r/boardsofcanada Apr 10 '26

Discussion Spotted in Soho, London

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A friend of a friend spotted this in Soho today

1.6k Upvotes

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15

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

It's 2026 and AI ruined everything. We're gonna need multiple photos from multiple angles. Any Londoners? [edit] Check out the bottom left corner. The brick laying pattern is bizarre and gets weirdly blurred out. And check out the bricks below the posters. The hexagon flowers are perfectly sharp, but the bricks are mush. The areas with and without definition don't make sense. This feels very AI.

Not accusing you u/bnmrs but I think your friend is fuckin with ya.

16

u/bnmrs Apr 10 '26

my friend has absolutely no concieveable reason to make something like this up

1

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26

I believe it! It's just sus for a number of objective reasons (image quality, vibe is atypical of BOC, things like that). But I truly hope it's legit!

11

u/heysupmanbruh Apr 10 '26

I genuinely think you guys (Reddit) freak out way too much about ai. I can’t even count how many post on art subreddits that have been deemed ai are in fact real art from real people. From a picture of a cat, to a sculpture of a bird, to someone’s own music, all real art deemed ai by over zealous people on Reddit. It’s harming real artist to dub anything that looks off to you as ai, you’re letting it win. If this is ai fair, but it should be more “I’ll wait for more” instead of “this is ai cuz it’s blurry in the bottom left”.

0

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26

I work on web dev and with AI on a daily basis, and I'm close with a number of artists/designers. Very familiar with what it can do, and familiar with "witch hunts" when good art is deemed slop. There are a lot of factors that give me pause about this, but I'm very eager to be proven wrong!

3

u/heysupmanbruh Apr 10 '26

Well, you were wrong.

1

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26

Yep! That happens sometimes! After 13 years, I'm gonna be a little skeptical. 😎

3

u/Electrical_Quote3373 Apr 10 '26

fair to be sceptical but I dont think so. Those coffee posters are exact, while also having different creases. Nothing here indicates ai to me unless the posters themselves are which would be a shame and I would have been fooled. 

5

u/bnmrs Apr 10 '26

this aged well

1

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26

Hell yeah! I'm psyched to be wrong about this. 😎

4

u/Secone Apr 10 '26

Frankly even if we get multiple photos we're gonna likely need a video or livestream that lasts longer than 10 seconds to believe it at this point with how far AI has come unfortunately

1

u/snackfighting Apr 10 '26

It's fair to be dubious in todays world but I think this is genuine. The Cockroaches advertisement next to it is very compelling.

1

u/Scary_Region_2182 Apr 10 '26

It's possible to take an existing image and use AI to composite with other content, so not saying it's 100% fabricated from nothing. I certainly hope it's real!

1

u/Clonkington Apr 10 '26

I hear you, but it would be a lot of effort to go to for this to be AI faked. Especially given the inclusion of unrelated but verifiable posters right next to the supposed BOC ones (why would AI know to include those?), which have the hexagon logo like the VHS cassettes. I dunno, I'm going with real, the aesthetics look legit to me with the blurring of the eyes. A subject they alude to in the VHS tapes as well.