Ancient cave dwellers wandering the steppes, carefully distinguishing potable lattes from poisonous varieties of herbal tea.

> How has AI art made your food meaningfully less delicious?

If a menu has pictures, I expect the food to look like the picture. That said, this is really only a problem for the store in respect of returns. If nobody is returning the product because it didn't look as advertised, there probably isn't any harm being done.

I don't eat cereal and I can't think of the last time I ate at a restaurant that had pictures on the menu, but to your point I think there's still quite a huge gap between optimized and perfected version of thing that exists versus thing that entirely does not exist.

It's not that it's fake. It's that it has a distinct style.

I once thought that AI image/video would quickly become unidentifiable, but the surprising thing (so far) is that every new model release is followed by two reactions: "This is incredible" to "I recognize this style. It's AI. They're all the same."

It takes only a few weeks. I've been amazed with our mind's ability to move the goalpost.

AI art has made the experience meaningfully less enjoyable.

99% of AI slop posters aren't an artistic depiction / deviation from the real product, they are a grotesque amalgamation of whatever generic images of food are in the training data. If they weren't, it would take more effort than just hiring a freelancer and defeat the purpose for these greedy business owners.

In the U.S., at least, this is not really true. The FTC has laws that prohibits companies from using non-food products (e.g., glue for milk or motor oil for syrup) in photographs of food they’re selling. They also have laws about deceptive marketing practices. These laws definitely aren’t perfectly enforced, but it’s hardly the widespread problem you’re suggesting it is. Also pretty funny to specifically highlight Chinese food, which has always looked like someone used a disposable camera to hastily snap a photo of a real plate of food about to be given to a customer sometime in 1997 in ~90% of the Chinese restaurants I’ve ever been to.

AI obviously has 0 realness to it. So it’s worse in every way.

Indeed you are correct about this! What I think is different in these cases is that the images of the food in your examples (generally) aim to make it look good, whereas the AI art makes it looks like slop (literally and figuratively).

I also prefer the side case of actual photos of the food, which is common at delis and some more authentic Chinese restaurants; these are also being replaced quickly by AI.

Has AI art made my food less delicious - I don't think I've ever purchased food I've seen first represented by AI, but certainly the expectation of taste affects your perception of it...

Ah, you've been downvoted by the holier than thou "nyeeeh!" crowd.

You are correct though, especially fast food places using air brushed and photoshopped food photos are the inedible food object has been carefully set up.

And no amount of petty votes will change the above.

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