What's not wrong with this picture?

At least it meant well.

An AI-generated picture speaks a thousand words. Almost all of them gibberish.

The threat of 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico has subsided, for now, but creeping stupidity has not.

I’m having trouble getting past this viral poster that spread across social media in the days leading up to Trump’s promised Tariff Tuesday.

It’s like one of those illustrations for kids where you’re supposed to circle all the things that are wrong with it.

At first glance — yay! Canadians and Mexicans uniting in solidarity against a genuine threat to their prosperity.

At second glance — what a steaming pile of AI-generated sludge.

A poster with so little to say, it says it twice.

A poster that can’t seem to think of any Canadian products that aren’t maple syrup — and which has trouble spelling “maple syrup.”

Is the bottle on the right — “Canaidan Mapesy” — meant to be whiskey?

Also, is this supposed to be the way that Canada saves itself from tariff-induced catastrophe, by buying more maple — excuse me, mapude — syrup? There are only so many pancakes we can eat.

And check out that, um, quintessential Canadian skyline.

In fairness, this could be any number of office buildings in downtown Ottawa.

Meanwhile, in Mexico…

A flag-adorned bottle of, presumably, tequila, the sort of overpriced souvenir you’d spend your final pesos on at the Cancun airport.

The message here, obviously: Save the Mexican economy! Stop buying American tequila!

Buy this creepy-faced craft instead.

and start eating more of … these.

Buying random crafts and foods from Canada and Mexico is not going to save us.

But what’s really troubling here is that the generative AI algorithms that have taken over the Internet are apparently so poorly trained on our non-American cultures that they can’t come up with anything that’s typically Canadian or Mexican beyond a few stereotypes.

If they scoured Reddit threads and sites like this that have proliferated up over the last week, they may get some better ideas.

I asked Copilot to make a new poster including “food, drink, automobiles, clothing and more” artifacts from our two cultures. The result is even more atrocious spelling and nonsensical slop — but the hybrid flag is a nice touch.

I then put the same prompt into ChatGPT. More nonsense. Syrup is mentioned (and misspelled) six times!

There is also what appears to be an avocado beer. Such a great idea for a product that unites our two besieged nations!

Alas, there already is such a thing as avocado ale, and it’s — you guessed it — American.