AI Posters and Cafe Menus Draw Creative Backlash as Trust Concerns Grow

TechRadar reported that local event posters made with AI seem to have appeared suddenly in many places. They are easy to spot because they look similar and generic, the report said, adding that ChatGPT appears to favor marker-felt-style fonts for headings while the main image often has an unmistakable AI-generated look. The report suggested the new ChatGPT Images 2.5, with its templates for event posters, may be partly to blame. The author wrote that the trend is sickening and can put people off the events being advertised, and said the same feeling applies to AI-generated posters in cafe windows showing food.

Maria Boyle, a scientist and professional cartoonist whose cartoons appear in New Scientist and who uses the name twisteddoodles, told TechRadar that AI-generated posters bother her. “I always feel a sense of disappointment and creatively I get the ick,” she said. “It hurts most when it is places like the library or local schools who are meant to be bastions of creativity.” Boyle said AI-generated posters look generic and the same, meaning essentially all events end up with the same branding. “If AI is used by really good events but also really terrible events, you can’t trust AI art as a brand to equate quality,” she said.

Boyle described a coffee shop where all the posters were AI-generated and the food had an uncanny valley quality. One poster advertised a mango granola item she likes. Because the person making the poster could not get the AI to make the food item look like what they served, they changed what they served to look like the AI image, she said. The item is now bigger and uses more ingredients. TechRadar said the anecdote points to a more serious question: what happens when marketing stops reflecting the actual business.

TechRadar cited recent YouGov research finding that 78% of Britons would be less trusting of a brand that used AI-generated actors in its advertising. Stephen Brookes, founder of UK-based creative agency NPK Media, warned that a purely AI-driven approach to marketing could damage customer trust, which he described as one of the most valuable assets a business can have. “If every advert and social media post starts to look and sound the same because it has been generated using the same tool, businesses risk losing the personality that makes them stand out,” Brookes said. He added that a business might save money by generating an advert in minutes, but if the advert feels generic, artificial or disconnected from the reality of the business, the long-term cost could be much greater. “The best marketing doesn’t just fill a content calendar. It communicates something real about the people, products and values behind a business,” he said.

Boyle also said some people seem blind to the distinctive look of AI art or see no problem with using it. She suggested that some feel entitled to use AI because they believe talent and artistic skill are innate, and that if a person is not born with those abilities, technology can provide them. She said such users believe they are not stealing from artists but simply giving themselves something fate did not provide. “But if you ask most artists, what they do has taken years of work and training to achieve and was not something gifted by the mysterious talent fairy,” Boyle said.

The TechRadar report noted that a few years ago much of the debate around generative AI centered on whether companies should be allowed to train models on artists’ work without permission or payment. That debate has not disappeared, but it is less prominent today. Boyle said the models have already been trained, have access to the internet and are still training. “Now I don’t think the fight is with AI, the fight is with companies and individuals to see how much they value creative talent,” she said. She added that the fight is people saying “This is made with AI, I don’t like it,” because if AI creation becomes everyone’s ick, the branding will be so damaged that companies will have to return to human creators. “Come back to me. I like money and I write really good copy,” she said.

Editor's Summary

AI-generated posters, menus and ads are becoming more visible in real-world settings, and creative workers say their generic style can blur the identity of events and businesses. A TechRadar report cited a cartoonist’s account and a YouGov survey showing consumer trust risks, while a marketing agency founder warned that short-term savings may carry long-term costs. The debate has shifted from whether AI models should be trained on artists’ work to whether companies and audiences will value human creative talent.