Article URL: https://blog.fiddery.com/businesses-with-ugly-ai-menu-redesigns/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005973 Points: 119 # Comments: 97

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. 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. 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.