Editorial.  

It seems that no matter where a student looks on the VSU campus anymore, Artificial Intelligence (AI)  looks back at them.  

Since the start of the 2026 academic year, there has been a drastic rise in AI-generated advertisements for campus events.  

It began first with Housing, showing off an AI-generated infographic on their table at The Happening, then other on-campus organizations followed, like The Rec, NABA, and VSU Council on Staff Affairs.  

There is a pattern that these flyers follow: Sans-Serif or Helvetica font, overuse of exclamation marks, and white text placed over a paint swipe as a header. It is not difficult to pick out these flyers as AI-generated.  

The question becomes: why?  

Most organizations have an actual executive board position for someone to create their advertisements — known as Public Relations or Outreach. This person’s only job is to get information and create a flyer with it.  

Does this position simply not exist anymore? Or are people being voted-in  to “create” AI flyers?  

The university has already had its hot takes with AI: a new AI major being implemented, AI workshops for faculty, as well as allowing usage in 1001 composition classes —  courses in which students are supposed to be learning how to write  

With a whole department of Art and Design, it is disappointing and embarrassing to see such high-ranking organizations on campus take the easy way out. Through the department of Marketing and Creative Services, there are people who are paid to design things.  

Is this where all of those extra fees in tuition are going toward?  

Most people in Generation Z will see an AI-generated advertisement and turn the other cheek. In a way, these groups are shooting themselves in the foot by using this means of design.  

Why do we hold such a strong reaction?  

Artificial Intelligence is “trained” by feeding the machine examples of work that paid graphic  artists are spending their time and resources to do. All of these sites that are “generating”  these same, gaudy posters are simply regurgitating a different poster design that a real graphic artist has already created.  

The Spectator holds a strict, zero-tolerance AI policy. All of the work seen in the paper, on the website, and in the newsletter is work of human hands. It is frustrating to see group after group cap victim to AI usage. 

Using AI flyers is lazy. It doesn’t even take five minutes to put information into a pre-programmed template in a computer program like Canva. The same amount of time spent tinkering with an AI prompt could have been spent creating one’s own flyer themself. It is also a mark of frugality to watch an organization use AI instead of commissioning a real graphic artist, just to save $10 on a graphic piece.  

The hard truth is: if a group doesn’t bother putting in the time, money and effort to create their own flyer, how much time, money and effort have they put into the event they’re trying to host? Is it even worth bothering with?  

A generative AI flyer is a mark of a group that couldn’t be bothered to even try, and quite frankly, it is really embarrassing to witness.