives a shit?" The answer is "Some folks, but their opinion decreasingly matters." And the same exact logic applies to AI. You might as well be complaining that Google doesn't pay cartographers to hand draw Google Maps.
> when it does the entire activity for you.
This is total fiction, and has spawned an entire cult of "just give me the prompt" folks that think using AI requires no skill, and anyone using AI is just a "meat proxy". But that's not true, at all, as evidenced by years of commentary on this site with people getting radically different outcomes using AI. We've gone from "stochastic parrots" to "gonna destroy humanity" in 2 years.
AI will do jobs that we used to go to Fiverr for -- it'll eat the bottom of the market, just like automation does elsewhere. The bottom of the market is blog art, clip art, menus, commercial signage, event posters, and the like. That's completely natural, and hating it is shouting into the wind. The local cafe owner was never particularly incentived to have their menus crafted by some local artist.
I don’t think so, even if the whole “AI exponential” idea is wrong, that’s just the shape of the curve. There still is a curve. Even if these things take 50 years to happen instead of 5 (which would be better and which I doubt will be the case) it still happens eventually. I think the current capabilities of AI are enough of a heuristic for us to assume this is going to happen.
It is a stated goal of several prominent AI business leaders. Altman, Amodei, and Musk at the very least have had mask-off moments where they said as much.
> Both of these communicate that I will probably not get a good value for my money when buying your product or service.
This is where I stop following. Businesses should focus on where they differentiate, and I really don't care how they generate signage if I can read it. I don't get anything by them paying Banksy to make their menu instead of having Gemini generate it. And if there is any connection to getting good value, it's the inverse: I'm more likely to get good value when I'm not paying for fancy advertising. See: every drugstore that puts generics alongside brand names for cheaper.
You're free to ignore signals of cheapness if you want, as well as not care about quality. If you want generic restuarant food I guess you can go to McDonalds instead of a burger place; it's all the same value to you I guess.
You're using rhetoric to try and change the subject -- you're making a jump from "good value" to "lack of quality", and painting them with the same brush.
I'm saying I don't particularly value businesses that focus on things that are low impact for me. I'd rather my barista focus on sourcing good beans and making good coffee than paying someone to do a fancy custom menu for them. We see this all the time when we visit new areas. It's considered naive to follow whatever looks most glitzy -- every seasoned traveler will tell stories about all the tourist traps, and how the real quality is the hole-in-the-wall place all the locals gather.
What I'm saying is we shouldn't conflate quality with marketing and advertising, which is what posters are. You seem dead set on doing so anyway, and I'm not sure why.
Yes, generics are better value, but at least from the big drugstores and pharmacies they still have clean design - they just make it clear what their active ingredient is in what dosage, mention the branded equivalent, and then put the standard drug label on it, and that's about it.
The worst generative AI posters and restaurant menus I'm seeing from newer small businesses do not instill the same feeling that I'm getting generic-like value. To keep with the drug analogy, they feel like the combo pills you find somewhere in the back of a gas station which combine 10+ random supplements to help with 20+ different symptoms. Especially for new restaurants where real reviews are limited, menus with terrible AI generated food drawings really give me the same ick - that they might not be providing any good value at all.
However, i do admit that part of this is also that i live in an area where there is tons of competition for most cuisines I'm interested in, so I can use menu quality as a differientiating factor in the first place. If enough places around me were using sloppy AI menus i would probably ignore it.
People don't think caring about your customers leads to failure, but it's a lot harder than not caring, and it does seem to be the case that it is mandatory to not care if you're going to be chasing massive valuations.
We're moving from a high trust society to a low trust society, I fear. It's a tough transition.
I realise I’m a sample size of 1, but for me caring was good for business: caring means you can empathise, if you can empathise you can understand, if you can understand you can build a better product.
We're having two different conversations. You're advocating for good citizenship, which is great. I try to do that, too. But I also know that's not scaleable, and folks are lazy.
The person you're replying to is citing the incentives that are created. That's not cynicism, it's analyzing motives to help model outcomes.
As for the buck stopping with the executives: can you apply this to a case I've heard of? We have multiple data breaches of companies that scan IDs. We have the Experian breach. We have multiple LastPass breaches. Is there any executive at any of these companies that has been held accountable?
I've actually done the legwork on the ones I just mentioned and the answer is there have been no criminal or civil penalties to any individual in an executive role at any of those companies as a result of the data breaches. Maybe I'm missing one?
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my message. But the buck stopping with the executives is when ‘the company’ breaks law. Usually because of gross negligence or corporate manslaughter.
With my last company, managing medical records, I was always conscious that if we didn’t take our responsibility of managing medical data correctly it could lead to the death of one of my customer’s patients; or some other extreme circumstance that the executives could be held liable for.
That was my point about being professional, if you have proper processes in place and audits to prove it, you have protection. And only the most egregious cases would land.
It’s good business to protect yourself from a gross negligence or corporate manslaughter claim. It just so happens that it’s good for your customer too.
Presumably, the reason you don’t hear much about executives in the dock for these crimes is because most professional organisations put these processes in place.
Again, I was just stating that it isn’t just data-breach fines that should encourage executives to professionalise.
Wondering where the accountability was in the hack of this Finish psychotherapy organization (Vastaamo).[1]
As far as I know, it was considered an act of god not something that resulted in punishment. Oh sure, they punished the hacker, but how about the people who were supposed to keep the data secure?
I’m not sure where I stand on punishing companies for getting hacked. I guess like the thread says, was it gross negligence? Back to searching the internet to find out…
Edit: definitely gross negligence.
> one of the first things he noticed was how lax security had been. “It was definitely unfit for purpose for storing this kind of information,” he says. He tells me that the patient records database was accessible via the internet; there was no firewall and, perhaps most egregiously, it was secured with a blank password, so anyone could just press enter and open it [2]
Edit: accountability? Maybe.
> the board announced that it had let the CEO, Ville Tapio, go. In April 2023, Tapio was found guilty of criminal negligence in his handling of patient data. His conviction was overturned on appeal in December 2025 [2]
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