AI-Generated Event Posters Are Flooding Local Bulletin Boards. Nobody Likes Them.
Walk into a pub in any British town and check the notice board. Scroll through a local Facebook group. You'll see the same poster repeated dozens of times: oversaturated colours, smiling children, cute animals with anatomical errors, bunting in the corners, and text overlaid on wooden planks or scroll designs.
These flyers advertise summer fairs, car boot sales, and open mic nights. They look identical. They were all generated by AI in seconds.
Artist Barry Whitehouse collected 12 posters from across the UK in April and shared them online. "All these posters look the same, yet they are from different areas in the UK, so much so I was concerned that I had repeated the same poster when compiling this," he wrote. The post was shared 4,000 times.
Why event organisers are using them
The appeal is obvious. Volunteers running community events are stretched thin. Hospitality workers are exhausted. A free, instant poster that looks passable requires no design skills and takes seconds to produce.
For time-pressed organisers, AI feels like a practical solution.
The problems are mounting
The environmental cost is real. A 2023 study from AI startup Hugging Face and Carnegie Mellon University found that generating a single AI image uses as much energy as fully charging a smartphone. A medium-sized AI data centre consumes up to 110 million gallons of water annually to cool its servers.
Professional designers are losing work to this technology. Illustrators whose work trained these models often never consented to having their art used as data.
But the sharpest criticism comes from the people these posters are trying to reach: potential attendees.
Consumers are switching off
Reshmi Bennett, founder of bespoke cake company Anges de Sucre, calls AI ads "an instant ick." She said: "As a consumer, I would choose not to attend the event if its poster is screaming AI slop, because it tells me the organisers have put little thought or effort into marketing."
James Bleakley, co-founder of luxury bakehouse Bumble & Goose, initially used AI graphics for his brand. He said: "It didn't take long before they stopped standing out and started blending in with everything else online."
Writer Lauren Johns described the aesthetic as "overdone" and lacking personality. "There's something I can't explain about the style that I just can't connect with at all," she said.
Photographer Jayne Cole refuses to attend events advertised with AI images. She said: "The ethical issues surrounding AI are not a mystery, and pretending it is just a tool like any other tells me that the person or people organising the event are either disingenuous or wilfully ignorant."
The scam problem
The AI poster aesthetic has become associated with fraud. James Bleakley, who administers Facebook groups for traders, said they are "getting flooded with scam events with AI images." The flyers look professional, but the events don't exist-organisers just want to steal booking fees.
The 2024 Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow is the cautionary tale. Families arrived at a warehouse expecting a magical event after seeing colourful AI-generated advertisements. They found a few candy cane decorations and drama students in Oompa Loompa wigs.
The irony
These posters promote events designed to bring communities together. Yet the technology behind them feels fundamentally at odds with that mission.
Cole said: "I would much rather deal with real people and real art, even if it's bad." A Comic Sans comeback, it seems, is starting to look appealing.
For hospitality and events professionals weighing whether to use AI for marketing materials, the message is clear: your audience notices. And they're not impressed.
Learn more about AI Design Courses and AI for Hospitality & Events to understand how to use these tools responsibly in your industry.
Your membership also unlocks:
