It seems AI is not just making everyone sound the same, but now everything must look the same too. I haven’t been able to walk into a pub, cafe or shop this summer without noticing the uncanny, slightly unreal sheen of an AI-generated poster. From caricatured cartoon children on a nursery advertisement to an abnormally glistening burger on a food menu, every billboard, flyer and sign now seems to have been regurgitated from the same ChatGPT printing press.

We are hurtling ever closer to a flattened future in which everything converges towards the average, the mediocre, the visual mean

We are hurtling ever closer to a flattened future in which everything converges towards the average, the mediocre, the visual mean

There are many telltale signs that a sign is generic AI-slop. The big, flashy text on a dark background (normally block letters paired with a more ‘handwritten’-style script, angling up to the right). Every square millimetre will be saturated with visual information and distracting details. The arrows, check-marks and bullet points haphazardly strewn throughout. The over-saturated colours. The weird smoothness that draws your eye to nothing at all in particular. The strange sweatiness to the images, inconsistent with the physics of light.

All these posters feel........

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