I am not sure, exactly, how many ChatGPT signs, flyers, or advertisements I had seen without noticing. But I do remember that once I began noticing them, I saw them everywhere. A few blocks from my house, on a display easel: “Break Free Surfing California: SURF LESSONS VENICE BEACH.” On Instagram, a going out of business closeout sale for a skateboard shop. On invites to parties from friends, Fourth of July barbecues being thrown by bars, concert posters. I saw ChatGPT-designed advertisements for drug deliveries in Berlin, World Cup parties in France, junk hauling services in South Carolina, and fundraisers in Texas. The scourge of low effort, stylistically indistinguishable AI-generated signs and flyers have flooded both social media and, increasingly, posters, billboards, and signs in real life: “So ain’t nobody gonna address this ChatGPT flyer pandemic we’re in?” one viral post on Threads read last month.

“YOUR FLYER LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE,” a viral ChatGPT-generated parody of the genre posted by Jill Oliver reads. “Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me.” The “ChatGPT flyer pandemic” has become a big topic of conversation among graphic designers, musicians, bars, and small business owners who care about design and showing that they’ve put effort into something.

Once you notice a ChatGPT flyer, you will see them everywhere if you keep your eyes open. The art of the format is basically big, flashy bright text on dark background and an AI-generated or AI-altered image. There is almost universally a little box of generic icons in a bulleted list vaguely tied to whatever event or business it’s advertising, lines coming off of the text to emphasize whatever it’s saying, and either bolded words or underlined text and tons of arrows and checkmarks haphazardly strewn throughout. It is easier to just show you what they look like than describe it, because they all look basically the same:

The argument against ChatGPT-generated flyers is basically the same as the argument against all other types of AI slop: It looks generic, lazy, and like businesses don’t care. The designer Kenzi Green made a video about the backlash to AI flyers that has 870,000 views called “Customers are begging you to stop the AI slop.” Another video of a graphic designer putting his head in his hands and shaking his head while ChatGPT flyers scrolls past called “we are living in an AI flyer pandemic” has nearly 7 million views.

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“Your logo, food truck wrap, social media graphics, menus all look AI generated,” Green said. “People are going to be able to spot that from a mile away and choose the competitor next to you that looks like they actually hired a human being,” she said. “It might feel like you’re ‘saving time and money,’ but you’re actually slowly turning your brand into something generic like all the other brands out there using AI tools.”

The rejection of ChatGPT flyers infesting real life spaces is real, growing, and cuts across languages and borders. The New Jersey-based sticker company Death By Stickers has started selling a “CERTIFIED AI BULLSHIT” sticker for people to slap on ChatGPT flyers: “With your roll of 50 “CERTIFIED AI BULLSHIT” labels you can let everyone around town know when that flyer is AI SLOP,” the company says. The Thomas House Bar in Dublin has said it will stop letting people post AI flyers in its pub: “We’re not accepting AI posters or flyers for the pub,” the bar wrote on Instagram. “We’re right next to Ireland’s biggest art college, lads. It’s not a good look.” A venue in Oakland has banned AI flyers, too. I have seen anti-AI posters in Portuguese (“TUDO IGUAL: FLYER GERADO PELO CHATGT? CLARO QUE SIM!” Same old story: Flyer generated by ChatGPT? You bet!) and German (“BITTE KEINE FLYER MIT CHATGPT” Please don’t create flyers with ChatGPT). I have seen numerous viral posts from people saying that they will not go to businesses or events that use AI posters to promote, lest one get roped into a Fyre Fest or Willy Wonka AI hellscape experience. And I have begun seeing real graphic designers offering low-cost services for companies that promise not to use AI flyers. 

Jonathon Yule, executive creative director for design at the creative studio Concrete in Toronto told 404 Media that these types of posters continue a long tradition of terrible graphic design that we see in the world, but with “none of the charm” that may accidentally come from a business owner making something low quality. 

“Terrible posters are nothing new,” Yule said. “The only difference today is generative AI makes it easier than ever to get the veneer of "polish" with none of the charm that these types of posters might have had when the designer was faced with constraints (usually time, resources or experience). These types of posters would have typically been done by designers either working at a small agency or print shop and these mid-level design jobs are disappearing. Stepping back to think about where this style (and its acceptance in the world) might have come from I'm going to have to pin the blame on YouTube and AB-tested-whatever-gets-more-clicks approach to thumbnail design with the exaggerated facial expressions and shoddy yet eye catching typography.”

In the last few weeks, since I began noticing ChatGPT flyers, I’ve been taking photos of ones I’ve seen in real life, and have asked my friends to take photos of AI flyers they’ve seen out in the real world. I’ve seen them at Mexican restaurants and for surfing lessons in Los Angeles, on business cards for drug delivery services and on döner shops in Berlin, for pretzel shops in Philadelphia, and so on. I've tried at times to not notice these, but like with other AI, my brain feels like it is constantly trying to calculate whether any given sign or flyer was made using AI, and, if so, whether it actually matters.

These can be generated in ChatGPT easily by asking it to generate you a flyer or advertisement for any sort of event or business you can think of. ChatGPT routinely generated flyers that are essentially identical in format to what I see all the time when I threw random events at it: “Can you make a poster for my bar? It’s called Jason’s bar and we’re having a Fourth of July party. It goes from 4-10 pm and has food, fun, and fireworks,” and it instantly generated this, which is emblematic of the style.   

None of the ChatGPT posters have the “Graphic Design Is My Passion” charm of quickly dashed off or handwritten posters, nor even the unhinged excess you might see in, for example, a Softbank Vision Fund slide presentation. For my money, one of the most iconic pieces of graphic design of the last 20 years is “Friendship Ended With Mudasir, Now Salman is my best friend.” With a ChatGPT poster, you get none of the sheer emotion that comes through the page with a mouse-drawn X. Here’s to bringing back an MS Paint aesthetic, handwritten scribbles, or literally anything else. 

A year after cutting around 9,100 employees, Microsoft is making further layoffs today as it begins its new financial year. The software maker is laying off around 4,800 employees today, approximately 2.1 percent of its workforce. Most of the employees affected by today's cuts are in Microsoft's commercial sales business or the company's Xbox division.

In an internal memo to employees, Amy Coleman, executive vice president and Microsoft's chief people officer, blamed the job losses on a changing technology industry and the "need to adjust resources and roles and shift how we operate" to respond to how AI is impacting companies like Microsof …

Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (kind of, mostly) and I’m just not feeling it this year. Is it just me, or do things seem kind of “off” in the United States these days? Can’t put my finger on it.

Normally I try to do my optimistic thing where I stress that it’s the idea of the country that we celebrate, not the reality of it. I even made a go of it at the end of May.

But it seems especially hollow now, when ICE raids are still happening all across a nation founded by immigrants, and built on the idea of welcoming anyone who wants to participate in the ideals of the country, regardless of their ethnicity. We keep hearing story after story of people who’ve been living and working in this country for years, who keep being betrayed by this country’s corrupt government. Often abducted and taken from their homes and families while they’re reporting to immigration offices, trying to do it the so-called “right” way.

It’s an atrocity every day, but especially on a day where the perpetrators wrap themselves in the flag and claim to celebrate freedom and opportunity.

And it’s especially hollow when you actually read the Declaration of Independence — I haven’t myself in years, since Schoolhouse Rock made me more a fan of the Constitution — and notice how many of the “repeated injuries and usurpations” committed by King George are going on today, in broad daylight, not just defended but brazenly celebrated by some of the shittiest people ever to walk the planet.

Hot dogs and fireworks aren’t going to smooth over the problems of this country, and neither will voting for the self-interested, ineffectual dipshits who’ve spent the past several years telling us they’re our only hope.

Memo to Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the uselessly centrist, corporate-sponsored Democrats who’ve utterly failed to meet the moment: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Maybe if a wave of progressivism, if not outright Democratic socialism, takes hold this fall, we might be able to start digging our way out without having to resort to the “abolish” option.¹

This morning I watched a video from Jackie of the Superenthused channel, as I often do, and saw all of the stuff that Epcot at Walt Disney World is doing to celebrate the 250th this 4th of July weekend. A lot of it, unsurprisingly, was around The American Adventure pavilion — meet and greets with the characters in colonial costumes, the Voices of Liberty performing (which is always pretty fantastic, in that something so corny and shamelessly patriotic can still give you goosebumps), and much of the American Adventure show.

That show is an impressive achievement in animatronics and stagecraft more than anything else, honestly. It does come closer than anything else I’ve seen at actually acknowledging the country’s long history of injustices and outright atrocities, even though it still mostly skips lightly along the surface.

It’s in that weird middle ground of not deep enough and also not shallow enough. If it were deeper, and actually tried to tackle any of American history head-on, it would be a downer for a theme park and frankly inappropriate. But it’s also not shallow or abstract enough to be “what America means to you is what’s important.”

There is one detail in the American Adventure pavilion that I’ve always noticed, though, and only really appreciated this year. In the lobby, there are all of these paintings on the walls, interspersed with notable quotes from people like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc. One of them is from Ayn Rand.

I don’t remember what the actual quote is, because Ayn Rand sucks and produced nothing of value to offer to any decent human being. But I always remember its being there, interrupting the vibe of inspiration and opportunity and optimism with a big, stinky, wet fart.

It’s always seemed so out of place, and I wondered why anybody in Imagineering thought it was appropriate to put there. I never looked into it, because I preferred not to acknowledge the possibility that there were proud objectivists lurking behind the creation of a place I loved so much.

Now that I think about it, though, it is kind of perfect for a pavilion all about the American experience. For one thing, it’s a reminder that America has always been full of immigrants, both good and bad, who came here to seek opportunity. Many of them actually built the country. Some of them did nothing but reassure generations of mediocre white men that they were, in fact, Very Special Boys, and that everything they’d accomplished was solely the result of their own unique gifts.

And it’s also a reminder that it’s impossible to think of America, even at its most abstract, patriotic, and maudlin ideal, without also remembering that some of it is really shitty. Something to look forward to when we celebrate the 251st!

The fucks are gone.

Kansas City spent a year telling the world to watch.

The host-city banners went up downtown, the tourism ads ran in a dozen languages. We were told that businesses would flourish and diversity celebrated. The promise was that the eyes of the world would be on Kansas City this summer, on the stadium, the crowds, the show, which in many respects has indeed been the case. Yet the underbelly of this spectacle was something community members from Advocates for Immigrants Rights and Reconciliation, the rapid response network known as AIRR, and Decarcerate KC among others named and warned about long before the first whistle.

As I write this, ICE agents are running a manhunt across the metro that local television has scarcely named. Raids. Terror operations. Viciously brutal scenes of community members looking up to see agents smashing their window and ripping them from a vehicle to be trafficked.

All of what I name below is just within the past two weeks.

On Sunday, June 21, community witnesses and video confirmed that ICE boxed in a vehicle at the QuikTrip at 555 North 78th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, and disappeared two people who had stopped for gas. The two were trafficked to the Leavenworth detention center, the concentration camp CoreCivic reopened in March as the first ICE camp in Kansas. Six days later, on June 27, multiple ICE vehicles blocked traffic at 6th and Central in Kansas City, Kansas and ran a roundup that kidnapped at least four people, then kidnapped another outside a restaurant at 7th and Northrup. A blue work truck was left at the curb, its owner gone.

The agents then ramped up their operations even more.

On Sunday, June 28, in Olathe, agents chased a man through the Home Depot parking lot and kidnapped two people from an agua fresca stand at Santa Fe and Ridgeview. Afterward, neighbors described the victims as the kindest people on the block. Gone in the time it takes to pour a drink.

By Monday, June 29, the hunt had crossed the river into Missouri. Four vehicles moved down Truman Road and Indiana in the Northeast before the sun was fully up, then to an apartment complex at 23rd and Topping, where agents demanded papers and dragged residents out of their own doorways.

And on Tuesday, June 30, came the scene I keep returning to, the one this dispatch opened on. An unmarked snatch squad surrounded a work truck in Olathe, shattered the driver’s window, and dragged the man out through the glass while the morning traffic rolled past. This is the work of a secret police that wears no badge and answers to no one in this city.

The mayor who told the world its eyes would be on Kansas City said in March that this city stands against ICE. I have no reason to doubt that he meant those words. Yet, the world’s eyes have come, and so did the raids, including in the Northeast neighborhoods he governs.

But the truth is, I do not want you, reader and comrade, to read this and feel small. It has always been everyday people (not the state or politicians) who protect one another, the way Minneapolis showed us earlier this year when neighbors stood between ICE and each other during that occupation. Read this and get organized, because that is exactly what your neighbors here already did.

Know Your Rights and How to Report ICE Activity

Before the fear arrived, the infrastructure was already here. AIRR runs a hotline and floods the blocks with Know Your Rights guidance in English and Spanish. Rapid response networks exist and continue to train thousands across our city. You can tap into one easily, or have your church or place of work organize a session of its own. If you’re interested, reach out to me directly and I’ll connect you.

The map at ICEOUT.org, built by People Over Papers, logs every raid so we can see the pattern the news will not print. When that window shattered at the QuikTrip, it was on video within the hour, because the people of this city decided long ago that no one disappears here while we are looking.

So here is what yours are for. If ICE comes to your door, you do not have to open it unless they show a warrant signed by a judge. You have the right to remain silent, and you can say it out loud. I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. You do not have to sign anything. You have the right to a lawyer. Regardless of your status, you have rights.

Report what you see to AIRR at (913) 999-2398 or at ICEOUT.org. Learn to defend your block at ICERR.com.

The world came to Kansas City to watch a game. Let us make sure it cannot look away from what was done to our neighbors while it did.

The post While the World Watches the World Cup, ICE Hunts Kansas City Community Members appeared first on The Kansas City Defender.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate, ousted Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado in a primary challenge on Tuesday. 

DeGette, a 15-term incumbent first elected in 1996, is the second member of Congress to lose her seat to a younger democratic socialist challenger after Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillait, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in New York’s 13th District last week. 

Chevalier’s and Kiros’ challenges came amid widespread discontent and frustration among Democratic voters with party leadership in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election. Both Espaillat and DeGette are longtime progressives whom their opponents cast as representatives of a failing Democratic establishment beholden to corporate interests. Chevalier and Kiros both also have a history of pro-Palestine activism and made opposing Israel’s war in Gaza central to their campaigns.  

Kiros is all but assured to win the general election in the deep blue district, which encompasses most of the city and county of Denver. 

She, Chevalier and Assembly Member Claire Valdez, who won the Democratic primary for another New York City-based seat, are set to expand the ranks of democratic socialists in Congress. All three were endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats. 

Kiros, who immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia with her family as a baby, was an associate at a large law firm in New York City before she was fired in 2023 for writing a letter criticizing law firms’ response to Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.  

She became a PhD student and barista after moving back to Denver and launched her campaign against DeGette last year on a message of generational change and getting corporate influence out of politics. 

In an interview Friday, Kiros said Denver “doesn’t get enough credit” for being as progressive as it is. 

“This is a state that really appreciates leaders that talk about the corruption in government, that talk about how rigged our economy is, and talk about the kind of programs that would meaningfully bring relief for working families,” she said. 

Kiros and DeGette were largely aligned on policy, including opposing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda and supporting Medicare for All. 

DeGette, 68, is the top Democrat on an influential subcommittee overseeing healthcare and pledged to hold hearings on Medicare for All if Democrats retake the House in November. 

But Kiros singled out DeGette’s acceptance of campaign funds from corporate PACs, including from the healthcare industry, arguing they contradicted DeGette’s progressive stances. DeGette said the contributions did not influence her votes in Congress and argued that she, not Kiros, had the experience necessary to meet the moment. 

In a brief interview at the Capitol on Thursday, DeGette expressed confidence in her chances of winning renomination and said, “Denver, Colorado is not New York City.” 

Still, outside groups poured a last-minute influx of money into the race aiming to boost DeGette and oppose Kiros. Much of the pro-DeGette spending came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, a PAC linked to Elect Democratic Women, which spent over $1.5 million in the final two weeks of the campaign. 

“I think what we’re seeing right now in New York, and also other places around the country, is that when a party is actually responsive to the needs of voters, they will come out and support, they will volunteer, they will be a part of a movement if that movement is fighting for them,” Kiros said. “That’s what we saw in New York, and that’s what we’re going to see here in Denver too.”

The primary race in the 1st District was one of several that tested the power of the insurgent left in Colorado. Also on Tuesday, Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated Sen. Michael Bennet  in an unexpectedly competitive Democratic primary for governor and Sen. John Hickenlooper faced a primary challenge from the left from state Sen. Julie Gonzales. 

Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel defeated former state Rep. Shannon Bird in the primary for the battleground 8th Congressional District, held by GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, set to be one of the most competitive in the country in November.