By Sophia Monson | Opinion Editor
An unfortunate pattern has infiltrated the advertisements that fill our social media feeds and decorate local bulletin boards: confusing and strangely similar graphics lacking in visual hierarchies, matching visual effects and an arguably tasteless design.
As a senior marketing major, I practically live in the business school. I am consistently dumbfounded at the number of flyers I come across on campus and online that are clearly created with artificial intelligence.
AI has seeped into the graphic design and marketing spheres. In case you’re unfamiliar, there are many tells to look for that can indicate AI image generation, including confusing visual hierarchies, cluttered layouts, an overuse of taglines and abstract textboxes. An even larger giveaway is Instagram’s “AI content” flag that attaches itself to any post it detects was made with AI.
Many corporate leaders have preached how the cost-effectiveness and practicality of integrating artificial intelligence into business practices is changing the industry. They’re not wrong — even I can set my qualms aside and see the value in the technology. AI can contribute positively in a multitude of ways, like taking over mundane tasks or sorting through large datasets quickly.
Costs, however, don’t just include cash profits and revenues. Prompting ChatGPT to create a flyer for an upcoming product launch might be cheap, but you can’t finance the loss of brand perception from your customers.
To explore if there are truly consistencies with these outputs, I asked three popular AI models to create a flyer to promote this here opinion column. I provided each chatbot with the same prompt: “Make a flyer that is promoting Sophia Monson’s new opinion column that is coming out in the Baylor Lariat this October. Make the image 1512 by 1080px.”
Below, you’ll see the images generated from the prompt mentioned above:
When I see these images, my mind goes to one thing: this was made with AI. I don’t think of the Lariat, the topic of this column or even my name. There might as well be a ChatGPT watermark stamped clearly in the corner.
Fostering trust and loyalty from a customer base is a difficult, but incredibly important, task. When human creation is substituted with recycled, overused graphics, people tend to disengage.
When I see a dress I like plastered onto a computer-generated woman, I immediately assume their product wasn’t good enough to feature the real thing. The problem is only amplified when food is involved; I don’t know about you, but I don’t find pictures of food on instagram served with an AI content warning particularly appetizing.
That, my fellow consumers, is where business owners are missing the mark.
There is a positive relationship between ad quality and customer conversions. While not every business can allow for a generous marketing budget, substituting the cost of a graphic designer for an extra hour on Canva’s freemium will yield far better results than a Copilot prompt will. A cheap, but ugly, and clearly AI-generated ad comes at the hefty cost of brand perception and differentiation.
Consumers require perceived genuinity and relatability from businesses, which cannot be replicated by computer-generated “artwork.” Humans are visual creatures, and therefore, are prone to making quick judgements off of the advertisements we’re presented with.
When we are fed ads that are indistinguishable from other companies, trust isn’t exactly fostered. If your marketing team is wanting to raise demand for a product or service, offering real genuinity is a safer bet.
To optimize a company’s return on ad spend, a business must closely target their intended audience, test various ad formats or fine-tune their website’s landing pages. While AI may be useful in creating strategy for those projects, plainly prompting and posting simply doesn’t suffice.
An AI-slop-ridden advertisement at its best is a cheap, quick way to check the advertising box on your to-do list. And at its worst, is a complete turn-off to the consumer, harming your business’ reputation.
There is much more charm in a poorly designed, but human-backed promotional ad than another tired, ugly AI-mess ruining our feeds.
