Was it over the line or an own goal? Bedford Borough Council was criticised last week for using an AI-generated image to promote a summer campaign supporting town centre restaurants.
I want to be clear, I support the initiative. I’m with them on the ambition to drive footfall and get more people eating out in Bedford.
But the way the council chose to promote the campaign, with an AI-generated image, was a miss, not just aesthetically, but strategically.
As we reported on Friday (22 May), the council shared the AI-generated image on social media to promote its planned “Bedford Restaurants World Cup”, inviting restaurants in the former BID area to take part.
Read: Bedford Borough Council criticised over AI-generated restaurant campaign image
The reaction was swift, with residents and local creatives calling it “depressing” and “cheapening”, and Bedford’s Circus of Illustration describing it as “disheartening” while pointing out concerns around homogenisation, copyright, and creatives losing work.
The council’s defence was that AI images were used “sparingly”, that there was no obvious photo showing the mix of Bedford or football icons depicted, and that the campaign would run “at no cost to the taxpayers”, meaning there was no budget to commission bespoke local artwork.
They have set this up as if the only two options are “pay a lot” or “use AI”.
That is not true.
AI reality
Let’s also be realistic. AI is not going anywhere, and if used responsibly, it can be a useful tool.
Progress Publishing, which produces the Bedford Independent and the Bedford Clanger, uses AI too, but only when needed to overcome limited resources, and only in ways that support our work rather than replace it.
Read: The Bedford Clanger at 15: Celebrating a decade and a half of local art, culture, shopping and more
We do not use it to fake reality, nor as a shortcut when the right answer is to pick up a camera, commission a local creative, or do the job properly.
The issue here is not that AI exists. It is the choices people make with it, and what that signals about value, standards and care.
If you are a council trying to promote local businesses, you should be making Bedford look real, vivid, and worth visiting.
Read: Our ethics and editorial policy
The simplest answer was staring them in the face. Use Bedford.
Better options
Use historical photographs of actual restaurants, actual food, actual streets, and actual people. Build a campaign around real faces and real businesses.
Search: Bedfordshire Archives
If you really must use a ‘World Cup’ concept, you can still do it with photography and design. It would then have looked better and felt more authentic instantly.
And if the council wanted an illustration-led campaign, it could have picked up the phone.
A quick call to Bedford’s newspapers, the Bedford Independent and the Bedford Clanger, would have sparked a hive of activity.
Between our networks, local photographers, designers, illustrators, venues, and business owners, a collaborative campaign could have been built at little to no cost to the taxpayer, with the potential to reach far more people.
Even if there was a small cost, private business could have covered it, and if they couldn’t, what taxpayer would object to money being spent promoting Bedford businesses and the local economy, rather than sending attention, and arguably value, to tech firms overseas?
False choice
The council’s argument relies on a neat line: the campaign is “at no cost to the taxpayers”, so there is no budget for local creatives.
But “no budget” is not the same as “no options”. There are other practical routes that could have been taken instead.
Use real photography
A photography-first campaign does not need a big budget. Use in-house comms time, ask restaurants to contribute images, run a quick community photo call, then wrap it all in simple, consistent branding.
If you are worried about favouritism, use archive images that represent Bedford without promoting one venue, whether that’s a well-known town centre scene, a past celebration, or a historic restaurant image from the Bedfordshire Archives that still conveys the spirit of Bedford.
Use licensed images properly
If you genuinely cannot source something locally, use properly licensed stock imagery with clear rights and provenance.
There are reputable libraries where images are free to use with attribution, and paid options that still cost far less than the reputational harm of computer-generated visuals that look synthetic or raise copyright questions.
Commission locally, or run a fair creative call
You do not need a huge bespoke commission to do this properly. A small paid brief to a local illustrator or designer for a hero image or a set of icons could be reused across the entire campaign.
If the budget really is tight, the council can still invite local creatives to contribute, but it must do it fairly: clear terms, clear credit, and no “for exposure” nonsense. If you want professional output, respect professional work.
Work with Bedford College
There are budding and brilliant creatives right next door to Borough Hall who would relish a real-world brief, and could build coursework and portfolio projects around it.
Progress Publishing has worked with Bedford College creatives for years, and many of the designers we have used have gone on to bigger and better things.
If the council is serious about supporting the local economy, this is one of the easiest ways to invest in Bedford talent and keep value in the borough.
Read: Bedford College colour coders commended in Creative Conscience Awards
Partnering with local media
To me, having sat on both the newspaper and marketing side of the fence in my time, this is an obvious one.
As I mentioned previously, the Bedford Independent and the Bedford Clanger already promote local independents day in, day out, and we sit at the centre of a network of photographers, designers, illustrators, venues and business owners.
A quick phone call would have immediately expanded the council’s own resources, with people chipping in because they would understand the end goal: a campaign for Bedford, built by Bedford, for the benefit of Bedford businesses.
It would have brought reach, trust and external support, without the council having to do everything alone or pay through the nose.
Budget reality
This is also a message for the councillors setting the budget.
It is always easy to win the argument that “nice to haves” must be cut to protect statutory services. But blindly stripping back marketing and communications, for example, is a false economy.
You might get a short-term saving, but you lose the long-term value of building pride, footfall, spend and investment in the borough.
Yes, Bedford Borough Council’s budget has a massive hole, but if Bedford wants long-term financial success, it needs a stronger local economy.
Read: Independent panel raises alarm over pace of Bedford council recovery plan
The more people who visit, open businesses here, move here, and spend money here, the better those statutory services you are worried about today will be looked after tomorrow.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing for an army of communications professionals on inflated salaries or haphazard spending.
I’m arguing for sensible, targeted campaign budgets that put money into the hands of local businesses and local creatives, because that is taxpayer money spent responsibly, and with a strong ROI.
I’d argue that very few Bedford Borough taxpayers (and only the obvious ones) would disagree with that, so long as Bedford money is being spent in Bedford.
It’s not “just a picture”
Some will shrug and say, “all this fuss for the sake of a picture”, but it’s not as black and white as that.
There’s another side to this that gets lost when we talk about AI purely as a tool.
On Saturday at Beerfly’s Kleine Fest, I met Cameron Stuart, a creative who was sat with a traditional typewriter, writing bespoke poems on the spot, off the top of his head, for strangers who stopped to watch.
We ended up talking about the encroachment of AI, and he said something that’s stayed with me: “What I do comes from two human beings having a conversation, and the result is not online until someone takes a photo of it and shares it on social media.
“Creativity is community making. Someone appreciated the interaction of connecting with a stranger for the sake of creativity… someone is listening with human ears.
“AI can’t do that. It’ll just use custom sets and things it has gobbled up from others to do that.”
He’s right. The value isn’t only the final product, it’s the exchange. The small moment of humans collaborating together. A shared laugh, surprise, or memory being moulded into something unique and full of emotion.
And that’s why this matters for Bedford.
If a council campaign is meant to get people out into town, spending time, spending money, being part of the place, then it makes no sense to lean on visuals that feel synthetic and detached from real human connection.
You can also see the long-term damage from the use of Generative AI in the way younger creatives talk about their future.
One participant in an Association of Illustrators survey, quoted in the Brave New World? report, put it plainly.
‘I feel a huge sense of dread knowing AI generators are everywhere. It’s wrecked my morale as a new graduate trying to start out,’ they said.
That is not a debate about aesthetics or convenience; that is a clear warning sign that creatives are no longer confident there is a point to their talent.
If talented young people start wondering whether it is even worth entering the creative industries, we do not just lose a few commissions.
We lose the next generation of Bedford’s designers, illustrators, photographers and makers.
This is not just depressingly sad, but also a sign of a catastrophic change in how humans express themselves, and not just with our daily lives or restaurant campaigns, but also our philosophy and what it means to be human.
This is why the council’s “no cost to the taxpayer” framing is too narrow. Public bodies do not just spend money.
They shape local economies and societies by whom they choose to work with and who they choose to ignore.
If you are promoting Bedford businesses, it makes no sense to do it in a way that leaves Bedford’s creative community feeling dismissed.
Keep it local
Every council decision signals what it values.
If you are trying to boost Bedford’s economy, you should be boosting Bedford’s economy. That includes the creative community that helps sell Bedford to itself and to everyone else.
A restaurant campaign should make your mouth water. It should make you want to go into town. It should make businesses feel proud to be part of it.
A synthetic image that locals instantly spot as AI does the opposite. It weakens the message and alienates the very community the council should be working with.
If the council wants to rebuild trust on this, the next step is simple.
Commit to using real people as the default for place-based campaigns, and commit to working with local creatives, local students, and local media when illustration or design is needed.
This is not about being anti-technology; it is about being pro-Bedford.
Bedford’s businesses deserve a campaign that looks like Bedford, and Bedford’s creative community deserves to be part of the solution.
