Irvington is home to two landmarks — the 450-year-old Kile Oak tree and the 153-year-old Benton House. Maintaining the two is an all-hands-on-deck job.
The Irvington Historic Landmarks Foundation has been trying to court volunteers to help mow the lawn and tend to the garden at the Benton House and to cut invasive plants around the tree.
It’s why the organization reached out to Samuel Martinez and others from the Indiana Arborist Association for help.
Martinez, who is not a graphic designer, committed a grave error: He used AI to quickly create a flier about a Sept. 20 community clean-up at the Kile Oak and posted it in the Irvington Neighbors Facebook Group. He didn’t know what would be waiting for him in the comments of the group, which has more than 17,000 members.
People basically called him a hypocrite for using an AI flyer to promote a nature event. Martinez apologized and took the post down. He accepted the criticism and used it as a learning moment.
“I made a bad choice and hit the lazy button. I could have just used my own creativity and created something just as good and better,” he wrote in a Facebook message to Mirror Indy.
Good peer pressure or community police?
Generative AI fliers are ugly. You know one when you see one. Someone has plugged a prompt into Claude or ChatGPT to create an explosion of text and clashing fonts dressed in paint splattered backgrounds, also known as AI slop.
It’s hard to know what to look at first. It’s almost like you become stuck in an optical illusion trying to make out the information you need, like the date, time and location.
But some people are wondering if the public pressure has gone too far, and if there’s a better way to deter the community from creating AI fliers.
In June, one of Indy’s most respected artists, Gary Gee, found himself the target of Indy AI Watchdog, which called him out for using AI tools on TikTok to promote his T-shirt line.
Gee – who teaches art, a founding member of We Are Indy Arts Collective and who exhibits artwork in the prestigious annual BUTTER Fine Art Fair — said he has never publicly shown artwork that uses AI. He had been playing with TikTok’s AI Alive which takes static images and turns them into short-form videos using AI.
“(AI) is everywhere and so many artists, designers and organizations use it way more than me, so why are you tagging me?” Gee wondered at the time. To him, Indy AI Watchdog, an anonymous Instagram account, didn’t really want to go deeper into the ethics of AI.
“They just … point out what someone else is doing,” he said.
Indy AI Watchdog’s Instagram bio says, “AI is rampant in the city and threatens working class people and the environment.” Mirror Indy reached out to the owner of the account, which has not been updated since July, but they did not respond.
Fatima Abdurrahman, who has earned a PhD in astrophysics from the University of California Berkeley, said she believes some people can be misguided in their fight against AI. Her “How to Anti (AI) Better” video, which has garnered close to 500,000 views, discusses the harms of AI and how to collectively fight against those harms.
She refuses to draw the line of when to use and not use the technology because she said people have different needs. But her stance on AI (and AI fliers for that matter) remains clear — she’s against it.
Still, “To say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to patronize (a business or event) because they used an AI flyer’ feels so hugely missing the point of taking a moral stance on a societally bad product,” Abdurrahman said.
Striving for political perfection
Businesses and individuals who use AI fliers might believe they are saving money on marketing costs, but they risk appearing lazy and losing customers — and being accused of cutting into the potential profits of local artists.
In September, Indianapolis food influencer Amanda Gibson aka AmandainIndy made a post urging farmers market managers to not allow vendors to use AI in their marketing and or turn them away. It received over 1,400 likes.
In the Indy Theater Community Facebook group, Tracy Carson was called out by multiple people for using an AI flyer to promote an audition. Following the backlash she made a post on the platform that one commenter called “passive aggressive.”
“Is there a person who can make audition notice posters? Apparently AI is not a good idea,” Carson had written in July.
There are many reasons why emotions are running high and why AI fliers have become one of the main symbols for the backlash against data centers. People are afraid and anxious about the technology’s impact on the future.
In April, Indianapolis City-County Councilor Ron Gibson’s house was shot up after he voted to approve a data center in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood. (No one was hurt.)
In Irvington, neighbors are fighting against DC Blox, a Georgia-based developer, which was approved by the city’s Metropolitan Development Commission to build a $2 million data center just north of an elementary school. (The moderator of another Irvington Facebook group, Irvington Indiana Information, just announced that they are suspending anyone who shares AI fliers from posting for 28 days.)
Humans make ethical choices every day. Often the clothes, technology and food we put in our shopping carts can hide unjust labor practices and harm to the environment.
Abdurrahman said her fight is not with her neighbor, it is against tech industry giants like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who she said she believes should have less political power and share a greater responsibility for the climate crisis.
“I do see standards of political perfection … that end up just pushing people farther apart from each other which to me is the opposite of what we need in order to be resilient against the really harmful forces that exist in today’s society,” Abdurrahman said.
Teaching a man how to fish — for original fliers
Hostile comments like “you’re destroying the planet” and commands to “pay an artist” can become platitudes when attempting to convince someone that AI poses a threat to the environment and people’s livelihoods. There are those who are committed to real solutions.
This past summer, DJ Little Town took to Instagram to express her concerns with the amount of AI fliers she saw, especially from other DJs. She disabled the comments on the post, but it received over 1,000 likes.
Little Town, who has a bachelor’s in fine arts, is offering to make fliers at a discount and teach people how to make their own. Another local artist, Kheyarra Johnson, invites you to bring your AI-generated ideas to her, so she can work her magic on the finished project.
In August, IF Theatre publicly pledged to not use AI for any of its public-facing content. “Our organization believes deeply that it is our job to prepare human artists to make their human work better.” IF Theatre has a graphic designer and photographer database located at the bottom of its AI statement.
Little Town is completely against AI fliers, but she knows it will take more convincing than just telling people to hire artists.
“The crying artist is not going to convince people as much as we want it to,” Little Town said. “There has to be a better way of creating a solution to combat this stuff.”
Cleaning up after the fact
Abdurrahman suggests “leading with curiosity” when talking with a loved one or community member. This doesn’t mean they will take your advice immediately, but she believes the conversations will help over time.
“It’s the sustained exposure to someone you respect and feel respect from that changes people’s minds,” she said.
Back in the Irvington Neighbors Facebook group, some recommended that Martinez, the arborist, use Canva instead of AI. That didn’t sit well with the purists who advocate against Canva because it has AI features.
Commenter Rebecca Jade saw Martinez’ post about the Kile Oak cleanup and kindly offered to provide other resources for him to make a non AI-generated flyer, including a list of artists. Now, whenever someone posts an AI flyer, a link to those resources is shared.
Martinez declined to do a formal interview with Mirror Indy. He referred us to Chad Cerda, treasurer of the Indiana Historic Landmarks Foundation.
Cerda, 53, said the 12-person volunteer organization doesn’t have enough money to pay for advertising; most of it goes into operational costs. (On average a graphic designer could charge $25-$100 per hour for a flyer.)
“We take a look at any tools that help us save time because not everyone is a graphic artist or has a degree in advertising, marketing or fine arts,” he said.
To further correct its mistake, IHLF created an AI policy. Cerda said going forward, the organization will not use AI tools to write its messaging or design logos and fliers.
But in the end, Martinez’ swift removal of the flyer and his apology were not enough, it seems, to get neighbors out to the event.
Cerda said they’re lucky to get 10 people who aren’t friends and family invited by staff to the clean-ups.
“Not everybody has an appetite for playing in poison ivy,” Cerda said. “It’s a struggle to get folks to come to these things to begin with. But rest assured, we did not have a circle of 50 people holding some sort of anti-AI protest and in turn, pulling weeds and cutting saplings.”
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Mirror Indy reporter Mesgana Waiss covers arts and culture. Contact her at 317-667-2643 or mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
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