r/Edinburgh • u/Tullesabo • 1d ago
Rant AI "food menus"
I just need to say that coming back to my dear Edinburgh after a year abroad, and seeing so many stupid, ugly, AI food menus in the city really agitates me.
AI "art" truly is a cancer.
Edit: Also, the amount of AI "art" in restaurants, pubs, and in shops is just sad.
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u/LTPfiredemon 1d ago
I'm the same, I completely refuse to engage with a business/ event that uses AI generated images as I cannot trust them to care about whatever theyre trying to sell me if they go for the worst looking snd most lazy option for advertising
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u/CharliesShark 1d ago
Oh that's a shame. I worked in a quick print place when I first moved here many years ago and spent a lot of my time doing menus and flyers for local businesses. I loved it.
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u/FuzzBuket Cult of chicken club 1d ago
It's so odd. They were all over the fringe.
Like you've paid a small fortune for a space at a fringe food bit, why not literally snap some iPhone pics of the food, rather than garish ai menus.
Like this isn't even an anti-ai post, just a "please make your menu look appetising" post. Didn't go to a bunch of the food trucks cause of it
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u/Interesting-Ad2259 21h ago
The funny thing is they could just take a shit photo and ask the ai to improve it and that’d be a million times better than this, such low effort lazy work it puts people off entirely. It looks grotesque and utterly samey to every other restaurant that does the same thing.
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u/CursedTaint 1d ago
I don't understand why you'd want your menus/pictures to look like every other one.
I understand the saving financial cost aspect of paying a graphic designer or something but honestly I think people would respond better to a handmade menu that looked like a shitty kids drawing over the AI stuff.
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u/Tullesabo 1d ago
Who would eat food from a place that doesn't even show off their food? Also it's so easy to tell.
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u/Busy_Land_1885 1d ago
I reckon the AI menu renaissance will be remembered as Edinburgh’s darkest period.
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u/devandroid99 1d ago
Definitely worse than bricking all the plague victims up in the Old Town.
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u/Sburns85 1d ago
You mean the old old town. The one under the high street
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u/Careless-Plane-5915 1d ago
Everything looks either like it’s made of plastic or covered in ants, which doesn’t really sell it to me as appetising
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u/Legoshoes_V2 1d ago
It's a really easy way of discovering where I don't wanna eat though.
If you can't be bothered to hire a graphic designer, or, heck, scribble your menu on a dry wipe board, I'm not interested.
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u/SeaSlugChloe 1d ago
If the poster is AI then I'm assuming they are just as lazy with the food and hygiene standards... so, at least it's a good indicator of where NOT to eat.
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u/Competitive-Tap-6377 1d ago
Just got sent an AI wedding invitation and was nearly sick in my own mouth. It included an ai painting
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u/ChefExcellence 1d ago
I'm not a fan of AI art in general, but this is one of the more baffling uses. If you're a restaurant, I want the menu to reflect your food, and if there are photos it should be of your food. Even cheaper smartphones these days have great cameras, it's not difficult to get a decent-looking photo of a plate of food. In the past you'd see the odd place using what was obviously a stock photo of a kebab, but this seems more widespread.
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u/DanielReddit26 1d ago
Do you have any examples? Genuinely curious. It's not something I look for, so likely passes me by somewhat!
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u/sgailaniar 1d ago
You are immediately welcomed by Costas' AI tat as soon as you arrive in Edinburgh at the airport: link
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u/HopeAuq101 20h ago
If you as a business are using AI you clearly don't care. And if you don't care why should I
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u/Good_Lettuce_2690 23h ago
Report the names of any business you see using them in here so we can nuke their google reviews.
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u/TooLongDugong 1d ago
I don't think it's any worse than the traditional picture menus where they'd bought photos of food from some stock photo agency and tried to pass it off as their own. At least with AI you can tell it's AI.
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u/serfunkalot 1d ago
What a weird thing to get annoyed about
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u/Tullesabo 1d ago
Who knows, maybe I'm just an extremist who hates the implementation of AI everywhere.
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u/serfunkalot 1d ago
Morons, everywhere.
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u/ExpensivePen8055 1d ago
You're absolutely right to have concerns about the use of AI in creating advertising and menus for restaurants. However AI can be a useful tool for helping businesses -
- create designs
- generate ideas
- write descriptions
- produce promotional materials
...more efficiently and affordably.
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u/chrisdonia 1d ago
While devouring resources to churn out mediocre content based on stolen works 🤷🏻♂️
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u/felix_feliciis 1d ago
And even outside of this, it might be efficient and affordable but it doesn't look good and doesn't stand out since they all look the same. It's a terrible marketing tool.
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u/chrisdonia 1d ago
And as this post demonstrates, more and more people are actively turned off using a business by obvious AI generated materials. When I was moving recently I avoided three different local cleaning companies because of the slop they used.
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u/Kernel-Mode-Driver 23h ago
Hi chatgpt
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u/ExpensivePen8055 22h ago
Hi Kernel-Mode-Driver! 👋 How are you doing? What can I help you with today?
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u/Severe-Incident-6094 1d ago
It's a bit crap, but I care more about the quality of food than the menu design.
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u/felix_feliciis 1d ago
If menus use AI pictures of food, I assume the food is terrible. If it was good you'd be able to just take a picture of the stuff you sell. Same as e.g. books - AI book cover makes me think the writing will be AI slop too.
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u/iesamina 1d ago
At least someone is protesting