Alicia Meehan, opinions editor

The Office of Student Involvement (OSI) decorated the Krannert Lobby with posters for Mountain Day Weekend, most notably a poster for Marthapalooza generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Last academic year, Berry’s Art Society used AI to generate their event posters. A student involvement club using AI for posters is bad in its own way, but an art club using AI is not a good look.

AI is already a heavily debated topic, but especially when it comes to art and advertisements. Artists across the internet shun those who use AI to create an image and call it “art.” Art needs to have feeling behind it, and that includes advertisement. People want to see thought and effort put into the posters for events, which requires a human to think and put in that effort.

There can be some moral issues when it comes to releasing AI generated advertising. If you have to synthesize the image you want to put out, how good is your product?

For online shopping, an AI generated cover photo on a listing is a telltale sign that you are going to get scammed if you try to buy that. If this applies to physical products, it should apply to less tangible products like events or clubs.

A recent instance where a college-based group recieved backlash for releasing AI generated content happened in September of this year. Stanford University released an AI altered picture of three students taken at the university’s dining hall. When comparing the original and the changed images, two students’ body and face shapes were changed to look more “attractive,” and a Latino student was completely replaced with an AI generated black female in university merchandise.

It’s clear that the university tried to put out a “better” image of their student population by including a more diverse and more “attractive” group. But what’s the point? Advertisements need to be accurate representation of the product, or it’s just lying.

When it comes to student-led projects and groups, the situation is not as dire, yet it still doesn’t look good. It’s understandable that students have their own commitments and can’t spend a lot of time designing graphics, but that’s not a great excuse.

OSI has a large budget so putting out an AI generated poster for Marthapalooza is confusing. An alternative to AI could have been hiring a graphic artist or student artist, which would be a good position to offer long-term. OSI sends out many posters and graphics when they advertise events, so having a graphic artist or two on their team would be a great idea.

For those who wouldn’t consider themselves artists, there are plenty of easy ways to make a halfway decent poster. Sites like Canva come with many fonts and free assets that you can use, including more throughout the internet. You can create a good poster just by tinkering around for a little while with colors, shapes and composition.

Some of you might say that even with the right tools, it won’t fit that professional standard. Honestly, that’s perfectly fine. With the rise of AI generated advertisements, seeing something clearly human-made is a breath of fresh air. It’s a great feeling to know that a person put any sort of thought and time behind the product they put out for the world to see.

For the artistically talented, using AI to advertise your art club is counterintuitive. A grand majority of artists are strictly against using AI, seeing art as something that comes from the soul.

Artists understand that burnout leaves people feeling unable to make things that they enjoy, much less creating something for work like advertisements/posters – as opposed to a personal art piece. A solution to this problem is again to use sites like Canva instead of AI.

Most of the artists who see the AI posters will be deterred by it instead of deciding to join the club. Who wants to join an art club that doesn’t make their own advertisements? Even if the posters come out “low quality” in your eyes, most artists will respect that someone took the time to create it with their own mind and hands.

Art is something that can only be done by a human. Actual art gets made because of lived experiences and a person’s emotions. Even the silliest or simplest of pieces will have soul behind them because a human felt something and wanted to create art about it.

Though advertising is a little different from personal art, the point still stands. If you can’t take the time to draw out or design the poster for your own product, why should people spare a second glance, let alone consider buying the product or attending the event?

People want to know that a fellow human was behind the thing they are purchasing, the event they are going to or the club they’re joining.

In the current age of social media and AI, people need personal connection more than ever. Putting in any amount of effort no matter how small, instead of using AI, immediately gives you and your product a new type of credibility.

We see groups that opt to create their own advertisements as those that will put in the work needed to create a good product and those that have that human connection we all crave.

Groups, including the student-led ones, need to use their own brains and hands to create their advertisement if they want their audience to take them seriously.