Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

I stopped by a Filipino/Hawaiian (mostly filipino) restaurant/bar that was recommended to me a few months ago by someone I met at an AANHPI event. One of my friends that was eating with us had gone many times before and said they enjoyed the menu.

We looked up the menu before heading over.

As a Filipino-American I always get curious about Filipino restaurants because a lot of our dishes are family-style/comfort food, so it’s always interesting to see what foods will be on the menu.

To our disappointment (did I mention the friend group I was eating with are my artist friends and we had just gone to a doodle date meetup?) the restaurant revamped their menu with AI. NO!

The worst part is that I frequently work with small businesses in Austin and know that this is from a place of complete ignorance rather than feeling a sense of ownership in art/design they did not do.

The disturbing uncanny-like look of all these plates are so… bad. I’m sorry to subject you, the reader, to such slop.

I was thinking about ordering the adobo plate before I got to the restaurant and then pivoted to spamsilog instead (lmao I was craving comfort food). The plate was only $10. I could make this at home but often don’t have the patience to get the spam really crispy (also I get to lazy so make sinangan /garlic rice)… and also I use the low sodium spam at home.

Ugly AI pic of the plate vs the real plate.

Disturbing AI aside this tasted just like waking up at home and my mom cooking spam for breakfast.

This is extremely conflicting because I love to support/shop small and local businesses and I’ve seen more and more of them use genAI in their signage. Yes I also understand many of them have slim margins, but TBH I would rather read a whole menu in Comic Sans, Papyrus, or Curlz MT than this garbage.

TY for all the responses!! I mostly post about life, art, and crafty things so we will go back to our regularly scheduled content.