cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/71005876
Consumers are increasingly encountering AI-generated images on food menus such as leathery meat and bread resembling reptile skin
Starting to wonder if business owners might just be the worst kind of people ever
Every time a cook is fired or quits and then starts their own successful business while the original flounders is proof that the weakest link in the chain is the owner
Someone should write about that
Critical support to small businesses slop house proprietors for making it easier to identify shitty restaurants to avoid. I’d even take the places that have the overly produced and edited pictures of food over AI slop, at least they decided to put some effort into how they present themselves.
Shitty pictures of real food are still the best indicator the food is going to kick ass though, I stand by that
A sandwich shop opened up here that has AI sandwiches on a sign inside the shop and their sandwiches are actually bangin. Its a real conundrum. They also use a service for online ordering that has the audacity to make me prove I’m human, like AI out here getting ham sandwiches.
“We decided we would design something that was eye-catching,” he said, declining to give his name for publication. “Restaurant people are trying to be cost-effective.”
I have yet to see a reason why you can’t just take a smart phone picture. They weren’t even trying to do some fucking appeal to investors; it’s a fuckin restaurant. Don’t overthink it. Maybe Photoshop, maybe AI and get it Instagram ready. But people like food I doubt the marketing team fussing with it is going to drive enough profit to justify the time spent
Yeah really. I used to sell sourdough bread in a small farmers market type thing and as I had no money I did all the beautiful bread pics and stuff on my cheap smartphone, the IG and website and whatever. It all looked very good and really you take the pics as you make the things, it isn’t that complicated.
WHY ARE THEY USING AI THEY CAN JUST TAKE A PHOTO
Collective “entrepreneur” psychosis. These small business tyrants see CEOs falling over their own dicks to push LLM slop on their businesses and think that they can get a slice of that pie if they copy those titans of industry
Small business owner delusion is perhaps stronger than the big capitalist’s
I think they’re radically different, not sure it’s apples to apples. The “entrepreneur mindset” sect of Capitalist Liberation Theology is an almost quaint belief that some combination of hard work and cleverness can Empower™ normal people to Create Value™ and do well for themselves, but only if they step up to the plate. You just need to Invest™ in the right
OT bookscourses and follow the right Thought Leaders™. It’s almost reasonable if you can put yourself back in your tenth grade economics classroom and blot out everything else you’ve ever learned about the world.These people fucking love the promise of the slop age, the instant gratification of the chatbot eclipsing any taste or judgement, they love getting scammed, a lot of them actively love putting money into every single part of their business except the people doing the work, they love it, they fucking love capex dude, they love following trends, they’re fucking investing, okay, they’re using the future of tech, stop pretending you’re better than them, okay,
Naive, individualistic belief in capitalism is different than the world the big money people exist in. Those guys are much more likely to understand that they’re not doing the world a favor, that they’re actually unkind or abusive or rapacious. The textbook lib example is all the m/billionaires actively tearing society to shreds for a few extra quarters of line goes up. No fucking shit they know what they’re working towards, they know on some level they need people to buy their treats, they very explicitly don’t believe capitalism to be this meritocratic but cruel great equalizer.
(That said the lib fantasy of being in a nice little fair business where I do a lot of work and pay my little band of misfit co-op-ployees well still speaks to me. Despite the Small Business Derangement Syndrome I keep witnessing around me. Why wouldn’t it. Corporate sucks and does nothing for my community. I’m not immune to propaganda.)
TLDR I think small business owners don’t think they’re greedy and it would hurt them to internalize that they’re greedy while big capitalism people know they’re greedy and they don’t care / like being the villain
(None of this is meaningful and I need to read theory)
so on the one hand I understand that photographing food is notoriously difficult. there’s a whole science to it for fast food advertisements and stuff where they have to grill the patty a certain way and arrange the ingredients in a specific way in order to both satisfy the truth and advertisement requirement while also making the picture look good.
on the other I would prefer a yellowing picture of a poorly lit greasy burger to slop.
one of my local hole in the walls has a big AI generated sign out front. they used to have a hand-painted slab of wood. it’s a one of the first things you see when you drive into my town and it suuuuuuucks.
Yeah it’s just the petite boug getting on the bandwagon of not wanting to paid workers for actual art and instead thinking that the proles will eat the slop readily
If it’s not some high-end restaurant or some huge company some Instagram level food photography is fine.
Congrats they managed to make Jamaican food, which is world renowned in the culinary world, look unappetizing.
Mind blowing.
Jerks!
If you try to cut costs, for the sake of profit, by eliminating the Divisions of labour through simply replacing the workers with technology, instead of uplifting the workers with the help of technological advancement, this is the inevitable outcome.
A world of too many things for nobody to consume. No matter how good looking the things are, it’s irrelevant, the hungry worker will grow to despise them.
It’s just a tell that the store really doesn’t give a fuck about their food
Whenever AI tries to produce an image of brown rice it ends up looking like bait worms.
AI makes food look like a bunch of rabbit turds that were dyed and mushed together.
Like how does one look at something like this and go, “Yeah our customers will find this appetizing.”
Wtf lmao
Look at those tiny chips.
Don’t these businesses know you’re supposed to lie to customers in a more palatable way? Be more traditional and use shaving cream, motor oil, and cardboard in your food photography. Consumers yearn for inedible fake food pictures, not fake pictures of food.
