I, like many other women my age, use social media on the regular, and using social media I have content I like, and content I do not like. There is an ever growing form of content that I loathe though, which is AI flyers.
AI is well-known for its inability to be at all original, along with just looking plain terrible. Every single AI flyer looks the same, just changing the colors and what the flyer itself says. Not to mention, every single flyer produced by AI has a weird yellow filter on it, that makes it look like it sat in a puddle and was pulled out and hung back up or put on social media.
I think my problem with AI flyers comes down to the general issues I have with AI as a whole. Why are we trying to automate creativity, which is so inherently ingrained in humans? . In the 1950s we dreamed of a future where people had artificial intelligence to do mundane tasks such as the dishes, laundry, and vacuuming, but instead there has been a push to have AI be creative, so humans have more time to do work around the house.
There are several environmental effects that the computers used to run generative AI programs have, especially regarding water, and the displacement data centers cause for marginalized communities. Both of these are more reasons to never use generative AI to create a flyer.
There are also enough people trying to learn graphic design, or user friendly tools such as Canva, that make the process of creating a flyer simple. Honestly, I would almost rather see something written on a piece of notebook paper rather than another AI generated flyer. This aside, there are enough people that need or want experience in graphic design that it is more than worth the money to pay someone for a flyer that actually looks good and is visually appealing, than for more gross, yellowy, copy and paste A.I. slop to exist in the world.
I will not deny that AI can be a useful tool, and has its place (while limited), but I simply cannot defend letting something artificial replace humans ability and want to be creative. Art is ingrained in being human, whether this is written, spoken, or visual, and has to remain something belonging to and created by humans.
