We’re always out there perusing the internets and the world wide webs and just, like, shredding the gnar of web surfing, so we start to clock concerning trends. We saw it with the MySpace Top 8 and the friendships it ruined (if you don’t know what that is, just trust us—it destroyed people); we saw it with the rise of 4Chan; we saw it when Facebook and Instagram changed from a chronological bit of “had lunch today” posts and photos that helped folks keep up to date with faraway friends—and we’re seeing it now with Santa Fe restaurants and their insistence upon creating AI fliers for use in online marketing and advertisements. To be clear, this is not unique to Santa Fe, and we’re not so naïve as to believe AI is going anywhere anytime soon. To be even more clear, we’re not anti-autocorrect, we can’t possibly understand every conceivable future iteration of the tech and we don’t super-duper mind when the internet says “You just watched 36 episodes of Frasier in a row, do you at least want to sprinkle in some Cheers, or...?” We do, however, posit that generative AI and its environmental impacts, not to mention the out-and-out nonconcensual theft and repackaging of artistic works created by actual humans, are enough to make decent human-loving dorks think a little more deeply about how they use the many available AI resources now baked into our daily internettings—and we think that restaurants who create those AI fliers (you know the one) come across as lazy. That last bit is particularly notable, because we know firsthand that owning a restaurant and/or working in a restaurant are not activities for the lazy. But if you’re willing to cut that corner, what else should we worry about? Here’s our main beefs: The Saminess Whatever the AIs trained upon to spit out those word salad-y, text-dense visual nightmares is not something we care to see, really, but the whole gross-looking (and obviously AI) too-many-words of it all makes us scroll right on by. The Weird Images We know this one likely comes down to how chronically folks are online, but also media literacy and all—but if you still can’t spot an AI image, especially an AI menu—you might wanna do a little looking into why that is. Even worse, we’ve come to a point of cellphone technology where most of us have downright decent cameras in our phones at all times, and that’s not even counting the excellent cameras on some flagships. Even if your phone is a little old, you can get a shot that works for online, trust us, and everyone would rather see a for-real image of your food over a slightly cartoonified version with an impossibly weird cheese-pull (that thing where the cheese on some food item looks all long and stringy, which we don’t get because doesn’t that mean most of the cheese falls off the thing and onto the plate?). Here’s a little tip from a newspaper person: Hiring a photographer (and there are many in Santa Fe) doesn’t actually cost that much. Learning how to use your phone’s camera costs even less, mostly just your time. Try fiddling around with portrait mode, because Satan knows online nerds love a photo where there’s depth-of-field and certain parts of the image are blurry while others are sharper than Shannon Sharpe, whom, we believe, is a real person who exists, though we can’t tell you what they do. The Vibes We get the razor-thin margins of restauranting, and we get that there’s just not a whole lot of time in the day. But when our first impression of you and your business is that you didn’t care enough to put any time whatsoever into your public-facing first impressions...? Well, we start to wonder what other elements of your business don’t warrant your actual time and attention. The subtext also becomes that you don’t value humanity as a business owner, so our mind wanders to whether you’d replace your workers with robots if you could. Not every restaurant is like Santa Fe’s Zeng, a Chinese joint that has a robot busser that HELPS the humans rather than being its own thing. Using AI fliers also makes us think that you think we’re stupid or that we also don’t value human input. And make no mistake, chefs out there who don’t own your restaurant, owners who don’t care about using AI would likely replace you, too. “No we wouldn’t!” some of you are probably thinking. “Yeah, right!” we are thinking. “Yes you would.” The Ugliness Those fliers look like shit. Accept it. They also cancel out any sort of “we’re organic!” and “we source local!” bragging folks might do for their businesses. That’s like saying, “Oh, yeah, our meat’s from here but also all our water is stolen from a reservoir in a different town, and though those people from Anytown, USA, can’t shower or get hydrated anymore, it was just a lot easier to do that than it was to get a fucking Canva account or hire my friend’s nephew for a couple hours or even ask my friend, an artist, to draw or photo something for us.” Look, restaurant owners, we get that you’re trying to be cost-effective, and we get that you likely aren’t out there twirling your mustache while tying an artist to the railroad tracks. You probably saw (or see) AI as an inexpensive tool to bolster your business a little bit. We’re almost positive, however, that the first restaurant around here that spends a couple hundo to hire a photog, then goes online and says something like, “We know there’s a lot of AI out there, which is why it was important to us to support the mega-local shooter Cam Shutterbug,” is gonna win sooooooo many points with the broader community. So again, while we’re not out-and-out condemning every possible use of AI, we know that using it to create imagery costs jobs, devalues arts and creators, is literal theft and makes most decent people feel all gross and stuff. This is an arts and food community—fucking act like it. And if not? Well, don’t come crying to us when we’ve got terminators out there trained to kill by terrible-looking digital menus that somehow became sentient. Also - Mark your calendars for the Indigenous Foodways Festival on June Saturday, June 20. A partnership between the fest itself and Edible New Mexico, the one-day ode to Indigenous chefs and Indigenous cuisine features so many notable food folks that anyone interested is like to be all, “Wow, that’s a lot of notable food folks!” The fest hits Museum Hill from noon-4 pm and even the seven-chef tasting experience only costs a scant $55, while general admission runs free for kids 3 and under to $95 depending on what type of day you wanna have (follow this link for more detailed pricing info). Sounds rad as hell, honestly. - Also on Saturday, June 20 at 5 pm? Flamenco maestra La Emi hosts a special flamenco show/dinner event at Tortilla Flats. This one’s a fundraiser for La Emi’s Emi Arte Flamenco dance school, kids, and all you have to do is drop $40 a person to get fed and see some dance. You’ll find more info here. - If you’re reading this and you know what we mean by Matt the Peach Guy, we hear Matt the Peach Guy is back in action a little later this week. If you don’t know, this-here Peach Guy (TM, probably) comes to town each year with beautiful peaches from faraway lands (and other fruit), and he hocks those peaches from a special tent in the parking lot area betwixt The Candyman and American Home Furnishings. In reality, we understand the biz is called Mountain Valley Produce, and you can usually find it/them/Matt at 901 St. Michael’s Drive. - We don’t have any World Cup information because sports are dumb, but we do know that pizza/Mediterranean joint Tender Fire Kitchen will be showing games daily for the next little bit. This one is...soccer, we’re pretty sure, and while we don’t have any details beyond the things we’ve already said, we figure if you’re a soccer fan that you might wanna call Tender Fire and just ask about what the deal is, when to stop by and all that stuff. Reminder: We don’t work there, so they’ll know better than us. - Apropos of nothing, we feel we need to mention that restaurants have every right to charge people for ketchup or whatever other condiments because—get this—they have to buy that stuff, too. Most places don’t, but don’t expect free shit ever from a restaurant. Just saying. More Tidbits - Food and/or Wine-dot-com wonders if engineered algae might combat microplastics. Well, it’s actually the University of Missouri that wonders that, but F&W is reported on the study. Broad strokes? Microplastics are a real concern, and we’re glad someone is doing stuff to deal with it. In short, the algae eats the plastics or something. Read more here. - Speaking of plastics, USA Today-dot-com gets into the reality of what happens when you store your food in plastic containers. The big problem, the story says, comes when folks heat stuff up in those plastic containers, but like most things, it’s complex and you might wanna just read it. - Lastly in not-just-local news, Walmart has launched a food delivery service dubbed Walmart’s Express Delivery. Apparently y’all can now order groceries and add on food from certain restaurants, like Subway. Our take? It’s great for folks who can’t get out of the house, but we’re also tired of what food delivery services actually mean for restaurants. Learn more here and wonder if we should just dust off the Pony Express. In Summation AI sucks so much. Organically intelligent, The Fork
