Oakland First Fridays director grateful for debate sparked by AI-generated flyer

But she probably won’t publish AI-generated content in the future

3:08 PM PDT on April 2, 2025

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Venessa McGhee, festival director for Oakland First Fridays, “had no idea” the arts and culture organization’s AI-generated flyer was “going to hit the fan the way it did,” she told Gazetteer SF.

As we reported on Tuesday, Oakland First Fridays posted an AI-generated flyer promoting its upcoming April 4 event, but the backlash was swift. Some took issue with an organization dedicated to celebrating arts and culture using AI for its marketing materials.

On Wednesday, McGhee told Gazetteer there was no malicious intent behind the decision to use AI.

“We do all our graphic work in house,” she said. “It was us just trying something different.”

Still, given the backlash that transpired on social media and via emails to Oakland First Fridays, McGhee said the organization might refrain from using AI- generated content in the future.

“I can’t say we won’t use it ever again,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we won’t consult it for concept ideas or inspiration but would we use something partially AI-generated again? Probably not.”

These days, there are a number of easy-to-use tools out there to create AI-generated images, like OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 and Apple’s Playground for iOS. Despite some folks taking issue with the use of AI, McGhee said she’s grateful that it “sparked conversation and brought awareness to how people feel about the use of AI.”

Internally, she said, the response to the flyer got the organization thinking about more ways to support artists. While Oakland First Fridays doesn’t have the budget to pay artists for design work, McGhee said, organizers have discussed ways to further showcase more local artists on social media and in other ways.

“Hopefully we can create infrastructure to allow artists to submit work that we can then feature and bring awareness to,” she said. “I always say, ‘never underestimate the value of a share.’ If we can’t financially support you we would at least like to get you in front of eyes.”