Why this diner (and other local businesses) are filling your feed with AI slop

Daisy’s Diner in Park Slope is about as cute and quaint as you could want out of a 24-hour diner in the city. It’s got random pictures of movie stars on the wall, cozy booths, bric-a-brac decorations, a shelf of hot sauces, a cake display case right in the window, a defunct fireplace and an old red telephone booth that’s used to store a vacuum and some coats. As someone who grew up in the metal-and-mirror aesthetic of New Jersey diners, this place is practically Stars Hollow to me. 

The menu is standard diner-style — sprawling and gigantic — ranging from western omelets to chicken marsala. The bar sells local beers and pounder cans of Twisted Tea and recently upgraded to selling cocktails. It’s overall got a real lived-in, neighborhood-staple vibe, appropriate for a place that’s been open on Fifth Avenue for almost 40 years. 

The image of the diner online, however, is different, noticeably shinier and more sleek than the brick-and-mortar version. Google the business and you’ll be presented with preternaturally glistening pictures of salmon filets, endlessly steaming deviled eggs and impeccably smiling faces of customers and staff. At times, it literally doesn’t look like the same place: images on its Instagram show the middle-of-the-block diner on different corners of the block; one TikTok shows what appears to be a completely different neon sign and restaurant entirely. Sometimes the lettering on signs of neighboring businesses shows up garbled.

The diner is one of a seemingly growing number of local businesses that are trying to “leverage AI,” in the words of owner Jordan Beau, for a competitive advantage in the harsh world of the New York restaurant industry. 

For me, it’s been jarring to see our feeds flooded with AI from all angles; I might expect it from peddlers of slopulism, national brands hawking vodka or low-quality political memes. It’s more of a shock to see it spread among the tier of small businesses across the city. But it’s all of a sudden everywhere, from new businesses announcing themselves to established ones rebranding their menus. I caught at least one grungy arts-adjacent organization using it to promote a ukulele event. Bodega sign AI slop has become a whole category in itself. 

As most of us know (and can easily spot at this point), there’s something off-putting about the AI ads that makes them both easily identifiable and viscerally cringey. They’re too clean, too shiny, somehow a product of extremely advanced computing but with an output that all feels the same. Why would a local business do this when so much of their appeal comes to being the little guy? To find out, we did our own version of the infamous “check in with a diner” journalism by visiting Daisy’s this week. 

“So I think when it comes down to it, it's about time, and all the videos that we produce, we produce, and then we leverage AI to make them professional,” Beau told The Groove. “What it does do is it saves us time, really, and resources to try and compete in a marketplace, especially in an industry that you know, [a large percentage] of diners in New York City are dead or dying.”