The 2026 Tinglewood Festival took place at Orr PArk. Photo from Tinglewood Festival's Facebook page. by Sophia Cooper, Podcast producer
Many attendees who visited Tinglewood this year felt like there was an abundance of AI art on signage.
On Sept. 12, the annual Tinglewood Festival was held in Orr Park. Admission was free to all who came, and attendees could browse through vendors that sold their art. However, many attendees noted that this year, there was an abundance of art made by AI being used for the signage of individual vendors.
Zoe McPhail, a senior art major at UM, attended this year’s festival and said that many vendors used AI for their signage. “It would be people that had little handmade things, so maybe they were someone that wasn’t very prone to visual art and so they didn’t feel comfortable making their own sign, but it seemed like those were the people who were using it more.”
“AI takes away something that makes human creation very important, which is the time put into it.” – Zoe McPhail
Many people on YikYak expressed disappointment, with one user saying, “I didn’t even visit any booths that clearly used ai. To me, if you wont even be intentional and deliberate about your branding/how you represent yourself, then i doubt you put intentional and/or deliberate thought and choice into your art either.”
“If i wanted to see ai work and pay way too much for it, i could open amazon or redbubble or walmart from the comfort of my own home. having ai art at tinglewood is disrespectful to both actual artists there and to guests. just tacky,” said another user.
Zoe McPhail said “It takes the mean of everything; it just makes something look very average-looking, so people that want to use it are just going to end up with this ‘bland, in the middle’ result. I don’t think it can replace what an actual person can do.”
“It uses a lot of water; it uses energy. It uses people’s time,” McPhail said, “In general, I think [AI is] negative because it makes people not really use the tools that they have at their hand, that they’re very entitled to, as people. They have their own brain, and I think that they should use it because it’s a thing to be proud of.”
McPhail went on, saying, “AI takes away something that makes human creation very important, which is the time put into it. … Things made over a long period of time usually are a lot more thought-provoking.”
We reached out to Tinglewood for their stance on generative AI, but we have yet to hear back.
