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The story
Text on a product image of “Hondashi” posted to Ajinomoto’s official X account came out garbled, apparently the result of AI processing, prompting the company to apologize. On 5ch, some pointed out that “if it’s your own product, just take a normal photo,” while others said “the real problem isn’t the AI use itself, it’s the lack of love [for the product]” — though plenty of cooler reactions also asked whether all this fuss was really necessary over a mere image.
Published 8/22 (Sat) 8:10
ITmedia Business Online
An image posted to Ajinomoto’s official X account showed the product’s label and text warped and distorted, leading the company to issue an apology. At a time when AI use in corporate PR can itself become a liability, how much image processing should companies really be willing to hand over to AI?
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Love matters, man
Makes me wonder why nobody's brought up Ryuji from Bazu Recipe (a popular Japanese home-cooking YouTuber) over this.
Yeah, there really is no respect here — not for their own product, and not for the customers who buy it
A company this trashy deserves to go under
I bet they thought it was just a normal photo touch-up and didn't check closely
There's even a chance they didn't know AI editing was involved at all
What do you use when you need dashi (Japanese soup stock)?
They didn't have it 'drawn'
You say 'just photograph your own product' like it's nothing, but shooting it nicely is actually a real hassle
Get AI to do it and it's done in no time
Now it's 'Ugh, AI again?'
Times are changing fast
The right way to use AI is to let it handle the tedious work humans don't want to do.
The creative parts still carry more value and appreciation when a human comes up with them
Well, it'll probably get better eventually so logos and text render properly.
There's a certain breed of people who think 'if you used AI, it's creative.'
(Should probably be classified as an endangered species soon)
That's just the same anti-AI crowd that's been around since back then, kicking up their usual fuss
Yeah, that's probably it
Bashing something lets you forget about your own problems for a while
Dealing with idiots is rough
Well, X is a nest of idiots anyway, so can't be helped
They never should have apologized
It's like handing water to a fish — it just feeds the frenzy
It's the official account, so you'd think they'd just take an actual photo
Then again, looking at Re: #73 — if all they needed was to slap text onto the same base image, they could've done that in Windows Paint instead of bothering with AI
There was also a theory going around that the iPhone auto-applied AI correction, but it wouldn't come out looking like that, would it?
Zoom in and look at Re: #73
Depends on the model you use
Well, Ajinomoto these days is raking in huge profits as a semiconductor-materials company, so a complaint or two like this is probably barely a blip to them
Ajinomoto's MSG itself is really just a processed sugarcane product anyway
never used any of them once in my life
*not counting home ec class
Ajinomoto especially — the world would be just fine without it
That's the kind of thing you should just write on your own blog
Don't need that stuff
It's just money down the drain
If you click or double-click the photo in this article
you can see the text flanking the 'Hondashi' lettering really is illegible
It's vague, AI-garbled text, but if the AI ever misreads it and ends up generating some other message on its own —
something it really shouldn't be writing — there'd be no taking it back.
Humans have five fingers, but in the AI world you sometimes get six-fingered hands, so using it is fine, just make sure to actually check the output
Big accidents like the Tobu one, caused by a manager's oversight, happen along similar lines
Are you an idiot
If you demand ad QC meet human-error safeguards on par with public transportation,
Hondashi would end up costing over 5,000 yen
Do you have any idea how much that would cost
I really don't get it
They're probably one of those crappy companies pushing AI adoption
The whole 'look how much cheaper this is than booking a photo studio' angle
They did snap a photo of their own product and use that
There's no way some other company's AI could just generate an Ajinomoto product out of nowhere
Background and Key Points
Ajinomoto’s Hondashi brand is a legacy staple — the granulated dashi (bonito/kelp soup stock) launched in 1970, and it commands a huge share of Japan’s instant-dashi market; Ajinomoto itself has been synonymous with MSG-based seasoning in Japan since 1909. That legacy status is precisely why its official corporate X account carries weight: it’s not a random affiliate marketer but the brand’s flagship channel, so an obviously AI-warped product image with illegible label text reads as institutional carelessness rather than a stray marketing slip. The apology followed swiftly, which is standard corporate-Japan crisis practice — apologize fast to contain a bad-optics story before it compounds, even when the underlying harm is minimal.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t “AI good or bad” — nearly everyone agrees AI-assisted image work is fine in principle. The split is over what the error signals: one camp reads garbled text on your own product’s label as evidence nobody checked the output, i.e., a “lack of love” for the product and customers; the other camp treats it as a non-issue blown up by professionally offended X users, and some even argue the apology itself was a mistake because it rewarded the complainers.
What’s likely to be misunderstood by non-Japanese readers is the practical backstory buried in the replies: several posters note Ajinomoto did start from an actual product photo, and one plausible explanation is the product bottle’s curved, hourglass shape naturally distorts straight-on text — meaning this may be an image-editing/upscaling artifact compounding an already awkward source photo, not a wholesale AI-generated fabrication.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Ajinomoto] The Real Issue Behind the ‘Hondashi’ Backlash: Consumers Weren’t Angry About ‘AI Use’ — They Were Angry About the Lack of Love for Their Own Product.”
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