Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
Reach more readers from Eastham to Provincetown.
Get the word out. Place an ad.
The Provincetown Independent
Your subscription supports real community journalism.
Read local. Subscribe now!
By
PROVINCETOWN — As in most years, last week’s Carnival parade on Aug. 20 marked the summer’s climax, and the whole town seemed to spill out onto the streets for an all-day dance party.
What was different this time was the number of Carnival-themed shirts, posters, and float decorations seemingly made not by humans but by A.I. bots.
The Art’s Dune Tour’s float, for one, featured a large A.I.-generated image of an old-fashioned four-door car driving through a desert landscape. Owner Rob Costa said that he made the image with ChatGPT in February to commemorate the company’s 80th anniversary.
“It came up with that, and I kind of liked it, so I turned it into a sign,” said Costa, who added that he also sold T-shirts with the image on it this summer. At the same time, he said he’s “not really comfortable with the A.I. thing.
“The dunes are about artists and writers,” said Costa. “That’s why the A.I. is not really appealing to us.” In the future, he said, he’ll go back to relying on artists who are friends and family for his graphic design needs.
Costa’s ambivalence reflects a simmering debate in town among artists and business owners about the use of the evolving technology in a place that has long welcomed and inspired artists — and whether to eschew it altogether.
A Certain Style
Rebecca Orchant, a writer and the co-owner of the sandwich shop Pop+Dutch and the Ladyslipper cocktail bar, said that she’s been having conversations about the merits of using A.I. in Provincetown with everyone in her life since A.I.-generated images started proliferating this summer.
Businesses using A.I.-generated images in a town full of creatives has been “really devastating and disappointing,” she said, adding that she’s heeding a growing call “not to be polite and be more vocal” about calling out businesses for using A.I.-generated images here.
Josiah Mayo, a commercial fisherman who also runs the Cape Codder Guest House, is part of that groundswell. He objects to using A.I.-generated images both because of the environmental effects, which include vast amounts of water used to cool data centers, and because of its aesthetic properties, he said. “If it washes over the coolest town that we know of,” Mayo said, “that’s a huge loss.”
Rachael Brister, executive director of the Provincetown Business Guild (PBG), said that she does not fault small businesses in town for using A.I. tools to promote their menus, specials, and sales, especially because many don’t have marketing budgets.
Nonetheless, Brister said that the PBG does not use A.I. for its graphics. “We feel very strongly about paying artists, employing artists, employing graphic designers,” she said.
Leading A.I. models by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have progressed so quickly in the last few years that it has become difficult to distinguish whether an image or video is made by humans or chatbots, according to M.I.T. Media Lab researcher Saetbyeol LeeYouk.
Comments on social media have accused the Provincetown Tourism Dept. of posting A.I.-generated images online, according to Tourism Director Nina Cantor, even though her department does not use A.I. in its photos or graphics. Cantor said her office is planning to add a notice to future posts to say their photos are not A.I.-generated.
“A.I. has a certain style,” said LeeYouk: it tends to depict unnaturally unblemished humans in front of similarly sleek background images. But “A.I. companies are really pushing themselves to resolve this,” she said. She thinks the quirks in A.I.-generated images may go away within a few months.
Tale of 2 T-Shirt Shops
Joey Holman, owner of the Old Baby, a shop in the West End, views A.I. as a “cheap and easy” technology that relies on stealing artists’ intellectual property while degrading the environment to create images.
Schuyler Brown, CEO of Seaplane Shirts, which has a Provincetown shop across from Marine Specialties, believes that A.I. is a “gift” that has allowed him to work faster, make hundreds of new designs, and imagine the possibility of running a store without employees.
The two men’s clothing stores are a quarter of a mile away from each other on Commercial Street, but their views represent polar opposite sides of the debate over A.I. use.
“I don’t want shortcuts,” said Holman. “I don’t want fast and thoughtless and generic. Nothing about what I want to see in my shop or in Provincetown is aligned with generative A.I.”
While Holman said he had experimented with earlier versions of ChatGPT when it was a “party trick,” he deleted it after he began to see it “blatantly copying” from other artists without giving them credit or payment or asking permission.
Several companies, including the New York Times, have filed lawsuits against OpenAI for copyright infringement, arguing that the technology company’s chatbots were trained with its intellectual property.
This past May, Holman designed a T-shirt that reads “Artificial Intimacy” in big green letters on the front. It has a short manifesto on the back that skewers the “tech clowns who are running the world” and concludes, “Don’t have sex with people who use Chat GPT.”
The shirt has been a hit even among patrons who work for A.I. companies who come to his store, according to Holman.
“It feels like missing the point of this entire place to champion something that is going to be responsible for the loss of so many jobs and the stealing of so many people’s intellectual property,” he said. He’s in the early stages of planning a “pro-human art” rally in town next year.
Six blocks down Commercial Street, Schuyler Brown described the virtues of working with chatbots as part of his creative process.
Instead of “putting my head in the sand,” Brown said, he was an early adopter of A.I., and he has since used the technology to create designs that “nobody could come up with.” One example: a set of prints that use lines from the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval codex written in a language no one can translate. He’s printed four shirts from those A.I.-generated designs.
While he had previously worked for “the better part of a year with a classic graphic designer” to design a shirt’s “repeat” — the way a shirt’s motif is arranged on the fabric — he found that his A.I. companion laid it all out perfectly, and “it did it with a single command,” said Brown.
Brown said he pays $20 a month to both OpenAI and Anthropic to access upgraded versions of their models. “I am a graphic designer,” he said, “but just a more powerful one because of some of these tools.”
That doesn’t mean that Brown is immune to A.I. slop. On Aug. 11, he posted a job ad with an accompanying A.I.-generated image on social media. The photo-realistic image featured a man beckoning a couple into the Seaplane store on Commercial Street next to the Lancy mansion. The man had six fingers on his right hand and an extra arm coming out of his torso.
In an Aug. 12 interview with the Independent, Brown acknowledged that A.I. “obviously makes mistakes” but said that he still feels it’s a positive development since it has “shifted the power much more into the producer’s hands.”
He said he is currently working with ChatGPT to imagine a store that can run without employees.
“You’ve got to direct it,” said Brown. But “to fight it is a mistake.”
At Town Hall
Assistant Town Administrator Dan Riviello said the town has been cautious so far about adopting A.I., but he believes that “there’s going to be a role for it in town government, especially for efficiency purposes.”
The town’s interim guidance to all employees in early July said they may use A.I. to assist in drafting, summarizing, transcription, and research, according to Riviello, but employees were warned not to put any sensitive, nonpublic information into a chat with an A.I. model.
The town does not have a contract with any A.I. provider, but that could change soon, according to Riviello. Massachusetts became the first state in the country to offer ChatGPT to all employees in the executive branch in February.
“It’s never going to replace us needing to do our own due diligence and vet all information before it goes anywhere,” said Riviello. But A.I. may provide a “first layer of customer service in a quicker, more efficient, more productive way,” he said.
Riviello said he designed a chatbot using material from the town’s publications, bylaws, and charter and that it has been available on the town website for the last year and a half. Over the last 12-months, he said, people have used the chatbot more than 1,130 times.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Filed Under: Economy, Featured, News
Find the Indie on newsstands!
Sign up for our free weekly newsletter here »
By
By
By
By
By
By
By
See more Arts & Minds »
By
By
By
By
By
See more Inner Voices »
Click to view the Indie’s first Photo Annual featuring winners of our photo contest.
© 2026 The Provincetown Independent, all rights reserved.
terms of service
