Consumer AI Fatigue Is Overwhelming, Local Businesses Should Reconsider Use
residentnewsnetwork.com
residentnewsnetwork.com
Before AI, such designs were neutral to positive. AI versions can create extreme negative polarization.
Why take the risk?
A local restaurant here caught a LOT of flack about it when they did a reopening under new ownership with AI menus, and had to revise their menu very quickly to avoid losing too much potential business.
I also see event organizers complaining about nobody showing up to their event, refusing to acknowledge that maybe it's because the flyer they had Gemini make was unworthy of any note in a sea of identical flyers with the same tired aesthetic.
It may be the case that the typical customer doesn't notice or care.
AI-generated images can be indistinguishable from ones created by humans.
I also doubt most people care if something was AI-generated, but it soon won't matter, because most things will be, simply because they'll win on economics and efficiency.
It's similar to using CGI instead of practical effects in movies, using typewriters (and then word processors) instead of quill pens to write, or photoshop instead of an airbrush to create illustrations.
Most people don't care how something was created. They only care about the end result, which for AI-generated content can be as good or better, faster, and cheaper than what many if not most professional humans can do (and certainly better than the oceans of human slop of every kind out there).
The use of CGI in movies led to a dramatic reduction in my willingness to see movies. Weirdly, there was a relatively short period of time where its use wasn't largely problematic, but over the last decade or so its use has become irritating enough to me that I factor it into my movie-seeing decisions.
The people who make basic posters and menus by prompting an AI are neither using the proper tools nor the proper prompts to reach that level of quality.
> I also doubt most people care if something was AI-generated
A lot of people hate AI, even if only because of what it represents - which is giant tech companies completely overhauling your day-to-day life for a few cents of profit.
> They only care about the end result, which for AI-generated content can be as good or better, faster, and cheaper than what many if not most professional humans can do
Exactly, and the AI-generated content is 99% obvious slop. Could a skilled professional have used AI to make something decent-looking? Yes, but that's not what is happening. What we are actually seeing is someone who has never used AI prompting it for "a poster" and grabbing the first output. It doesn't even have the quaint look of work created by an enthusiastic-but-untrained amateur, it just looks plain bad.
If all AI output looked amazing and nobody could ever tell - or simply didn't care - then we wouldn't be seeing articles about "AI fatigue", would we?
AI chaps my ass when a restaurant that charges $125 per person for the prix fixe menu has it answering the phone. You're not Walmart. Don't be cheap. I don't mind if the host(ess) is on the phone briefly with another customer when I walk in because... I know that's going to be me one day calling.