AI Slop, Advertising and Visual Literacy

B

benc98

Messages
1,210
Name
Ben
Edit My Images
Yes
I was a bit surprised to be served an Ad on Threads yesterday, the image was textbook AI Slop and advertising a series of crime novels available to purchase on Amazon.
I saw another chart somewhere that showed the increase in books on Amazon since AI has taken off - I'm not saying the book I saw advertised was written by AI, but I made the connection and wouldn't buy it.

copilot.microsoft.com

Your poster is ready now — gritty, moody, very British, and absolutely in the spirit of a DCI Parker series launch....

Shared via Copilot
copilot.microsoft.com copilot.microsoft.com

And then on Facebook I see a pub near me advertising their Sunday lunch menu, the image showing four dinners with different roast meats - again what I recognise as a very typical AI image. A commenter on the post asked if the photos were fake, and poster responded no and said they had been busy in the kitchen. The photos looked too perfect, shared the same composition and that saturated AI look.


copilot.microsoft.com

Your image is ready now — a warm, cosy, traditional Sunday Roast poster for **The New Inn**, featuring all four roasts, Yorkshire puds, gravy, veg, puddings,...

Shared via Copilot
copilot.microsoft.com copilot.microsoft.com

I spent no more than 3 minutes making my versions and look no worse than what I was served

I've also noticed lots of AI generated ads for Events on social media - https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/fPXu6U3v1RyBsHMP22RM5

While it's great that AI has democratised graphic design, as a consumer I feel these adverts are a massive turn off for me (connotes inauthenticity, fake, etc..) and I feel less likely to visit the pub, buy the book or visit the event. I wonder if other people are subsequently put off by the services and products being advertised, consciously and subconsciously by people are are less visual literate? Wonder if people will begin to push back against it or just accept it.. toughts?
 
Look out for humans deliberately introducing 'flaws' into their work to differentiate it.
 
benc98 said:
While it's great that AI has democratised graphic design, as a consumer I feel these adverts are a massive turn off for me (connotes inauthenticity, fake, etc..) and I feel less likely to visit the pub, buy the book or visit the event. I wonder if other people are subsequently put off by the services and products being advertised, consciously and subconsciously by people are are less visual literate? Wonder if people will begin to push back against it or just accept it.. thoughts?
Click to expand...

I don't know if I've been deterred exactly, but I just tend to ignore them. I suppose it's the nature of AI that it's evolved to almost a common look, and it makes it very easy to spot. It is uniquely bland, in my experience.
 
It instantly puts me off, it's unauthentic and makes me wonder what other corners they cut as a business.

That generic AI font really irks me as well.
 
benc98 said:
I was a bit surprised to be served an Ad on Threads yesterday, the image was textbook AI Slop and advertising a series of crime novels available to purchase on Amazon.
I saw another chart somewhere that showed the increase in books on Amazon since AI has taken off - I'm not saying the book I saw advertised was written by AI, but I made the connection and wouldn't buy it.

copilot.microsoft.com

Your poster is ready now — gritty, moody, very British, and absolutely in the spirit of a DCI Parker series launch....

Shared via Copilot
copilot.microsoft.com copilot.microsoft.com

And then on Facebook I see a pub near me advertising their Sunday lunch menu, the image showing four dinners with different roast meats - again what I recognise as a very typical AI image. A commenter on the post asked if the photos were fake, and poster responded no and said they had been busy in the kitchen. The photos looked too perfect, shared the same composition and that saturated AI look.


copilot.microsoft.com

Your image is ready now — a warm, cosy, traditional Sunday Roast poster for **The New Inn**, featuring all four roasts, Yorkshire puds, gravy, veg, puddings,...

Shared via Copilot
copilot.microsoft.com copilot.microsoft.com

I spent no more than 3 minutes making my versions and look no worse than what I was served

I've also noticed lots of AI generated ads for Events on social media - https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/fPXu6U3v1RyBsHMP22RM5

While it's great that AI has democratised graphic design, as a consumer I feel these adverts are a massive turn off for me (connotes inauthenticity, fake, etc..) and I feel less likely to visit the pub, buy the book or visit the event. I wonder if other people are subsequently put off by the services and products being advertised, consciously and subconsciously by people who are less visual literate? Wonder if people will begin to push back against it or just accept it.. toughts?
Click to expand...
People "are" pushing back against it and It's been discussed a few times before.

There is increasing evidence that people are very good at recognising AI slop, and are put off buying the product because they see a seller using AI images as "untrustworthy".

High-end commercial photographers are busier than they have ever been. Scott Choucino (https://scottchoucino.com/) has commented that he and others in the industry have never been busier as clients want to distance themselves from AI-generated photographs. He also mentions that while there have always been some commercial photographers who never switched to digital, the level of interest in having advertising campaigns shot on film is showing a resurgence, just to make it more obvious that the pictures haven't been generated by AI.

For me, I think AI is probably the most dangerous thing human beings have ever invented, and as the already rich and powerful are going to get even richer and more powerful on the back of AI, I fear it's unstoppable.
 
myotis said:
For me, I think AI is probably the most dangerous thing human beings have ever invented, and as the already rich and powerful are going to get even richer and more powerful on the back of AI, I fear it's unstoppable.
Click to expand...
Second most dangerous in my opinion.

Lawyers are still in the lead by a short head! :exit:
 
To add to my earlier post, Scott Chocuino has just been discussing the amount of money that large advertisers are spending on proving their ads aren't AI.

For example, routinely making Behind the Scenes (BTS) videos of how the advert was made for them to distribute with the advertisement.

It's a long rambling video but the relevant part is at 22:51 minutes

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAfU8tj2OC4


So folks, as customers, we aren't only paying for the adverts, but also the advert for the adverts to prove they aren't AI.

No doubt we will soon be paying even more to have it proved, that the "proof" of something not being AI, wasn't also produced by AI !
 
myotis said:
No doubt we will soon be paying even more to have it proved, that the "proof" of something not being AI, wasn't also produced by AI !
Click to expand...
That's all right: we just set up our AI to check their AI.

Of course, this could end up with an endless chain of AIs checking one another, which will draw so much power that there'll be none left for us to turn on our computers to look at anything...

:tumbleweed:
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
That's all right: we just set up our AI to check their AI.

Of course, this could end up with an endless chain of AIs checking one another, which will draw so much power that there'll be none left for us to turn on our computers to look at anything...

:tumbleweed:
Click to expand...
But I'm not sure the AI is doing anything more than collating data at a rate faster than we could do as humans.

So the misinformation generated by the first lot of AI, is simply being recycled by the second AI. It needs human beings to keep feeding it with new, original, verified information.

It's a fantastic tool in the right hands and used for the right application, but it looks as if it is going to soak up all the world's power, and all the world's RAM.
 
myotis said:
It needs human beings to keep feeding it with new, original, verified information.
Click to expand...
Aha! the old GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)
juggler said:
Convolutional Neural Networks are really good at that stuff.
Click to expand...
Well, the current crop of humans seem to disprove that theory. Any calculation of any form is only as good as the base assumptions from which it starts ... and on the evidence so far, the base assumptions are largely rubbish.
 
juggler said:
Amusingly.. it's industries like law which are likely to be most affected by AI. Specialist AI models, not genAI stuff. A lot of law is about recalling & synthesising huge quantities of facts & arguments. Convolutional Neural Networks are really good at that stuff.
Click to expand...
I think this applies to other professions as well, but I feel the issue is that a lot of a persons initial learning, building up an "intuition" on how things work comes from working through these sorts of tasks.

My fear is that we end up with a new generation of "experts" which have no foundation to their expertise. I'm also worried in the loss of jobs, if "trainees" are replaced with AI, so we end up with no one getting trained, and forced to rely more and more on AI as some sort of oracle, which seems to be tremendously flawed without proper human oversight.
 
Last edited:
I'm seeing slop more and more in advertisements. There are entire youtube channels that host nothing but AI created and AI narrated videos, and they have thousands of subs. They have the same style as written AI, repeating the same points several times just worded differently, then bolting on a little phrase to button the whole thing up - "When you think about it, there's something deeply profound at the core of that thought" or some other tosh.

I have grown to hate it with a passion.

Don't get me wrong, AI in general is great. I use it almost daily both in and out of work. It's great for coding (lol), logic checks, tough calculations, data aggregation, looking for trends etc.

The quote "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes." often gets picked apart by AI bros with arguments like "hurr durr AI is limited to digital content not physical tasks" or "robots that do physical stuff are too much of a liabilty" etc.
The sentiment isn't to be taken literally, it just means use the technology in an appropriate way. Let it deal with facts, numbers, calculations and things that save you time. For anything that requires creativity, original thought, or an opinion - It is incapable of any of those, and rather than admitting it, it will just give you slop.
 
jimmyjamjojo said:
...It's great for coding (lol), logic checks, tough calculations, data aggregation, looking for trends etc.
Click to expand...
I'm glad I left the IT industry ten years ago.

The idea that I would be expected to entrust logic checking to a program that I couldn't check myself, makes me wonder if the the idiot managers have finally succeeded in turning the office into a madhouse.

:thinking:
 
Had to renew my insurance over the phone this morning ... obvious AI assistant answered the phone...

"To renew without changes press 1, to renew with changes press 2".

Presses 2 ... "You have made an incorrect choice!"
 
Claire, the AI assistant at EonNext, pays my electricity bill for me. Make of that what you will.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top