| ▲ | petetnt 6 hours ago |
| The author claims that the AI posters don’t have to be horrible, but fail to see that the dozen variations generated are not distinctive - they might have somewhat different typography or imaginary, but still have the same AI uniformity and smell as the crappy restaurant poster you see on the street. The core issue is not only technical, but also the lack of vision and imagination when creating art or even infographics. |
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| ▲ | bonoboTP 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The alternative is WordArt, or just black on white Comic Sans with some bolding and font size variations with bad ClipArt. These small scale events would never hire a professional. I'm old enough to remember that people also complained about WordArt and Clipart and too many fonts etc. I see the chatgpt poster style on many small-scale local village events also. But again, what they replace wasn't any better. It's not replacing some beautiful craft that existed before. |
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| ▲ | wiether 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I'm old enough to remember that people also complained about WordArt and Clipart and too many fonts etc.
We basically had two kinds of posters: - those made by someone skilled/savvy (not necessarily a professional)
- those made by someone without skills/knowledge
The later were awful, in the sense that I would never display them in my home as a reminder of a an event I took part in.But still, they were nice because you knew someone took the time to create them to promote an event and share the important information about it, and each person was producing their own awful posters. Now with gen AI we have something filled with trash, everything looks the same, the important information is hard to find... Sure, the variations offered in the article are a bit better and more opinionated, but they still reek AI conformity and I feel sick looking at them. | | |
| ▲ | jwr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > they still reek AI conformity and I feel sick looking at them I bet you would not feel sick if you didn't know ahead of time they were AI-generated. Some really are quite good. | | |
| ▲ | ACCount39 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's saturation. If I saw an Images 2.0 flyer in year 2020? In a world where Images 2.0 didn't exist? I'd be impressed. But if I see it now, today? I'm not impressed at all. It's the same image, produced by the same AI and seen by the same person. So, what's the difference? What changed over time? Saturation. "I've seen it all before." AI made that specific flyer style plentiful and omnipresent, and that made it "derivative" and "cheap". What used to invoke "cool" and "wow" was turned into a dreary cliche by repetition. Flaws that were easy to overlook when overshadowed by novelty stand out like a sore thumb now that you've seen them before in the same patterns many times over. The image is the same - it has the same strengths and the same flaws. But your focus is shifted by familiarity. It's the same mechanism that drives trends and fashion. AI just supercharges it. Naturally, you can avoid a lot of it by using careful prompting and steering to guide an AI away from the "cliche" style-space. You can get something with both good quality and good identity that way. But that requires: being aware of the problem, being really good at prompting, and putting in a considerable effort. It's hard to steer a model away from "AI cliches" if you don't have the eye to spot them in the first place. Most AI-generated content doesn't have that kind of skill and effort applied to it - it simply uses the "model defaults", and gets the "model defaults". For all the good and bad that comes with those. | |
| ▲ | wiether 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The activities being perfectly aligned and normalized is the big tell here to me Idk how to express it exactly, but I don't see how a human would have come to something like this | | |
| ▲ | graemep 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you think about whether it is AI, are good at recognising those tells, an thinking about whether it is AI, then its probable you will spot things like that. Most people are not that good at spotting those tells, and when looking at a poster they will not be thinking about whether its is AI or not. If its not obviously AI they are not going to even think about it. | | |
| ▲ | wiether 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | At least in this case I can't pretend I have some kind of super power since I knew beforehand that it was gen AI. And also it's not like I'm saying I love all the man-made posters. Or that I never been "fooled" by gen AI content. It's just that as soon as I start seeing some gen AI tells on an image, I can't unsee them and I feel disgusted by it. | |
| ▲ | Applejinx 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If there's nothing to think about they may well not think. That's the problem. |
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| ▲ | card_zero 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Like how if you bought a box of chocolates, and it was actually filled with rocks, you wouldn't dislike it until you found out. Immediate glamor followed by gradual disappointment is AI output all over. | | |
| ▲ | sejje an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it's like if you bought a box of chocolates, and you couldn't distinguish if they were handmade or factory-made, even after you ate them. And it took them telling you before you knew. And then you decided you didn't like the ones made by the factory as much anymore. | |
| ▲ | hardbass 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Chocolates and rocks are different things. Pictures and pictures are the same thing. |
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| ▲ | phoronixrly 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > if you didn't know ahead of time they were AI-generated You can't be serious... Are we looking at the same posters? | | |
| ▲ | ACCount39 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes. That's the issue: we are looking at the same posters. It's just that "seeing this poster for the first time, unaware of the workings behind it" is a very different experience from "seeing this poster after you already saw dozens of other AI generated posters that used a similar style and had similar issues, got canny at spotting both the style and the issues in it, and came to associate them with cheap low quality work". The former impression is "wow that's a good poster". The latter impression is "ew, it's posterslop". The poster, in the meanwhile, remains the same. AI can often win in art contests - images, short stories, design. But that requires either sharp prompting, or an audience that's not familiar with "AI cliches". The quality is, if removed from the context, fairly good. If embedded in context, it's utter slop. The work is the same. Funny how that works. | | |
| ▲ | miyoji 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, context matters. The greatest painting in the world is just crushed materials smeared on a canvas, it's nothing too special without the context. A computer (not even an LLM, just something generating random pixels) could randomly generate the exact same pixel pattern as the greatest painting in the world, and it would not be the greatest painting in the world, because context matters. | | |
| ▲ | hardbass 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because of what? | | |
| ▲ | miyoji 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Context. | | |
| ▲ | hardbass 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is it the lack of hate? I could put all the hate I have into a person or group I hate while composing an AI art piece for instance. | | |
| ▲ | miyoji 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No you couldn't, because you can't compose AI art. The AI composes it, and it can't feel hate. | | |
| ▲ | hardbass 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't paint physically with paint when I use photoshop either. Photoshop doesn't feel hate. | |
| ▲ | hardbass 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The sentience of AI is also an open question. |
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| ▲ | elxr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you read the article at all, the "everything looks the same" is easily fixed with just a tiny bit of effort. It's not AI causing the sameyness and hard-to-read nature of these posters, it's people being lazy. I personally think there's a few nice looking ones in there (the punk fanzine style for one). Sure it's not some 9/10 hand made poster, but considering these take 30 seconds to make, it's impressive. | | |
| ▲ | miyoji 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Sure it's not some 9/10 hand made poster, but considering these take 30 seconds to make, it's impressive. It's not impressive. It would be impressive if a human did it, but a human did not do it. Is it impressive when a printer prints out 10 perfect copies of the same flyer, because it would be impressive if a human could do that? No, of course not. It's similarly not impressive when the copying machine makes a plausible copy of something a human once made. |
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| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Some level of uniformity is fine and indeed the norm. It was uniform back when posters were hand painted, eg 19th century world fairs or zoo openings or theater posters. They look pretty similar. Carneval posters looked similar. The expectation of some kaleidoscope of styles is not really grounded in how things used to be ever. Also, it's just nostalgia, just like how some young people now think audio cassettes and discmans are "cool" and have some revival, some are nostalgic for the back-in-the-day Word posters because "at least back then", but "these days" it's decline etc. Pretty sure in a few years people will be nostalgic for crappy AI slop of 2025-26 because their shittiness will feel like some charm compared to whatever the AI will be able to do. | | |
| ▲ | wiether 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Also, it's just nostalgia
I'm not sure about that. I, myself, am not skilled enough to make a nice poster, so when I needed one, I used to asked my skilled friends to do them for me.But sometimes I also purposefully made myself some Comic Sans stuff, exaggerating them in every possible way, as a joke. And it was well received because people knew it was my own work and understood the joke. If I made this today, it would not be seen the same. People would thought I'm trying to fight gen AI trash or I'm nostalgic of the past. While I'm just trying to make a joke by making something awful on purpose. And I couldn't do the same joke using gen AI. The "on purpose" cannot be conveyed. People would just see gen AI trash. | | |
| ▲ | dreambigwrkhard 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I was one of those "skilled friends" that people go to, to make those posters in times of need back in school. And this was many years ago. Didn't enjoy it, but just did it as part of volunteering, or help the student community or a school club out. Some people enjoy doing that work, but most people did not, and I was often the last resort because a random club or activity could not find suitable help in time. So had to step up when a friend or acquaintance asked. I think there is some misguided view where in "the good old days" people designed everything by hand. From the perspective of someone who had to make 10-20 of those a year as a volunteer, I can say it came at personal cost, often caused distractions from the actual event, and there was not enough people who stepped up to get it done. If it was so enjoyable we would have no problems finding people doing the work and that was not the case. The posters and designs were often rushed out late night by the closest person you can find who had a copy of photoshop on their computer. If we had AI back then, I would bet you 100% it would be the preferable solution and no one would bat an eye. It wasn't the type of work a lot of people wanted to do, could do properly and is willing to do for free, at their spare time, rushed for a deadline. | |
| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Making stuff that's bad on purpose is annoying, like acting retarded ironically. Make good stuff or just spend little effort. Putting in effort to look low effort is just trying to be special when you're not. |
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| ▲ | nephihaha 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sorry, but Walkmans and Discmans were considered cool... At the time. Personally I like simple designs. I always remind people who make posters that whoever looks at them will only do so for a matter of seconds. If you want extensive detail, put it in smaller print. Put the main hook in large letters and a brief description. | | |
| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | But they became uncool when the iPod and mp3 players came out. Nobody felt sentimental about VHS artifacts either, and now it's a genz aesthetic or something. These things cycle, like I'm sure some old folks miss the radio hiss and listening to football matches with just audio. |
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| ▲ | dreambigwrkhard 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I am somewhat tired of all the AI posters, but I have to agree with what you are saying. The alternative was not any better. I think there's a persistent and very vocal segment of the population that just want to complain about anything to do with AI with a take no hostage approach. Some instances are understandable but if a local small town event or a low budget restaurant using AI to make a poster draws so much ire, I feel that it may be likely misplaced personal frustrations projected towards others. The response don't seem to be proportional to the offence. | |
| ▲ | gyomu 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The alternative is WordArt, or just black on white Comic Sans with some bolding and font size variations with bad ClipArt ?? The alternative is people just taking some markers & a sheet of paper, or chalk and a blackboard. If you travel around east Asia you’ll be delighted by the variety and creativity of these handmade signs. Way better than anything produced digitally. But of course their relationship to handwriting is completely different there compared to the west. | |
| ▲ | Kreutzer 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | One of my favorite local ice cream shops uses Comic Sans (white on navy blue) on all their signage and this is one of the main reasons I frequent it. If they were to switch to some AI slop I wouldn't step my feet in there again. | |
| ▲ | r_lee 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > But again, what they replace wasn't any better. I would argue otherwise. whereas before I'd take a glance and go "hm interesting" or whatever, with these its just "oh look, it's AI slop" and that's all I will notice | | |
| ▲ | Bootvis 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In the examples above, that’s really your own loss? There will only be one or two events in your local village, it seems self defeating to ignore what they offer because you don’t like the medium. At least these posters are well laid out and easy to read. | |
| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I can't help but like the posters for the sheer reason that they annoy some annoying people who have a visceral reaction to the concept of AI. | | |
| ▲ | r_lee 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > who have a visceral reaction to the concept of AI why do you think this is the reason? should I be cheering and clapping when someone goes on chatgpt and say "make me a poster" and they think they're a genius when this slop comes out? | | |
| ▲ | drstewart 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | God forbid some overworked volunteer make a poster in 30 seconds instead of taking a college course to please some huffy internet commentators with an axe to grind | |
| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | r_lee 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | what are you even trying to imply here? should I be complimenting these default AI slop posters or be feeling good about them? I never felt this way towards low effort / simple posters before, I thought they were fine | | |
| ▲ | bonoboTP 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You just dislike their taste and the fact that they don't subscribe to your political crusade. | | |
| ▲ | r_lee 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | political crusade? and yes I dislike the taste of the AI slop posters as seen in the introduction of the article |
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| ▲ | breezybottom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Same mentality as people who voted for Trump. No wonder he's become such an AI booster. |
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| ▲ | BoredomIsFun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > t still have the same AI uniformity and smell as the crappy restaurant poster you see on the street You have really try hard to see that. It is good enough to not give immediate annoyed reflex of seeing something in the same ubiquitous default chatgpt style. For goodness sake - these are just a fair posters. |
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| ▲ | AIiscoming 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They look absolutly well done. |
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| ▲ | crazybonkersai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Idk, those are more than alright to my eye. Surely they won't win any design awards, but as a throwaway poster for one time event these are miles better than any amateur work. |
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| ▲ | danpasca 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It doesn't fail, it actually demonstrates how the model can improve the output if the prompt is better. AI generated websites look like crap because developers don't know any design language so they have no idea how to prompt the models to get something good and more unique and creative out of them. This shows that you can actually achieve that with just slightly better prompting. Just like with programming, actually. |
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| ▲ | bspammer 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For me what always gives it away is not the posters themselves, it’s the context. These are all overdesigned for a local community fair. There is no way they’d be paying for a professional designer for this, therefore it’s AI. On the other hand if it had word art, grammar/spelling mistakes, images with wrong aspect ratios or clipping issues, that would immediately convince me it wasn’t AI. |
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| ▲ | _puk 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Context is everything. A twee handwritten sign for free range eggs at the roadside is likely to do well. A handwritten sign for flying lessons on the other hand.. | | |
| ▲ | jasonjayr 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I recall a hand-painted "Skydiving" sign at some small rural airport... | |
| ▲ | bspammer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And anyone selling flying lessons could probably afford a graphic designer, it sounds like we agree. |
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| ▲ | singpolyma3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Prompt: make me a poster in the "looks like garbage made by someone who doesn't know how to use Microsoft word or what aspect ratio is" style... |
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| ▲ | TacticalCoder 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > but fail to see that the dozen variations generated are not distinctive - they might have somewhat different typography or imaginary, but still have the same AI uniformity and smell as the crappy restaurant poster you see on the street Hard disagree: every single example TFA gives is way better than the horrible generic ones that are polluting every shop and LinkedIn post. It's not even close. |
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| ▲ | grumbel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's not what OP is complaining about. The issue with AI art isn't how the individual piece look, but the similarities they have in aggregate. One image can look perfectly fine, once you seen a hundred they all start looking extremely similar. Human brains are great pattern recognizer and lock on to those similarities, even when they are covered under different styles. When all your art comes from a single source, it's difficult to create real diversity and novelty. That's still the big issue when it comes to genAI in general, without a lot of hand holding you'll just bound to end up with slop, since the AI won't get creative on its own. | | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Did you look at the examples? They're almost ridiculously diverse, and the prompts show very little handholding was required. They're not novel, but a poster for a spring fair isn't supposed to look like a de Kooning. These arguments are almost completely detached from reality. Most artists aren't diverse either - they're told to find a style and stick to it, and that's what they do. Commercial graphic designers are more versatile, but the set of standard looks is still relatively small. Hollywood movie posters and book cover designers are notorious for reusing the same tropes and colour systems, and that's been true for years, long before AI was a thing. | | |
| ▲ | grumbel 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > They're almost ridiculously diverse, and the prompts show very little handholding was required. The structure is identically to all of that, big title, graphic, list with icons. As said, they look fine on their own, the problem is only becomes apparent when you had to look had hundreds or thousands of them. It's the em-dash or the "load-bearing" of the AI-art world, the more you look at this stuff, the more apparent the similarities become. > Hollywood movie posters and book cover designers are notorious for reusing the same tropes and colour systems, and that's been true for years, long before AI was a thing. Exactly, but with AI that issue becomes even more drastic since the models don't create diversity by default. > Most artists aren't diverse either They don't have to be, since there are millions of them, all coming from different backgrounds, with different art styles and all. While there are only a handful of big AI models, who all come with a pretty generic default style. |
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| ▲ | graemep 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I am not sure. If something is not in the usual AI style its not going to leap out at you that it is AI the same way. Maybe if thought about it, but when someone looks at a poster they typically focus on the information, not the style. |
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| ▲ | Applejinx 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Only at the first derivative. What you're observing is an additional layer of 'but, in genre X!' and then same slop, different prompt. You're complaining about what happens when people don't even supply the additional layer, but just go 'make me a poster, no mistakes, it should be a great poster'. When you give no direction at all you get the purest of slop. You start giving directions, you start narrowing down the area you're digging through the slop of, and possibly you ask for something that people aren't familiar with and they're only able to identify that you asked. Hence, Chinese posters with a cherry blossom and the kanji for 'Japan' and such. Someone went 'make it Chinese' and the slop associated it with 'Oriental' and what came out was collective unconscious, such that people who weren't thinking and didn't have experience might not look twice, but the meaning turned out tainted. Sort of like food depictions that more closely resemble a pile of maggots. Those glisten! (well, I suppose they must.) There's a whole uncanny-valley thing that happens on every level and inspires revulsion. I'm suggesting that is still happening in the other examples but you've not got the experience to register their problems. With the food depictions, all animals eat stuff so we're hardwired to bounce off unsafe foods even if they glisten… |
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| ▲ | echelon 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The variations the author generates are night and day better than the "piss filter" era slop in the first batch. Some of them would have passed as intentionally crafted by a graphics designer before AI. And let's not forget that before AI, many of these would be word doc printouts with clip art. The alternative wasn't hiring a designer - the alternative was doing nothing special at all. |
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