An AI-generated image sparked a surprise in the Berkeley woods. A local event poster caught attention with its colorful, cartoonish carousel featuring kids and animals. But the clincher? The carousel’s top showed weird, mangled characters — a dead giveaway of AI creation.
The poster’s creators had clearly used AI tools like ChatGPT or similar. This isn’t isolated. AI-made content is popping up everywhere — on restaurant websites, kid lesson plans, local ads, and now outdoor event signs.
The strange text mishap on the poster reveals the limits of AI image generation. It churns out visuals fast but often botches fine details like letters. 
No official word yet from the event organizers, but this incident underlines how AI art is leaking into everyday life — sometimes clumsily.
Photos by the author
Thomas Smith reflected on the discovery:
As I was walking through the secluded darkness of the Berkeley woods this week, I stumbled on an AI image.
Catching a glimpse of a poster for an upcoming event in the park where I was walking, I saw a vibrant, cartoony visual. It was full of color and movement — showing smiling kids and animals riding an ornate carousel.
“That looks a lot like AI!” I thought. Initially, I dismissed the idea. The middle of the woods seemed like a strange place to happen across an AI illustration.
But a closer look at the poster confirmed it. The top of the cartoon carousel was loaded up with the kinds of mangled, vaguely Cyrillic-looking nonsense letters that AI loves to generate.
The creators of the poster had clearly used ChatGPT or its ilk to make the poster.
That’s a pattern that I’m seeing more and more. From restaurants’ websites, to kids’ lessons plans, to local organizations’ posters and advertisements, AI content is invading the real world.
