The worst is food places. Motherfucker, I don’t need to see a representation of what pepperoni pizza looks like. I already know what pepperoni pizza looks like.
I want to see what your pepperoni pizza looks like.
Restaurants using AI for food menu is a sign of bad quality.
The best pizza I ever had was from a hole-in-the-wall place in Montreal with a layer of grease in the windows, thick cobwebs covered in dead flies, and an air-conditioner black with mold.
If anyone cares, or remembers, it was Rock And Roll Pizza on Bleury, where the Spectrum used to be. In front of the NYKS.
It was a Persian guy running the place. One day I convinced a Persian co-worker to eat there. I guess he gave shit to the owner because the next day the place was a lot cleaner.
Basically they made some kind of shawarma pizza that was out of this world.
Oh and the business next door sold sex dolls, there was a fully inflated transexual doll in that window.
I miss that Montreal. I don’t like the crappy generic condo abomination that’s there now.
So anyways, if greasy windows and dead spiders didn’t turn me off, what does it say that seeing some generic gross AI art turns me off?
(I just remembered another MTL pizza place with greasy windows and dead flies that was so amazing a guy drove from the South Shore just to eat there.)
I also miss when cities weren’t condo oblivions and had character. I really felt this. And the pizza sounded amazing BTW.
Montreal is just becoming a densified condo tower hellscape.
There’s a place near me that made amazing chicken parmigiana, pasta, and pizzas. Went back recently and they’ve replaced their entire menu with nonsense ai slop. Got a pizza anyway and it was awful, literally had a chunk of bone left in the toppings.
Why? Do you assume that means there are robots in the kitchen?
I think it’s a sign that they don’t have their own marketing department.
The first mistake was going to a local business. #fsmallbusiness
It’s worse when their menu pictures have the glitch where it makes things look like triptaphobia? I forget how it’s spelled and I’m not going to look it up for obvious reasons…
Waffles. AI waffles always looked so cursed.
Oh yeah. I think that was the place I had in mind. Some sort of breakfast place and I had to just close it.
Trypophobia? Went to a restaurant that had ai menu pictures that looked like everything was made of bugs. They looked absolutely disgusting. At that point it wasn’t even about not liking ai, i simply lost my apetite looking at it.
That’s the one. Same reaction. They’re lucky I didn’t puke lol
It’s like they all use one model that can’t figure out french fries, hash browns, or lettuce.
This place has a $35 crab cake sandwich on the menu and can’t manage to take a picture of the fucking thing.
Yeah. Reminds me of this place that tried to advertise their opening on a small sub on Reddit. So they’re opening in six months, have entirely generated website, and have the gall to put two posts on the front page. Like I said this was a very small sub. So of course we roasted the shit out of them. I think my favorite was, anyone want to place bets on how fast they’ll close?
Oh yeah like it generates the images all roughly textured? I think it’s like a reaction to generated images usually looking too smooth, but they just ended up deep frying them in uncanny.
That’s what you get when you use ai to upscale ai images.
And their prices are 15-30% higher than any place else. And their customer service sucks. And the only employees are high school kids because they only pay minimum wage. And their hours are 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, Mon-Fri, so you have to take time off work just to go there.
At least that’s how it is for me where I live. It’s a wonder any of them are still in business. The saddest part is, most of them say shit like, “Well at least we don’t have Bidenomics to worry about anymore. Things were way worse then.”
I expect higher prices when I’m trying to shop local. I know they can’t compete on price. I’m willing to pay the premium specifically to support small business.
Sure, restricted hours kind of suck, but like…I’m not going to hold wanting to find work/life balance against them.
Customer service is hit or miss anywhere. Really, I think the idea of customer service has mostly gone out the window everywhere. It sucks because HS kids (and anyone else working these jobs) aren’t being taught these skills. With a small business, at least I can have a nice little conversation with the owner even if they’re socially awkward. People skills are hard. Obviously there is a line in there somewhere that goes into shitty service or bad attitude.
I do plenty of shopping at chains, but it’s important to me to throw money at small businesses. I’ve watched my city grow a lot in the last 30 years and the only thing keeping it interesting are the local businesses.
I mean, I still shop those places when I can. But it’s usually extra effort for a worse experience.
And the checkout system is an iPad. With tip prompt, even if it’s just a store.
I’ve seen some places being more self conscious about this lately and no longer do the tip prompt (or literally pick up the thing themselves and hit “no tip” before handing it over).
Which goes to show that shame can still move the needle sometimes.
A lot of marketing material for a product is provided by the manufacturers of a product. Small shops, at-least from my knowledge, don’t have the resources to create marketing material. So blaming them doesn’t really work unless they are making their own products (like restaurants, hand-crafted items, etc).
Instant walkout. If they’ve already started a dialogue, I (respectfully) let them know why I’m not buying—otherwise I don’t bother. I’d literally rather see a shitty MS Paint drawing than an AI generated picture.
Are you using ai to write this??
Edit: asking because of the emdash but I respect that the op is not an AI. I just had to ask 🤣
I’m using i to write this.
FN A BROTHER
Just checking because of the emdash 🤣
Dude… alt-gr+dash, or cmd+dash or alt+dash depending on your flavor of OS/keyboard layout. The whole em-dash = ai is so annoying to me cause I’ve been using em-dashes way before LLMs came to spoil the fun.
Back before llms poisoned it (and I still used Windows), I had the alt code for em dash memorized (prob still have the muscle memory to do it, but not currently at a numpad) because I really liked using them in papers I had to write for school. I read lots of books back then, and recognized how much I preferred using em dashes to commas in specific cases.
I hate that I can’t use them anymore lest I be mistaken for someone who uses llms
forreal, it’s one of my favorite ways to break up a sentence. it’s also stupid to accuse of Ai for one piece of grammar, when there’s typically multiple tells to pay attention to when it comes to Ai.
let’s not forget that llms were originally trained on human-made text too. we are the ones who made the patterns first. llms simply regurgitate it
That’s why I ask! I respect that real people use it. It’s a valid punctuation
Or on the X Window System:
⇧ Shift+AltGr(aka. multi key), then--.
I’m on an iPhone, which autocorrects two dashes (- -) to an emdash.
My bad! I learned something today
No wtf?
At the risk of being down voted to oblivion, I don’t mind if they use AI to touch up actual photos of their food, like improve background , lighting etc.
Note the photo has to be original though.
However, if they use AI to generate the whole photo, that’s a problem.
Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation
If they generate AI slop, they’re supporting the big corporations.
Edit: damn, that’s a lot of AI bros trying to make themselves feel better with “nuance” and “lesser evil” arguments down in the comments. I guess if you don’t see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.
You can get an AI Poster created for negligible amount of money. Maybe even a free trial.
Unless you’ve verified somehow that that company uses AI in abundance and not just a few posters, you’re just making assumptions.
If they use AI for a few posters, where’s the guarantee that they will actually put effort into their main job? The kind of person that cheaps out by using AI is not the one I want to be paying.
Again, you’re just making assumptions.
They may or may not be accurate assumptions, but if they change your decision making to instead shop at mega-corp instead of local, they’re ultimately harmful assumptions imo.
Believe it or not, not everyone is keen on sloppifying everything they do. Local businesses that don’t use AI exist. And you can help by not normalizing the slop.
No, if they are using AI then what is wrong with the actual item? They are either lazy (not someone I want making food, or service, or item.)
Or they are committing fruad by creating a image that doesn’t match what they are selling…
That is also valid.
Yeah so small business without AI slop is clearly better, it’s just that small business with AI slop still supports big business less than you supporting big business directly.
Does it, though? Small business still has more money to throw to corporations than individual people.
A small business with an AI poster is still better than a big business with an AI poster.
And you czn be sure those big businesses are using way more AI
Yes, getting stabbed in the arm is better than getting stabbed in the throat. Doesn’t mean I should go and get stabbed in the arm.
My reasoning was that when you buy from a big business, then 100% of what you spend goes there, while less than 100% of your spending go to big business if you buy from a small business that supports big businesses itself.
It doesn’t make sense to compare the total amount a small business contributes to a big business with the total amount an individual person contributes, unless you have some further factors you think I have failed to take into account.
Why wouldn’t it make sense? If I want to minimize the amount of support corporate LLMs get, it absolutely makes sense to stop endorsing other businesses that use it.
The original claim I made was that supporting small business is better than directly supporting big businesses. You are 100% right about minimising the amount corporate LLMs get, it’s just that your responding to my comparison of small business vs big business. What you want to do is to support neither of them, so I wouldn’t really spend more time analysing what I said since I don’t think it’s relevant to you.
Yes, I don’t really support this “lesser evil” type argument, since both options in the end proliferate corporate slop. If a business can’t exist without using corporate LLMs, it shouldn’t exist.
Either you support small business directly and large corporations indirectly or you just support large corporations directly or you walk out in to the middle of the woods, withdraw from society, and homestead. There is not way to participate in today’s society without indirectly supporting corporations.
Sure, feel free to go in to every small shop and argue with them why they should not use AI. But supporting a multiple small shops that use AI for posters is better than giving all your money to Walmart.
This statement is the correct option.
Supporting a small business with an AI Poster is much better than supporting a big corporation.
Or I find a small shop that doesn’t use AI and support them. And if you think they don’t exist any more, well, you helped make that happen.
You get to pick the hill that you die on, but what I am saying is even if they don’t use AI - they still use bookkeeping software, they still file taxes, they still order supplies, they have an email, website and someplace they store documents.
So AI can be your hill that is fine, but you are still picking the lesser evil in other ways. As you said, “I guess if you don’t see your money directly go to OpenAI, it helps you sleep at night better. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.”
Took me a bit to realize multiple of my comments are getting lengthy replies by the same person, and that said person isn’t either of the commenters I was replying to.
You, of course, get to pick whatever criteria you want for supporting or not supporting businesses. But I don’t appreciate walls of text trying to shame me into supporting AI slop.
As I’ve said before (as you’ve surely seen since you’ve seemingly scoured this entire thread to find people who disagree with you), there are businesses that don’t support big corporations in their operations. And if you can’t find any in your local area (presumably the US?), then you can live with the knowledge that your “lesser evil” slop-normalizing rhetoric helped make that happen.
I didn’t realize I was also replying to you over and over. I also understand that you are purposely missing the point. So I’ll leave it at that.
If your “point” is defending slop, then yes, let’s leave it at that.
You helped make that happen by walking away from small shop and walking directly to a corporation.
You must have been replied to the wrong person, or else blatantly making shit up. Maybe stop using LLM to generate comments.
Why? Isn’t the small business supporting a big AI corporation? So a big corporation is getting supported either way?
Small businesses aren’t inherently cool and good, many of them would prefer to be large corporations, they just don’t know how to get there.
Creating an AI Poster might literally just be one month of some $5 AI sub or a free trial. There’s no way to verify how much they’re actually supporting the AI Company.
And while your second point is valid, if you really cared about supporting local you’d simply do some research on which local businesses are running with a community-centric approach. Which ones are run by decent people. Etc. That will likely but not definitely exclude businesses that use AI anyway.
I’d also just rather support a local shithead than a billionaire shithead 🤷
It’s like when I go to vendor halls at conventions and half the vendors are repackaged aliexpress/temu items
It’s like when I go to
vendor halls at conventions and half the vendorsany store that’s not a mega-department store all the items are repackaged aliexpress/temu itemsftfy
TBH, the US has been middle-manning economically depressed labor for cheap goods for decades. It just turns out that China is way better at it than we are.
Alibaba/express just made it a marketplace where companies could do it with zero friction.
I’m fine with the massive Chinese booths like that at our flea market. We get some useful stuff for cheap. But in general it turns me off. Our local Goodwills now sell bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese imports for the same prices as the next better sort of thing.
I hate even more that I get there and they tell me “you know you can get it cheaper on Amazon” or “we no longer stock it but you can get it on Amazon”. Bud, I can get every single thing in your store on Amazon and yes, it is often cheaper but I am trying to keep local stores and local jobs alive.
This happened to me a few weeks ago when I was looking through thrift shops to put together a Halloween costume. I went looking store to store for overalls, asked the employees if they had any suggestions. The elderly ladies had legit suggestions (that simply didn’t work out for me), but the young staff just went, “Try Amazon?”
The sad truth is, the youngin’s never lived in a world without Amazon. They don’t know the local stores like the older folks do. Perhaps they’ve never gone from thrift store to thrift store looking for treasures (even if they work in a thrift store.) It’s possible the idea of “avoiding Amazon” has never occurred to them.
Perhaps they’ve never gone from thrift store to thrift store looking for treasures (even if they work in a thrift store.)
That’s crazy. But on the bright side, that means they’re not poaching all the good shit as soon as it arrives lol
employees justifiably hate their employers
and small businesses typically abuse their employees far worse than mega corps which is saying something in a world of Walmarts and Amazon’s
the sweet spot is a company that’s small enough to maintain a culture and the owners still have a vision but big enough they have to follow the rules pay taxes and have an hr department
of course there is no ethical consumption or production under capitalism but I didn’t create this world just suffering along with everyone else
Sweet spot is shops that require staff with some level of skills or knowledge which makes them a bit more difficult to replace.
Some stores don’t understand that they can’t just sell the high margin stuff. They have to also sell the high volume/low margin stuff that generates the foot traffic.
If I stop going to your store for 98% of my shopping, why would I go there for the last 2%?
There’s a shop near me that has one of those sandwich board signs on the sidewalk with some sort of “fuck the billionaires, support small businesses” messaging, but for some idiotic reason, it has the faces of those billionaires on it, so every time I see it, I just get angry.
Anything bigger than A2 is obnoxious
I did let a place I go semi regularly know that I choose not to eat dessert recently because their dessert menu had all AI images. The next time I was there the specials were just text (like their standard menu)
That’s sad. You criticized them into submission.
This is voting with your wallet. I don’t see how this is significantly different from boycotting a company for any sort of reason, aside from the difference in scale.
The company was advertising the product in a way this person disagreed with, this person informed the company that they were not going to purchase said product for said reason, then the company seemed to value them and/or others like them enough to change their advertising.
They shared an opinion, businesses typically value customer feedback, get over yourself
Sad? I could come up with dozens of words to describe the situation. Sad ain’t one of them.
Recently saw an AI photobooth. No one was using it, they were taking their own pictures instead.
Why the fuck would I pay you to stick a prompt in when I could do it myself if I really wanted an AI generated picture? You may have cut some of your costs, but now your final product has no value to it.
What’s an AI photobooth? I’m just imagining a booth where you have your photo taken and it prints a totally unrelated AI-generated photo. Like, you go for a passport photo and get a picture of Marie Curie and the Hulk windsurfing on the Moon.
Your imagination of it is pretty spot on tbh
That’s the thing that really gets me about these folks.
You slop up something for yourself and you are happy with it, ok.
But then you expect me to engage/pay for your zero-effort AI output that I could have just gotten myself direct from the same place you did? Why?
