????

Baffling response. The point is none of this AI cancer is necessary.

The reality is that knocking a mom & pop for using ai generated junk is fucking stupid. They're not a corpo mega giant like walmart that could afford a graphic designer. Get off your fucking high horse.

Ahh "the customer is always wrong" motto...

...also, your image of others as "people who prefer to be miserable" rather than people who prefer hand made art, or art that hasn't been stolen and used for profit by billionaires, or art that wasn't created by polluting the planet... Is it's self, a miserable illusion of others.

So you, yourself are choosing the miserable viewpoint.

Personally I'm glad people have a sense of justice, and pay attention to the news and care about issues of morality and climate survival.

I like people fighting billionaires, and fighting for the environment. I think they're great, and that your view point - is the flawed and weaker one.

Black and white opinions are fine on the internet but they don't work very well in real life. You have to have nuance and make educated choices.

If the the small business doesn't use AI, they sure as hell still are using Intuit for bookkeeping or Sysco for supplies or Microsoft for email. You can't get any from indirectly supporting the mega corps. But you can minimize your impact by making smart choices, like picking the lesser evil sometimes.

It's still a local business so why abandon that because no one there has the creative ability to make "cool" looking ads?

AI for the masses means they can "draw" stuff, even without any artistic ability.

You might mention your dislike of their using AI - and offer your artistic services instead. Shunning business because of their lack of creative ability is kind of silly... made even worse if their product is good and what you want.

Miserable meaning you just HAD to post something about it. I'm all for fighting billionaires, BUT TYPING IN ALL CAPS AT AN ONLINE STRANGER ISN'T FIGHTING BILLIONAIRES.

Yes, I'm minimizing my impact by not supporting said small businesses. You can't rationalize away your subpar decisions by claiming "nuance".

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.

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.

While I agree with the whole ai is ruining shit argument, I'm just saying I'm not going to punish a LOCAL MOM AND POP SHOP for using AI. Instead of boycotting them, why not talk to them about why AI is bad and offer to make their damn menu for them. Instead you pack up your chairs and say Nope! And then go complain about it behind a screen. DO SOMETHING rather than SAYING SOMETHING.

Don't care, not going to pay for it.

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."

Sure, you get to pick with you wallet and go with the causes that are meaningful to you.

Personally I do not buy products that are made by Nestle or Proctor & Gamble. Because of this sometimes the other option for shampoo is then going to be a Unilever product. Great - don't really like them either but don't like them less than I don't like Proctor & Gamble and I still need shampoo.

Sometimes to support a small business that doesn't use AI posters I might not just have to pay more than I would at Walmart or Target. They might have gotten the supplies for their homemade soap on Amazon and and the only way I can pay is thru their Shopify point of sale system and then they emailed me a special offer via Mailchimp and then followed up with on email set up in Microsoft 365. And then at the start of every year, they used Turbo Tax to file taxes. Did I pick the lesser evil?

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%?

went antiquing recently. store was large and had dedicated vendor booths. half of them had shitty AI generated "vintage" art.

I was thoroughly disgusted.

though, there was a large booth filled with books going back to the early 1800s and woodworking tools in reasonable condition. most books were poetry, but there were some first edition engineering code books there as well.

it was my happy space.

or, and hear me out, do market research to identify if what you're planning to do is a good idea.

when you're running a business, no matter the size, making decisions based on gut feeling is a terrible idea.

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.

Great job! I think i'll join so that every mom and pop goes out of business and then we're left with massive mega corps who again, wil just use ai slop. What a plan!!! Every main street in the US will go under because grandma used AI to make a flyer. Stupid dipshit.

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.

Plenty are not using AI too.

Bakery round the corner from where I work doesn't use AI or even poster. To advertise they fill the wall with bread, buns, pastries and cakes.

That wasn't the order of events, you spoke up on behalf of AI and models trained by billionaire companies destroying the planet THEN you (gasp) got an all caps response (the pain!).... Telling people to just accept it.

Now you're pretending like that was the start of it, or the part that has harmful or world scale implications.

It's not. The support for AI companies does.

P.S I didn't all caps you, I'm not the same person, so stop saying "YOU just had to ALL CAPS ME".

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.

You're using a piece of software in 2026. I can guarantee you that lemmyworld uses AI in some section of it's stack and I'd be willing to bet that bakery uses ai for accounting. So it's okay for you to use AI developed software but not for a mom and pop? Go delete your account and get out of here with this bullshit.

Instant walk out, never again

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.

Less bothered when its in the background. But when its the product or blatantly plastered over everything? Fuck that. It looks cheap and shit.

In the instance of a restaurant, "market research" consists of eating there. CGI (AI's public interface; menus, advertisements, menu displays (as have been in fast food chains for decades) - none of that matters if the food is inedible.

That's kind of where I was coming from. I give a shit if they've got god fucking a unicorn, AI style, in the front window if their flautas and tamales are GOOD. Or their Bün is good. Or their chili cheese dog with pickles and jalapenos is delicious. Or they are the only place to get a Hang Ten with a pocket. Or ALL the Vans. etc.

Mention it to them. Tell them your opinion. Do it correctly, expound on the excellence of their product - some of the best you've ever had - and opine to them you feel AI involvement in their establishment lessens the establishment while the food remains excellent or the product quality remains.

Diplomacy. At the local level. If you're on about homie depot or ded lobsters or wallymart - fuggitabout. If you're going to shop there - deal with it. Think of that slop as pablum for the droolers. Well, maybe not all droolers, but you get the idea.

You can get principled on that but then also walk out if they have a phone.
You're not using one are you?
Do they know where those precious metals come from and how they're mined? No.

Most of these people are also blissfully unaware of any AI problems except them possibly taking over the world.
They don't even need to understand it, It's just some cool thingy computers do these days.
Then back to their administration or the facebook.
Average shopkeepers are busy running their shop.
They're not having ethical debates on Lemmy.

And the checkout system is an iPad. With tip prompt, even if it’s just a store.

The "shop local" thing is just a bullshit attempt to prey on people's emotions and ethics.

This is the way.

If your "point" is defending slop, then yes, let's leave it at that.

Lmfao. My God. You win bro 👍

Anything bigger than A2 is obnoxious

I can't afford to pay twice as much locally because it comes out of my grocery budget. If I find a good deal locally, that's nice. If I find it online only, well, it's necessary.

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?

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.

You helped make that happen by walking away from small shop and walking directly to a corporation.

You can always go to big corporation who has plenty of money and can hire a painter.

You must have been replied to the wrong person, or else blatantly making shit up. Maybe stop using LLM to generate comments.

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.

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...

The ethics is only one side.

My main concern is the fact that if they use AI for themselves, they will cut every corner known to man when they provide their service to me. I can't expect an AI slop user to provide me with something of quality, if they can't even make their slop not look awfully like slop. At least I shouldn't be able to tell it's slop.

That is also valid.

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).

I also miss when cities weren't condo oblivions and had character. I really felt this.
And the pizza sounded amazing BTW.

I find that a bad argument.
They are not designers, it is not their field.
If anything it might be that they are too busy with getting better at what they do to waste time on trivial stuff.

It's like saying this or that famous actor must be shit at his job because he's out in a track suit and crocs.

If they sell groceries they arent a distributor either. Or a producer. Or a transport company.

Point is, they hire someone that gets the job done right for all of us.

The minimum they can do is hire a beginner artist with no career to design their posters and other stuff. These guys take pennies anyway. Jesus.

What a pointless talking point.

There were food trucks at a street event here a few weeks ago and some of them had AI menu art. There is no less appealing menu than that.

Agreed