Quick Take
Following a wave of online criticism and one-star reviews from locals, The Salty Otter Sports Grill replaced its colorful, AI-assisted otter logo with a stark black-and-white design. Owner Rachael Smith, who said she refined the image herself and invested everything into the downtown Santa Cruz business after selling her Monterey restaurant, said the backlash has left her discouraged.
The restaurant industry is a tough business, especially in the first year. But just a few months after opening The Salty Otter in downtown Santa Cruz, owner Rachael Smith faced an unusual challenge. She said her dreams were dashed not by economic realities, but a controversy over how she created the bar’s smiling otter logo with the aid of generative artificial intelligence.
“A lifelong dream has been crushed by a lot of locals,” Smith wrote in a post on The Salty Otter’s Instagram page on Friday. “I have received one-star reviews from people saying they want 99 Bottles back and that I should have paid for a local artist to do the logo instead of a crappy AI logo.”
After months of criticism, Smith admitted defeat. Last week, she ditched the colorful river otter on a surfboard design she made with AI, and replaced it with a new look: simple white text on a plain black background. This was in response to critics who she said plagued her business with negative comments and online reviews about the logo, not the food or ambiance.
Smith, who said she has 26 years of experience in computer graphic art, as well as 34 years in the restaurant industry, admitted she used AI to create the initial design, then colored and finalized the logo herself. “This is not a logo where someone just keyed in some words and pressed a button,” she said. She chose a river otter, rather than a native sea otter, to symbolize her own journey from outside the area to the coast, where she has lived for several years.
Even after she wrote a clarification about the image’s design and origin on The Salty Otter’s website, the negative comments persisted. “All of my hard work is being erased,” the post said.
In a one-star review on The Salty Otter’s Google review page, the writer equates poor logo design with bad food. “Their logo is AI-generated, if they can’t make the effort to create a logo they definitely won’t make the effort to cook good food,” it said of the Walnut Avenue spot. The restaurant has an overall rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars. Smith asked Google and Yelp to remove other negative reviews posted over the past week.
The name is a reference to The Salty Seal, a restaurant she opened on Cannery Row in Monterey. She and her business partner sold The Salty Seal last summer, and Smith told Lookout she poured everything from her portion of the proceeds into The Salty Otter. “I have spent my life working two to three jobs to earn what I have,” she said. “I put everything I had into this business.”
This is the second time this year that a piece of art has been accused of being created by AI and drawn criticism in Santa Cruz online circles. In January, users of the online community Reddit accused Good Times weekly newspaper of using an AI-generated image on its cover, drawing hundreds of comments. Joshua Logan, who goes by the handle OKCourage1841, wrote the cover story on comic book shop Atlantis Fantasyworld and created the cover design. He explained in a comment that he had used AI as a graphic design tool for many years.
But for Smith, the hostile reactions to her otter have discouraged her from creating art — logo or otherwise. “To all the haters out there … I’ll never create anything else in this town again,” she wrote.
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