I quite like the 4th and 5th place posters.

4th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i...

5th: https://cdn.saffire.com/images.ashx?t=ig&rid=OhioStateFair&i...

I disagree... while those are definitely better art-wise, they are not better marketing-wise. I imagine this is why the ai one won because the others do nothing to actually sell the fair.

This is where the AI submissions get really sad.

If everyone was competing based on their AI submissions then I wouldn’t care. It can be fun to have a slop-off where everyone competes to see what they can coax out of the LLM.

When a contest is designed to get people to compete with each other, it’s just sad when the win goes to someone who did the least amount of work. In this case, the result isn’t even good.

If the people judging weren’t familiar with AI they probably mistook the details and textures as evidence of high effort and skill input. If you didn’t know better about AI, some of the quirks like the messed up lines might look like someone’s awkward attempts at a unique artistic style.

The 5th almost feels like an AI benchmark akin to the infamous Pelican.

Those look so much better. I’m not even saying those are definitely hand crafted but they certainly don’t have the “slop” aesthetic.

They look much better. I don't know if it's just my exposure to AI images but the first place one looks so obviously like AI slop.