That said, my own aesthetic sense is very much turned off by them. It is hard for me to articulate why, but I can name four reasons:
- The food never actually looks good, real, or delicious;
- The information is presented in a haphazard way, with text randomly thrown all over the place;
- There is really only one kind of "style" of these signs that I've seen, and it's sad to think that this style (or lack thereof) may become ubiquitous;
- In a world where AI feels increasingly shoved down our throats, it is unnerving to so suddenly see its rise manifested in the physical world.
I recall in particular when I first moved to London and realised you could identify low quality Italian restaurants by whether they had the same laminated plastic dessert menu from some distributor of ready made desserts... The step up was when they'd cut and pasted parts of that menu design into their own template...
And keep in mind we notice the bad examples, because they stand out. They'll fade out of public consciousness as people get better at getting better output out of them, but they're not likely to disappear - menus have clearly been a low priority for a certain subset of places pretty much forever.
If anything, it reliably signals "cheap".
The former is both weird, creepy most of the time, and false advertising. The latter is as you say - the state of the current status quo. I can tell that it's AI, but honestly it's just replacing low-effort human crud for low-effort AI crud. Doesn't bother me at all, it's actually a great use for the technology imo.
We've got millions of years of evolutionary wiring in our heads to try and figure out if something can be eaten - take that out of the process and you can screw up in a bunch of ways which raise alarm bells.
If a menu has pictures, I expect the food to look like the picture. That said, this is really only a problem for the store in respect of returns. If nobody is returning the product because it didn't look as advertised, there probably isn't any harm being done.
Has food ever looked like the picture, though? I find this position unrealistic outside of an Amazon return excuse.
An AI image isn't anything to do with the actual dish. That's too far removed from the reality to be considered fair.
Sign me up, I love it.
AI image of a pancake because the small business owner doesn’t have a Kellog’s budget?
Fuck that guy, I hope his business fails
So defensively we have to assume the worst, but when we actually do that (or god forbid talk to other people about it) online weirdos like yourself start jumping in front of the bullet.
I'll say that again - when a restaurant has pictures of food, those pictures are often from stock, not actual representative shots of the food the restaurant sells.
This especially applies to fast food and tourist eateries. (Upmarket restaurants don't usually have photos at all.)
Just Eat in the UK has a policy of requiring actual dish shots, but that's not the norm.
Kellogs need a perfect picture to sell millions of pancakes.
Small business doesn't. They can use a slightly worse picture, or no picture.
This wasn't a problem 2 years ago when the best AI was Midjourney and terrible. It's not a problem today either.
Yeah man it's unrealistic for restaurants to take pictures of the food they make and use that for the menu. Totally.
I once ordered from a Waffle House once exactly like this:
"I'll have the Texas Bacon Cheesesteak Omelette, with hashbrowns all the way...and I want it to look like the picture."
And to my disbelief, they don't throw a chair at my head.
Instead, the cook came over and asked about that -- usually, they'd finish cooking the omelette filling with the eggs because it tasted better that way, and he wanted to make sure that I wanted the fillings wrapped up as in the photo (kind of like a burrito) instead.
I saw him holding the menu with one hand to use as a reference when plating it. He presented it with a big smile. And, indeed, it did look exactly like the photo in the menu.
Er, all the time? In the South East of England, I specifically look for menus with pictures of the food on Just Eats because I can get an idea of how good the food is going to be that way. I don't think I've ever received something that didn't look like what was on the menu pictures. Sometimes people make a nice presentation with fancy dishware and so on (Indian restaurants do that a lot in particular), but the food is always the same as what I get when I order, except it's in a foam box or similar.
It's reasonable to be annoyed when the menu board _isn't based on the product at all_ and thus is nowhere close to the real thing.
Yeah. Especially at Asian restaurants. (With predominantly Asian customers.)
If a menu has like clearly painted or drawn images, on the other hand, I weigh them on artistic merit versus anything descriptive.
Neither the images created by ChatGPT nor an artists rendition of a latte exist, but based on this logic you’d have a problem with both?
I think most people are just reacting to the careless default style of ChatGPT, or the fact that a human didn’t draw it, not the fact that it’s not “real”.
Wow, you really got him with this completely relevant fact that did not at all miss the point.
I once thought that AI image/video would quickly become unidentifiable, but the surprising thing (so far) is that every new model release is followed by two reactions: "This is incredible" to "I recognize this style. It's AI. They're all the same."
It takes only a few weeks. I've been amazed with our mind's ability to move the goalpost.
AI obviously has 0 realness to it. So it’s worse in every way.
I also prefer the side case of actual photos of the food, which is common at delis and some more authentic Chinese restaurants; these are also being replaced quickly by AI.
Has AI art made my food less delicious - I don't think I've ever purchased food I've seen first represented by AI, but certainly the expectation of taste affects your perception of it...
You are correct though, especially fast food places using air brushed and photoshopped food photos are the inedible food object has been carefully set up.
And no amount of petty votes will change the above.
> They gave her a day to "think about it."
When this is sort of behavior that the "good guys" advance then it's hard not to expect a "bad guy" with money to show up on the scene and thwart it.
(If I were the coffee shop, I'd seriously weigh how much business versus hassle they're getting from being on Instagram.)
The message’s author is trying to present themselves as someone helpful and compassionate (‘I understand’, ‘I’m trying to help’), but at the same time, they’re one-sidedly setting a firm and short deadline (‘I’ll give you a day’) unprompted and suggesting the café owner strike a deal with one of the people they’re going to recommend. They might have written this with good intentions at heart, but it also wouldn’t feel out of place in a mafia setting (as in ‘do business with us, or else’), so it’s a hard sell.
If they really were compassionate and wanted to help, they easily could have suggested to get the owner in touch with some affordable artists and left her with time to mentally deal with the backlash and all. They didn’t need to emphasise how they were going to tell on her like they were about to launch a vendetta smear campaign or something.
The important thing is how we go about it, and whether their reputation remains reflective of their actions, or we try and make it worse than it ought to be. We can’t say for certain the author of the message was going to do the latter, but it does not inspire good faith.
It's textbook extortion.
> so telling a business when we’re unhappy and influencing their reputation is the feedback mechanism we have at our disposal.
Telling a business we're going to fuck you up unless you send our friends work, even by implication, is literally extortion.
1.) We don't like your poster so you better remove it or we'll badmouth you within our network.
2.) You have 1 day to comply.
3.) You can instead work with an artist we will recommend (aka connected to us), and we'll cease.
Textbook mafia-style extortion.
However, I’m just pointing out that as far as the implications of the threat goes, in most instances it would’ve just happened anyway, without a “warning”, because people simply post things to make fun of them and mock them. Sometimes those accounts might at least anonymize their subjects, but this might be a name them and shame them type situation.
You really should listen to me. If you need some time to think it over, I understand. It's a lot to consider and you've got a lot in your plate. I'll check in soon - would tomorrow be okay? If you need more time, just tell me when.
vs
You really should listen to me. I'll give you a day to think it over before I take further action.
Same information, but the latter assumes a position of authority (I, the person in charge, will be the provider of the time you will receive), and then uses that position to provide an ostensible benevolence as a way to mitigate the implied follow up of non-benevolence. The threat is introduced as the power disparity. The person in power has leverage over the less powerful and the threat is that they will use it. Remove the power disparity, and the implication of threat is also removed.
We just disagree, and that's why this is the wrong approach to enacting whatever kind of change they wanted.
You can threaten someone with ceasing to be a customer if they don’t change their business practices, and that’s perfectly fine. Sharing publicly available information is generally not a problem, either. But in this case, the author of the message is coming off as very insincere, setting deadlines, and trying to strike up deals, which comes off as unreasonable and makes one wonder if they really are simply going to share publicly available information, or if they’re going to give undue focus over them being ‘uncooperative’. If they did not want their message to come off as a threat, this was very far from an ideal way to write it.
If they can barely do that, then I'm sure they're slacking off on more stuff too.
The overlap in skills between photographing your product and being a great barrista aren't obviously overlapping.
The takeaway seems to be to remove images from the menu.
The coffee still tastes like a Victorian chimney sweeper's piss.
I don’t actually care about the menu or sign. It’s a coffee drink and I’ve had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them. I know what I like and if it’s just stencil letters pinned on a cork board I don’t care. I just want to grab a coffee and go.
A shop with no pictures, just words? Sends a message that their coffee is probably good enough to speak for itself. Fine.
A shop with hand drawn lettering, ornate art? The coffee is probably made by people who care about their craft in some fashion. At least the person making my coffee probably enjoys their job a little. Fine.
Fully AI menu with gen Ai modeled drink pictures? The drink isn’t going to look like that. There is obviously no effort made here. They spent time to create a generic menu my kids could have put together. Worst of the lot, to be honest.
They do slack off on cleaning the chairs and the decor, that’s for sure. The coffee though is phenomenal.
How much might it cost to have someone local show up and produce a decent-looking chalkboard display?
IDK, you own a business and do this sort of stuff and all sorts of red flags go off for me.
It’s a pretty good indicator the owner bought a ChatGPT or Canva subscription, that’s about it.
Why? When you see a derelict pizzeria, you don't think "they must be devoting all their energy to making good pizzas!". Similarly, that a coffee shop owner uses AI for branding is a big signifier of their laziness or lack of attention to detail.
Like you own a coffee shop and you’ve freed up one hour in the 12 weeks before you have to make a new sign, what do you do in that hour that makes the coffee better?
The entitlement is off the charts. The more I read this insanity, the more I hope she printed it at Walmart with a discount coupon.
You might not have spent a lot of time in the world of "small business", but this is hysterically out of touch.
The owner was not personally either making or serving the coffee.
Every single small coffee shop owner I know has employees. They work alongside them and do every job in the shop along with them. They operate in shifts, sometimes the owner is there for both open and close.
What does hiring a barista have to do with not making coffee yourself?
Gonna go with the "hilariously out of touch" comment. These places rarely print money to the point an owner can be an absentee manager type.
If you take anything else into consideration you are a bad customer that damages the market.
The headline makes it sound like people are phoning in bomb threats and violence, which doesn't seem to be happening at all.
Honestly, I think the business owner should have ignored these weak "threats" altogether. It doesn't have anything to do with coffee and it's unlikely they'll get any business because they use AI, so it can only hurt them.
If somebody threatens them with violence (which is what "threat" is usually implying) then that's a different thing entirely.
I am really disturbed by language minimizes concrete actions taken to cause harm.
"I am not hurting your business I am just talking to my friends!"
It's her right to use AI, but the customers also have the right to say they won't patronize businesses who use AI, and are free to tell people they know that the business is using it.
If the shop's oat milk was really cow's milk, would it be "threatening their business" to tell other customers that?
The milk comparison is specious and irrelevant, because consumers are there for the product. Coffee shops sell coffee, not jpegs.
But aside from that - bullying and threatening a working mother with a newborn is not the moral high ground you seem to believe it is.
She's not a witch, and your assumed right to burn her is not a good look.
> If the shop's oat milk was really cow's milk, would it be "threatening their business" to tell other customers that?
To entertain this analogy, if a shop is misrepresenting their ingredients then it can make sense to spread the word, particularly if the shop owner refuses to rectify the issue, because there are health implications which represent a legitimate material harm to their customer base and the safety issue takes priority over the shop owner's bottom line.
An AI menu, assuming it offers a reasonable representation of what the shop offers, has no safety issue.
It doesn't matter anyway, because "using AI" doesn't make somebody a protected class. If people don't want to patronize businesses that use AI, there's nothing wrong with that.
No, if you have to make several indirect causal leaps, to get from "shop owner uses ChatGPT instead of MS Word to generate a menu" to "somewhere a graphic designer loses their employment" it is not legitimate. And if that is how you interpret the world, virtually any harmful or even violent action can be rationalized in the name of stopping some probabilistic harm.
Sticking with your cow's milk analogy, serving the wrong milk to the wrong customer with a dairy allergy can cause immediate harm to their health. Generating an AI menu cannot be reasonably interpreted as causing direct harm to anyone.
> If people don't want to patronize businesses that use AI, there's nothing wrong with that.
I completely agree. But making a personal choice to not visit a business and undertaking a coordinated effort to organize a boycott against a business is in a different category altogether.
See how that works? That's why you should care. The so-called influencer-orienter culture has become a plague after social media. And these F&B businesses are the ones hit hardest - remember all those movies in the 90s and 00s about how some up and coming entrepreneur or chef had to win the approval of some hoity-toity food journalist?
Also, rest assured, I'm not serious about badmouthing you or anyone here for that matter - just trying to illustrate a point.
If it were me, I would have called their bluff and ignored them.
In the case of this shop, we're talking about local retail. If you are a retail small business owner you have to assume that any customer can be an "influencer" and cause significant harm if they seek to trash your business online.
ive been called enough mean names by friends and strangers id much rather be called some more mean names in order to become aware of what i could do to win back some customers
It's bullying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
I consider a boycott threat a non-violent threat; legal but an exercise of power that has moral dimensions.
Articles like this always rub me the wrong way. I don't know the term for it, but I feel you should be able to make the point without making us picture a new mother getting stressed breast pumping in the middle of the night.
That said, I also feel that the level of negativity the lady suffered was a little out of proportion to her 'crime' - essentially amounting to bullying.
The way to make these transitions less aggressive on everyone is to not have it tied directly to whether or not someone can afford to eat.
People take things very personally when their core livelihood and ability to support themselves are threatened.
Btw. notice how boycott is often perceived as ok to good, while "cancel culture" as bad, while both are identical if the target is corporation.
Imo, artists boycotting any corporation for any reason at all, even if the Ouija board told them so, are completely justified.
This has always been a thing.
What should we expect when it's coming from the top?
The theory was that piracy might actually increase sales due to more exposure of the music to consumers.
AI generated art, AI generated anything really, is very close to piracy, but nobody is making that argument anymore.
I think this is because the positions are reversed - the general public were motivated to find and spread vacuous reasons that piracy was neutral to good as it benefited them. When the general public might be harmed, instead of corporate rights-holders, then it becomes an unambiguous moral wrong.
So it’s never really been about right and wrong, it’s just about who benefits. Like everything I guess.
Decades ago when corporations were taking over the world, they used to justify it as a proxy for eventual benefits to the standard of living of regular people. I guess now we don't even bother.
At the same time though, even if time or budget is tight enough that you’d want to use AI, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t still use real photos for the menu items. This style that the AI apparently defaults to is kinda somewhat passable-ish, until you get to the food items which often look like they would inflict you with several status effects.
That aside, if you spend 5 minutes prompting AI, you can create an image that no one will clock as AI.
And here it is: https://imgur.com/6C3zWcD
It's not grand at all; just an informative sign about some fall specials that is direct and to the point. (Nothing about it was done by hand, but nothing about it would get people all torches-and-pitchforks, either.)
Business is not entitled to people's patronage, they can refuse them for any reason. They are not and should not be shielded from public opinion.
The problem is it all looks the same, and those of us who are terminally online are exposed to it non-stop. AI slop seems to be poisoning every space that used to have quality conversations, and mass un-employing many creative professions.
People do have the right to vote with their feet though - it is perfectly ethical to support coffee shops that support the local artist community and avoid ones with AI "art". Too bad we've mostly lost the ability to rationally discuss things, instead of resorting to threats right off the bat.
This reads to me like a YouTube AI thumbnail. If you go to a lot of trouble to make a product and then you punt the last and probably easiest step in the process, makes me not want to engage with the product.
If I’m going to a coffee shop, I might not like the AI coffee sign, but it’s much more important to me how good the coffee is and how expensive it is.
It's also worth keeping in mind that a shop owner might google "clip art cup of coffee" and the result was created by somebody who used AI, and the shop owner wouldn't necessarily realize it. At some point, 99% of clip art available online is going to be AI.
One group of folks is trying to say we basically have AGI. The other group is pointing to AI that remains very limited and where lowly humans can spot anything it’s created from a mile away. The evidence continues to point towards the later.
For every person who can spot it a mile away I wonder how many false positives they have or simply aren't aware of it. If you're looking for it, with people using it a lot these days, of course you are going to have a high success rate.
But really I don't think it falls neatly into either of those categories.
Not that they were in a position to figure that out, in the moment, but I think it is a good thing to take away from the story... The interpretation of transgressions as moral failures instead of mistakes has done a lot of harm to society in the past few decades, because it creates bitter people instead of resolving things cleanly. It's a failure of the whole norm around these things, rather than any individual per se; people are rarely in the position to realize their behavior is contributing to a toxic norm on a daily level.
Edit: even in this comment section there are a lot of people who are bitter about this (which showed up since I started typing this). Goes to show how important it is.
Personally I will not fault any individual for following a norm that they do not have the perspective to reject. So I think the coffee shop owner and the critics both screwed up here, by participating in shame-culture on both sides. However they did not know they could do differently---nobody has demonstrated to them the harm and degradation of their actions, nor what the alternative is. But as analytical outsiders we can make that observation and put it to use later by not practicing that behavior ourselves, and by helping others learn to not practice it either.
why i actually replied: would have been an excellent punch line if the apology post was clearly ai gen chock full of clauddish. not sure if id come back around to respecting the owner, but id laugh for sure
> I want to address the recent conversation surrounding our fall menu boards.
> The design was created using gen AI. I want to be transparent about that. At the time, I genuinely did not understand the extent of the concerns surrounding AI-generated artwork, particularly the impact it can have on artists and the environmental concerns associated with it.
> My intention was never to disrespect artists, take credit for someone else’s work, or diminish the value of human creativity. I was simply trying to put together our fall menu during an especially busy and demanding time for me and our small team.
> That said, I have listened to the feedback. I understand why people have strong feelings about it, and I respect those concerns. Going forward, I have decided that Penny’s Coffee Shop will not be using AI for our menu artwork and promotional designs.
> What has been difficult for me, however, is the amount of negativity, personal attacks, and messages that followed this situation. There is a real person behind this small business. I am doing my best to run a local coffee shop, support my team, serve our community, and navigate being a new mom at the same time.
> I am always willing to listen, learn, and do better. I just hope we can have those conversations with kindness and respect.
> To everyone who continues to support Penny’s, especially through a challenging time for our business, thank you. Your support means more than you know.
- I'm sorry
- I know my use of gen AI made it seem like I dislike artists
- That's not a belief of mine
- I'll prove that by not using gen AI at my cafe for this sort of thing ever again
- Please be kind to me, this is a small business and I'm very stressed out
Talking to business insider was exactly the wrong thing to do after that. Your sign looks bad. You've made the awful mistake of telling more people about your bad sign with the intent of making them feel sympathetic. Even if they feel sympathetic, people still look at the bad sign you made in desperation along with the framing from BI and think... "oh so maybe she shouldn't be running a cafe then. This seems like she's barely getting by at this point".
On the flip side, telling someone "pay my artist friend or else I'll go out of my way to tell people primed to hate you based on a single detail, about only that 1 single detail" is actual old-school extortion.
Everyone in this story is tiring and annoying.
The text exchange in the article with the thinly veiled threat is exactly how you'd expect someone disempowered (and it's not like working artists pre AI times had a ton of capital to begin with) to act when they are given some power. As we continue displacing, or attempting to displace, individuals up the value chain, I think we'll continue to see echoes of this kind of behavior. When the luddites can't break into the factory to smash the machines, smashing the outputs and users of the machine seems like the obvious choice.
The owner had to resort to her standby Canva when the employee left, but lacking time due to a newborn.
To me, having followed all kinds of embedded links over to Vermont and Germany, the latter example being extraordinarily unappetizing. [0]
Stepping back to get the big picture, it seems to me that small business owners have gotten spoiled by local artists and artistic employees who created really beautiful signs and brochures. Come crunch time, it's either pay a local artist or DIY. And to get "pretty" artwork, many resort to AI, which mostly ain't pretty, sometimes pretty grotesque.
But this seems to be a case of wanting things both ways. AI is famous for really bizarre food rendering, as exhibited below. Customers really want food and preparation to look real. So why not set up a simple grid (say, Pages on a mac or Libre Office or Scribus) and pair the best photo you can grab with a description opposite it, on a nice background?
Other than KISS, you can get excellent art for a price, or slop for cheap (or at least, artificial art that advertises itself as such).
Increasing costs affect not only businesses, but people needing work, some of whom have lost jobs and income, are understandably upset.
The workflow I described can be done for little cost if DIY is not suitable, perhaps even a local photography class (who would work for (coffee) beans?)
I refer friends learning photography, intrigued by their phone cameras, and wanting to expand their skill set, to community college and other classes. Maybe even one of those starving artists.
Businesses brag about sourcing locally. I see a way to do so, but good art requires good artists, just as product photography requires some skill.
You can't have it all, or damn cheap. You must choose wisely.
P.S. My Dad was a commercial artist and I am an amateur photographer. And I make my own coffee. Yikes, the cost. If it's atmosphere, do put some nice art on the walls and let the product speak for itself.
My two cents, or "Sixbucks" worth.
Or, for that matter - skip the photos, just do text, maybe with a few bits of clip art if you're feeling daring. Photos are hardly essential for coffee drinks, which tend to all look the same in real life anyway.
I am now recalling all of Dad's clip art books!!
I am not a connoisseur of fine coffee drinks, just get me out of my morning daze! So, I can't say if the "specials" really need their own photos.
Perhaps to justify the price?
But as for me, a vent fan blowing out of the shop will do it every time.
- I don’t want to listen music with AI generated vocals or tunes.
- I don’t want to watch TV shows or movies with AI generated scripts.
- I don’t want to read novels with AI generated text
- I don’t want to see animations with any amount of AI in it.
- I don’t want to play video games made by any amount of AI. (No FCKIN Blender models made with AI)
- I don’t want any amount of my digital art or posters to be touched by AI.
I think as a part of alignment all AI models above a certain size should refuse requests to generate stories, scripts any art object etc. text-to-image, text-to-music, text-to-videos should just be banned outright, I don’t see any good use case for them outside of art.
If society cannot agree to do the above then at the very least, we should have a way to easily know if AI was involved in any of the art I interact with, so that I can avoid it with a ten foot pole.
I say this as an early adopter and lover of technology in general, I bought the Vision Pro the day it came out, I bought experimental volumetric displays, experimental robot vacuums, I own 2 robot arms, LED panels etc. but generative AI in art just leaves me with disgust, I want no part of it.
It is also true that as a consumer, I do have a right to feel contemptuous towards garish design and the freedom to spend my money elsewhere.
Internet morality is about seeking reasons to hate.
This seems like the wrong attitude to take after experiencing such a backlash. If she'd made the signs herself for years then why resort to using AI to produce what is so obviously a generic slop result?
The article says she paid $150 for printing and $200 for a stand. Why not throw another $200 towards an artist?
It’s disgusting and unhinged behavior to threaten and bully people about this. Who cares how a local cafe made their menu? I truly don’t understand what’s going through people’s minds who attack people like this.
Creativity
Taste
Judgement
This primarily, for me, has resulted in me ignoring a lot of long winded tickets.
the user a generate's email/documentation/whatever via claude > sent to user b > user b uses claude to summarize it ... loop is shitty.
This applies less to me for code as long as you are reviewing it throughly and 'sculpting' it throughly to make it readable/maintainable.
Care about your work if you want me to care about your work.
The issue comes when you (or someone, not you personally) dig way to deep into what "it" is, there is always something that someone was, to quote you, "too lazy to do yourself". You might not like the result, and that's fine, but you're phrasing it as if the other person is just being unnecessary-lazy.
They probably bought their display stands instead of designing and building them themselves. They also probably bought the cheap ones from Amazon (instead of building them themselves, or hiring a local artisanal carpenter to build them).
Do you refuse to engage with a pastry stand because the owner was "too lazy to do it themselves"? If you're at a friends house and they order food, do you refuse to engage with it because "they were too lazy to cook it themselves"? Where do you draw the line?
Your point as it applies to something that takes a sufficient portion of your time is valid, but this conversation is literally about a menu sign at a coffee shop. If you spent substantial time engaging with a coffee shop sign, I have questions (and wouldn't want to be behind you in that line).
If they spent time more time curating better AI images or asked anybody with modern taste and style what they thought we probably wouldn't be talking about it.
Just because they're on payroll and being paid for their time doesn't mean you can instruct them to do anything you ask.
And besides, this is the U.S. Unless you’re in a union, responding to legitimate, legal and business-related tasks from your employer (that don’t exceed your ability to accomplish, e.g. not lifting 100lbs or whatever) with “not in my job description” will get you canned.
Most folks who do stuff like this just assume it's part of the job and carry on.
> "At 4 a.m., I was holding my pump on my lap and replying to this person, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it that way,'" she told me. "I was so into typing this message that I produced so much milk, it was dripping down my legs because I overflowed the pump."
Also, it's one thing to dislike AI to the point where it "kills the mood" (for you) when you see an AI-generated poster, so you stop visiting that particular coffee shop. It's something else entirely to threaten the business owner.
It is misquoted on a criminally large scale.
A small business in my city made a poster using stick men and simple drawings(because of the topic at hand) and people loved it.
Instead, they chose to exploit people and remove art from the world by using ChatGPT. So no, I don't have a ton of compassion.
I do have compassion for the business owner though - lots of mixed signals between people selling AI and the people having been sold AI now rejecting it.
If not even software engineers can keep up (we still see slop posted here regularly), how is a non-tech person supposed to know better. I try to be gentle and/or keep my mouth shut when it’s people who can’t be expected to know better.
Please enumerate the threat, as I've been unable to find anything that passes for a threat in the article.
