I was looking into a new Craftsman product when I came across… this.
At first glance it looks like a vintage workshop filled with hand tools, tool storage, and various supplies and equipment.
But if you take more than a passing look, reality falls apart as a lot of the details seem impossible.
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I took a closer look at first because I couldn’t easily identify the closed wrench-like tools. It turns out they’re not tools, but tool-shaped things.
They’re not the only ones doing this – many brands and retailers have gotten sloppy with AI generated marketing materials, with Craftsman just the latest one I came across.
Here are some tool box details.
Honestly, I’m extremely surprised. Craftsman seems to run a tight ship, and I can’t see anyone at Stanley Black & Decker being okay with this. Or at least I hope no one is okay with this.
Giving Craftsman the benefit of the doubt, maybe this somehow made it onto their product page without approval.
Frankly, it makes me appreciate Bosch’s latest marketing campaign a bit more. Sure, it’s… different, but it’s likely the brainchild of actual people.
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Once again, here’s some Ryobi AI slop from a Home Depot newsletter.
Just because this keeps happening, that doesn’t make it okay.
Josephus
That guy has a lot of [redacted] on his tool wall. All the stuff off to the upper right. No tooling just handles.
Also who would put small screwdrivers twelve feet in the air on a shelf that requires a ladder? Look to the left of the “clock”.
Stuart
I lost count as to how many reality-breaking and impractical details I could find.
Josephus
The human person appears to have a real bad cauliflower ear, or a bandage in place of an ear?
This is like a really busy “Where’s Waldo” or one of the old MAD magazine illustrations with lots of tiny details to find.
Wayne R.
Maybe the image *was* approved by a boss somewhere, but that role is also AI. Can hardly be worse than a lot of human bosses…
I keep seeing AI being credited with huge leaps in medical molecular development, but “consumer” grade AI isn’t apparently doing as well, not from my viewpoint anyway.
Troy H.
I think that many things that were previously referred to differently are being called “AI” because of the marketing buzz associated with it. The kinds of things used for medicine development are different from large language models on a pretty fundamental level, but it all gets thrown into the same bucket.
Other times companies are just releasing new, worse version of existing products because AI makes them easy. OCR for scanned documents gets replaced with AI based stuff and sometimes it hallucinates. Transcription software gets replaced with AI based stuff and sometimes it hallucinates. We had OCR and transcription software that was pretty good, but more importantly, it failed in detectible ways because it didn’t just make up plausible filler when it couldn’t do something accurately.
I think the “AI” fad is starting to peak and come back down, so we’ll probably be off to the next big thing in a couple years.
Stuart
Yes, and no.
2020: https://news.mit.edu/2020/artificial-intelligence-identifies-new-antibiotic-0220
2022: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2022/09/13/using-ai-to-find-new-antibiotics-still-a-work-in-progress/
The use of “AI” terminology preceded the flood of generative AI services that have gained momentum since late 2022.
Troy H.
I’m sure it pretty much comes down to my personal perception of “AI” going from benign to annoying. Generative AI like stable diffusion and ChatGPT have come to dominate the public perception of AI so they get some extra credibility from the public perception that they’re doing the same kind of thing as researchers using AI to develop medicines when its pretty substantially different.
I’m also just generally salty about a bunch of different things at the moment, so that’s coloring it as well.
TonyT
There have been multiple waves of AI hype dating back to the 1950s and LISP.
SecretSquirrel
I would argue all AI is “slop”
Nate
I would argue that AI is not very intelligent with all the mistakes it makes.
ChipBoundary
You’d both be wrong. Images aren’t perfect but AI generally has a very high degree of accuracy, WAY higher than the average human. The average human is very, very, very dumb. They say and do stuff that is inaccurate or incorrect roughly 50% of the time.
SecretSquirrel
I could take a picture of a garage/workshop that is 1000% more accurate than this “slop” on my first try.
Al
Just saw 1 fake product photo (man nailing a board to a bench) and 2 fake garage shots in this Craftsman listing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D41X2FR2
Just reinforces the idea that some brands want to trick people instead of making anything of real substance.
Bonnie
The guy with the pin nailer is just bad product photoshop. Those kind of images long predate AI.
Josephus
It’s cheaper than paying for human models and staging by far I’m sure.
If the company saves a couple thousand on the ad budget and sales don’t drop significantly from the slop they’re going to do this kind of thing. Most people only look at the price.
JoeH
There is a diffent AI garage photo at the bottom of that webpage and its just as bad as the one Stuart called out!
Stuart
And without safety glasses. That’s a huge no-no Craftsman/SBD would never have approved of.
Nathan
Remember when ai was called fuzzy logic?
Meanwhile I bet those aren’t screwdrivers either but handled silver sticks
Bonnie
Fuzzy Logic doesn’t have anything (inherently) to do with AI. It’s a branch of logic and set theory which is useful to AI but so is basically every aspect of discrete math and computer science.
ElectroAtletico
It’s just advertising
Andy
“hey, what time is it?”
“Åß)ê楧”
“Huh.”
Saulac
I don’t trust “A One”.
Jason
I kinda like the dreamlike quality.
KokoTheTalkingApe
Heh. I’ve been called a “tool-shaped thing” a few times.
Mr. C
Ayy-Eye isn’t a product created to solve a problem. It never was meant to.
Current AI is utter junk. It was only created to refine the technology, so that later revisions and developments can be sold off or directly used for its only intended purpose:
“To reduce labor.”
It’s designed to get people to interact with it, to train it, to reinforce it. It’s free real-world development.
That’s why they’re shoveling it down everyone’s throats. It’s on every device and service — phones, Windows, Macs, in email, etc. Just look, there’s a button on the keyboard now. Even Microsoft Office is being renamed to Microsoft Copilot 365.
Macs are enabling it by default during their OS updates. At least they asked you in the past — YES or MAYBE LATER used to be your only options.
Even things that don’t use AI (like weighted test scores and car jump starters) are claimed to be run via AI.
—-
They NEED your data.
They NEED people to use it.
They NEED people to become comfortable with it being everywhere, so that it’s normalized.
And under NO circumstances are you allowed to turn it off or disable it.
All so they can turn it from junk to a pink slip.
Say NO to AI for class solidarity. We are all laborers. Let’s not train our replacement for free.
Chris
This is hilarious. I imagine it wouldn’t be hard at all for craftsman corporate to find real tools in a real workshop to take photos of. So why use AI?
Rog
Because of “corporate efficiency”. It takes 2 minutes to pump out AI crap vs. two months of coordinating a photoshoot at this level.
CMF
Do you remember the 1st gen AI?
When we went to the furniture store and they had fake stereo equipment, TV’s and other bobbles on the consoles…cheap plastic like Halloween masks back in the day.
A bowls with plastic fruits was in some cases more realistic.
That Craftsman wall, if it wasn’t AI generated, I assume would be a set, with some big bucks designer deciding what should go near the screwdrivers, and a minion running around placing things as to what “looks” like a real workshop wall.
So the AI is a bit sloppy, funny to look at the details, but does not bother me.
Stuart
There are others.
It makes no sense to me how you can equate the use of plastic replicas of high-value products in retail environments to AI slop.
Craftsman’s staging is typically very well done. For example:
Sloppy AI depictions are very uncharacteristic for the brand.
Joe E.
Why am I not surprised? Stanley Black & Decker cuts every corner with the Craftsman brand, so why not with advertising.
James+C
I successfully used AI the other day. Our son wanted some new coloring pages and we had a blast feeding Google’s AI image generator all sorts of wacky prompts.
NoDak Farming
I like A.I. At least the publicly available apps. They are fantastic for doing any kind of conversions. It takes just a little practice, to ask it questions the right way, but it can also be very handy for diagnosing equipment problems. AI once diagnosed an electrical issue I was having with a Polaris side-by-side. It saved tons of time, and potentially saved having to haul the machine to a shop. I’ve had AI research an out dated serial number on a hydraulic orbit motor. I was quickly able to identify it as being a high torque/low speed motor, and that was exactly what I needed to know. I’ve also used AI for basic veterinary info on animals from cows to cats.
The main thing is to remember to give AI your expectations. And tell it what sources you want it to research. When researching a specific bovine bacterial disease, I make it clear that I’m looking for info from university studies and agricultural trade magazines. In my mind, AI is a tool that can be used for a great many beneficial things. If nothing else, it can speed up research.
In regard to poor image production, some of that is slop on the part of the user. I’ve created many great images using AI, and many just ok ones. I only use free image production apps, and that is maybe what was used in the above images. With paid subscriptions, you can train your own version of AI. A company art department employee would have the option to show AI multiple pictures of actual tools. And actual existing workshop layouts. And with some trial and error, create some good images that would keep getting better as long as the “training” continued. And there are AI enhanced versions of image editing available now that can be used to perfect an image. Even with traditional computerized image editing, there really is no excuse for a multi million dollar corporation to release sub-par hoax like images.
Btw, I’ve tried several AI apps on my smartphone. They are all decent. For research purposes, I like the usability of Claude best. Download a couple apps, have fun with them. They will save you some time and money someday.
John
Is this from Craftsman itself or from an Amazon reseller? Do you have the link?
Stuart
https://www.amazon.com/CRAFTSMAN-Compressor-Gallon-Oil-Free-Vertical/dp/B0F3HJFVW3/?tag=toolguyd-20
It looks to be a genuine Craftsman product that only recently popped up on Amazon.
John
I’d look at who’s selling it – it’s ToolDirect, and they have other AI images and bad copy on the other products they’re selling: https://www.amazon.com/s?me=A2MYPTR0J8Y49I&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER. This does not appear to be a Craftsman product.
Stuart
Those are all Craftsman and Dewalt products. From what I’ve seen, authorized licensed SBD products are typically distributed via
partnered sellers on Amazon. e.g. https://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-Bluetooth-Wireless-Reduction-Cancelling/dp/B0DM4DSF78/?tag=toolguyd-20 .
Robert
Malwarebytes, which is one of the better anti-virus companies, just passed on in its newsletter that the application security company Imperva has calculated that in 2025 more than half of internet traffic is automated. The increase attributed to AI run bots. You can argue it’s to Malwarebytes and Imperva’s monetary benefit to raise alarm over bots. But it matches what we are seeing in these ads.
Jimmie
We have Facebook’s mucky-mucks saying they want increased AI presence to drive user discourse (eg. they want AI troll bots to post rage-bait to get clicks). We have Reddit where AIs respond to posts made by other AIs. We have YouTube where AIs are being used to (illegally) read stories published on sites like Royal Road.
Traffic-wise, my ‘snort’ daemons have logged automated probes for years.
So it’s probably not surprising that half of all internet traffic is automated in some fashion.
(I guess even I’m responsible for a small percentage of the automated network traffic: I have nightly cron jobs that archive a couple dozen YouTube channels and other sites just in case they were to disappear. And then there are the nightly jobs that backup data to the cloud…)
S
Ok, am I the only one laughing at the underlying joke of an AI image paired with a bold statement of “We Build Quality”?
I guess to be fair, they don’t specify the quality level they build to. Bad quality is still a quantitative amount of quality.
ITCD
Snap-on also did an AI photo recently of an Easter bunny in Snap-on jumpsuit working on a car. It’s on their FB page. It at least got their logo spot-on (perhaps a separate edit?) but the perspectives of the scene are just all out of whack and there’s a wrench laying on the ground that just looks atrocious lol.
I guess this is really where we’re at.
Stuart
Many tool brands used AI for Easter posts on social media, but that’s very different.
ITCD
They also did another post though that used a real rabbit sitting in a tool drawer with some fake grass and of course some carefully-positioned Snap-on tools, on Easter proper. Like…. they clearly had the means (and obviously have the money) to just do a real photo lol. Or could skip the bunny altogether, less than $5 worth of Easter deco from Dollar General along with some tools they already have since they make them and a camera.
eddiesky
Ai I mage apps like Adobe Firefly, allow insertion of images that AI can do like logo and typefaces. But you can better uppermanagement dollars, they are pushing to have programmers get that ironed out.
“AI won’t kill jobs!” Oh, it will displace designers, the creatives and companies built on them. Now every office admin is an agency…at 1/16th the cost!
Stuart: thanks for posting that slop. I hope someone sends this up to Craftsman because… its really bad.
Stuart
They’ve seen it and are looking into it. At this time the AI slop is still live.
Oarman
There’s an entire True Temper website that is just full of Lovecraftian horror AI versions of wheelbarrows. I can’t imagine who is getting paid to authorize these.
Stuart
I removed the link because it looks like a scam or spam site. That’s been a trend, AI-filled impersonations.
Oarman
Ah, that makes more sense, sorry about that. Good thing I didn’t try to buy a freakish three-legged wheelbarrow.
Darkest
Craftsman, for when you have concepts of work to do.
Steven Phillips
This is embarrassing for whomever does it.