> Unfortunately, this might become something like the em-dash—where artists start tweaking their work to look less like the AI’s that are copying them.

So true! (And yes—I see what you did there.)

It's even happening to photos now. A few months ago I posted a "Bot alert!" on Nextdoor warning people about the latest scambot.

One person replied "It's funny to see a bot reporting a bot."

I asked how they discovered I was a bot.

"It's your profile photo. The facial expression is too good, and the smoothness of the background is too perfect. Has to be AI."

For the curious, it's the same photo as on my LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/

What they didn't know was how I took that selfie. I set up my Micro Four Thirds camera on a tripod in the front yard, with the world's best portrait lens: the Olympus 75mm f/1.8. I stood some 10-15 feet from it (this lens is equivalent to a 150mm lens on a full frame camera, i.e. a moderate telephoto) and used the remote control to take a few dozen shots as I let my face relax into various expressions.

I picked out 4-5 favorites and asked a friend about them. She said "This one. It has gravitas."

I don't even think it's that great a photo. But I suppose the "gravitas" makes it look like AI.

For a photo that really shows off what that 75mm lens can do, check out this one of our late dog Brownie, titled Pumpkin Brownie:

https://geary.smugmug.com/Pets/Dogs/i-dNMQW2v/A

The cheese pattern and the green teacup pattern after it are obviously AI generated. The weird curve of the wedges, the fuzzy edges to the cheese holes, the artifacting around the edges of the teacups, the fact that neither is a perfectly repeating pattern. It's 100% AI, even if the font may not be.

In 15 years, the youths will become obsessed with that strange yellow cartoon style. They will crave that “vintage ChatGPT aesthetic”.

> this might become something like the em-dash—where artists start tweaking their work to look less like the AI’s that are copying them.

Literally how art has always worked

100% Homemade is just a stock phrase that they are using to display the type-face. I don't think you should take that to mean anything more than "Feathers McGraw."

Simply the "I" and "N" baselines on "Cracking" is wildly (un-professionally) off! Took a screenshot and there's +/- three pixels or so with no artistic justification for it. Even Comic Sans has a consistent baseline!

IMO for a cartoon like W&G a little wonkiness and skew is entirely on-point.

I was just coming here to say, it looks like each letter is about to fall over backwards.

Doesn't seem like a ton of attention has been paid to kerning, either. The 'he' pair seems especially noticeable to me, which occurs several times in the "somewhere where there's cheese" image. I don't know enough about font design to guess whether the 'bad' kerning is intentional for the typeface, though - so I could be off base.

It seems intentionally cartoonishly irregular.

EDIT: I'm wrong

It's interesting; I'd imagine very similar design briefs (friendliness, breadliness, etc)

The ICBINB font is almost a semi-serif, almost like a sans serif that's slightly melted, whereas I'd say the crumpet is fully serif. The "e", "L" and "v" are pretty different. And I'd say the ICBINB font lends itself better to tighter spaces, whereas the crumpet font seems to beg for more space.

But certainly, I could see one being used to replace another in a pinch - but I'm not a font specialist (graphologist? Is there a word for a person who studies fonts?)

Nice find! That looks like Cooper Black, which the article cites as inspiration.

Ah, a British convergence! That phrase always makes me think of this now (from the Vicar of Dibley): https://youtu.be/37ficiqoE6U

RIP Emma Chambers

There are a lot of similarities. You must either have a great memory for fonts, or eat a lot of butter alternative spread, either way good eye!

Yeah they looked like they were wobbling while I read them until I focused on them more.

Too few people appreciate typefaces. Are they under-overall though? Those who do appreciate get really, really, really into them. I'm sure it nets out. :-)

I clearly don't have refined appreciation of visual typographic nuance because I do not see this at all.