Over the past months, something has changed — not just in how images are made, but in how they circulate, dominate, and overwhelm our screens.
Artificial Intelligence has triggered an unprecedented flood of images on the internet. Perfect interiors. Idealised faces. Infinite variations of the same visual ideas. Produced faster than any human rhythm — and in quantities no independent creator can compete with.
In e-commerce, this shift is not theoretical. It is brutally concrete. Visibility is measured in numbers. Traffic. Conversion rates. Sales. And when your images — created by real artists, over time, with intention — are drowned in an ocean of AI-generated visuals, existing online suddenly becomes harder.
Not because your work has lost its value — but because it has lost its oxygen.
At the same time, a new narrative has emerged everywhere: the promise of “effortless creativity”.
Courses, ads, and so-called “experts” now claim that you can build a poster brand, a t-shirt business, or a design store entirely with AI — from visuals to websites, from product descriptions to social media posts and ads — without drawing, photographing, writing, or even thinking too much.
This phenomenon alone deserves a full article of its own. Because when AI starts feeding on AI, visual culture doesn’t multiply — it flattens. Repetition replaces intention. Style becomes average. Creativity becomes statistical.
We’ll come back to this in a future piece.
So where does that leave us?
At MyRetroPoster, we asked ourselves a difficult question with Charlotte, Pam, and the people who advise us:
Should we reject AI entirely, to avoid any confusion with our posters — all created without AI, from real places, real photographs, real drawings, and real memories?
The intention was noble. But the reality is more complex.
We are a small, independent company. We don’t have large teams. We don’t have infinite budgets.
And when you’re challenged on your core craft — artistic creation — you can’t fight back by pretending the rest of the world hasn’t changed.
So we made a clear decision.
AI will never create our posters. AI will never replace our artists. AI will never invent places we haven’t been, or memories we haven’t lived.
But AI can help us elsewhere.
It can assist when we step outside our core skills. It can support communication, exploration, storytelling, or experimentation — especially when we don’t have the human or financial means to outsource everything.
And above all, we chose transparency.
This is why we are currently working on a clear AI charter for MyRetroPoster.
It will define:
- what we use AI for,
- what we never use it for,
- why we use it,
- where it intervenes,
- and how transparent we want to be — fully.
This new series of visuals and messages is the first visible step of that approach.
When we say “Everything here is AI. Except the poster.” we are not hiding. We are pointing.
In the Amul visual shared recently, AI creates the movement. The steam. The impossible toast frozen mid-air.
But the poster brings the memory.
A memory that existed long before algorithms. A figure that never existed, yet belongs to millions of kitchens, breakfasts, and shared moments.
This contrast is not accidental.
It’s our way of saying: AI can simulate life. But it doesn’t remember it.
We don’t believe in rejecting technology blindly. And we don’t believe in surrendering creativity to it either.
Between fear and fascination, there is a third path: using AI consciously, visibly, responsibly — while reaffirming the irreplaceable value of human-made art.
That is the direction we are choosing for MyRetroPoster.
More reflections, more clarity, and yes — more surprises — are coming this year.
Because when everything becomes artificial, what truly matters is what still feels real.
