Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

This was a popular advertising slogan from the 1970s for cassette recording tapes that Millennials are unlikely to identify-with as they're not going to recognize the marketing campaign.  Nevertheless, if you are a baby boomer you already know that the Memorex brand audio recording tapes claimed to offer such an authentic playback experience that the listener would not be able to differentiate a live performance from an audio recording. 

I still have a soft-sided case of Memorex mix tapes in my pick-up truck that are the industry's contribution to bootleg music recordings.  But I digress.

I'm sharing this anecdote as further evidence that nowadays you cannot expect that everything you see on the interweb or social media is real.  It may very well be an AI fake.

For instance this advertisement for the Spacematic Food Spinner 2000, boldly marketed by the Spacematic Corporation as The Futuristic Food Preparation Center for Today's Space Age Family!   According to the ad it is an all-in-one tabletop unit that can spin, mix, blend, heat and serve an entire meal visualized thru a See-Through Dome.  It comes equipped with a One-Touch Control Panel and a Revolutionary Gyro-Mix Feature that cooks food evenly in individual wedges.  All of this George Jetson Family space-age technology is yours for only $19.95 (plus tax).

Pretty cool, eh?

Nope.  It's all made-up.  It never existed.

This is a clever piece of AI-generated art that perfectly captures the atomic-age aesthetic of the late 1950s or early 1960s.

How to tell?  

The text lacks any specific details ordinarily included in a vintage Sears or Montgomery Ward advertisement. The capsule structure behind the tidy nuclear family looks like a spaceship instead of a suburban kitchen.  The food in the spinner is indistinct and doesn't include any jello.  Finally there's the RetroFuture Vault watermark in the bottom right corner.

It's certainly entertaining; but you won't find one on EBay....