New York’s Beloved Bodegas Are Filling Up With AI Slop
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Bodegas and restaurants across the five boroughs are becoming plastered in badly hallucinated AI slop, and New Yorker's aren't having it.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you! 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 l...
