Germany has AI "art" on a stamp.

A few days ago, I was ordering stamps for my postage needs (or, to be more concise, for the company's postage needs). Among those was a bunch of 1.80 € stamps showing a submarine in the Mariana Trench. Okay, well, the topic was "human as explorers", there was nothing appropriately historical (first choice) or blatantly green and liberal political (second choice), so I went for those.

Without, unfortunately, reading the full description first. Said description tells you who designed the stamp, who made the artwork, and where it was printed - details I usually don't need to know. In this case, though, the artwork was by DALL-E... which is a generative AI.

Have I ranted about the rampant use of AI here already? I think not. Well, imagine a long rant about the incessant use of AI by what seems like everybody these days, from answering simple question a normal search engine could have easily answered, to photo transformation into art in the style of an artist who never consented to their work being used as training material, to having it write up shopping lists and simple emails and whatnot, all the while using gigantic amounts of energy and water. The TL;DR: I can see the uses of machine learning, and I have very much benefitted from using LLMs as translation aids for reading papers in languages I do not read well on my own, but I am very, very suspicious regarding almost all other uses, and especially generative things. (Yes, I also am aware that I might be overdoing it a tad, but at least when it comes to using generative AI for one's own personal amusement, I am out.)

Consequently, when the stamps arrived and I read the small print on them which goes something something interpreted by an AI, I was not amused. At all.

Stamps were always something where some designer got to have a really nice exposure (and hopefully also a really nice wad of cash). They were a glimpse into current design trends, and into interpretations of history, or nice photography. They were a means to highlight activists, scientist, explorers, politicians, architects; of historical events larger and smaller, of places both built and natural.

I am still rather livid about this. I am curating the stamps I use, and now it seems I also have to pay attention not to end up with AI slop. Gaaah. Seems like it's time for an enraged (yet still polite) letter to the post.

(I sent the offending stamps back and ordered others at the same value, by the way. With an honest photograph of a politician who was strongly engaged for social stuff.)