Not even the most enduring symbol of New York city is safe from the AI onslaught. No, we’re not talking about the iconic pizza rat, or even the stable of mascots wandering Times Square like some kind of sad, brand-name purgatory. We’re talking about bodegas, the ubiquitous corner stores that first emerged in the 1950s as waves of Puerto Rican migrants began calling the city home.
If you’re not from New York, they may just seem like corner stores, and on a certain level, that’s true. But they’re a special part of the fabric of the city. Even Chicago, largely considered the USA’s second most walkable city after New York, pales in comparison to the latter’s sheer number of convenience stores.
With an estimated 13,000 bodegas across the five boroughs, it was probably only a matter of time before some of them began turning to AI slop for their in-store signage. First reported by Hell Gate, many of the city’s beloved convenience stores are really going for it, replacing their time-honored retail graphics with uncanny garbage generated by the likes of ChatGPT.
Gone are the days of human-made deli signage, the kind jam-packed with sometimes-dubious stock pics of tortas, deli meat, toilet paper, and coffee. Now is the era of slop signage, exemplified by stores like Blend and Bites in Brooklyn, whose logo features an uncanny burger, what appears to be a water-based smoothie, and cartoon berries crammed together onto one indecipherable mess of a sign.
One Imgur post captures a particularly depressing tableau: a bodega window papered with AI-generated slop, including hallucinated text like “RUSTORS” and “POTIORS.” The real nightmare fuel waits in the corner, where a woman appears to have fused her face with the store’s branding.
Hell Gate found a few beauties as well, such as a logo for “Maza Cloud Kitchens” which features a chicken wing with a belt loop and a sign for bottomless mimosas featuring waffles topped with brussels sprouts.
New Yorkers, for their part, aren’t thrilled with the new ad movement taking over their local haunts, especially at a time when human artists are struggling like never before.
“Everything looks like a tacky weed dispensary,” one netizen observed under Hell Gate’s Instagram post on the subject.
“I really don’t get why businesses don’t hire artists,” one poster commented on the r/BedStuy subreddit. “I myself would do it for free, I just would love to see actual art when walking outside rather than AI images or generic images taken from the internet.”
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