Did you read tfa?
>I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image.
So spot on!
And, with that Paint drawing, it'll probably illustrate what you mean and at the same time we establish some kind of trust; I'll know this is not just mere AI slop.
If you read the summary/abstract and nope out because there's nothing interesting or insightful, whatever, but if you were interested in subject of the article and its assertions and you nope out because of an AI writing tic, that's just toolish.
Interesting because I'm seeing tons of YouTube channels using AI generated stick figure animations with AI voice overlays to trick people into thinking it's not AI generated.
The problem comes when the imagery is placed as a false value signal. If it is designed to send a signal of "this content took a lot of effort to produce because an image that would be hard for a human to make is attached to it" - but the image was generated without that effort, then it's basically a lie and insult to the reader.
If it's only decoration, leave it out. No matter whether AI, stock or custom made.
If you're creating complete slop, no one is reading your article in the first place. Full stop. The image doesn't matter.
As with anything, it's about what you created, and creating at all - not the tool you used to create.
The snobs and haters will continue to b!tch and moan. They always have. Always will. Your two cent elitist opinions are still only worth two cents.
But you didn't create anything in this case. Not the images at least. Which then casts doubt on the rest of the writing in said blog post.
The author say they’d prefer Microsoft paint images but actually I don’t think this is true of most audiences. People have the ability to make terrible paint images for decades and they’ve never caught anyone’s attention in a positive way, it’s not going to start now.
OP’s blog of white text on black background will be forgotten quickly. If I visit it again, I will have no recollection of ever having visited. I’m not saying they need to use AI, but to oppose AI with the opposite —- minimal design or even intentionally crappy design — will not have the intended effect of communicating “this is quality human-authored content”, it will just be forgettable.
Citation needed for this one. It could be because people don't do it very much? I think a very good piece of writing coupled with a crappy but intentional MS Paint piece could be very attention catching and memorable.
> OP’s blog of white text on black background will be forgotten quickly.
I actually get annoyed with the tech crowd always complaining at seemingly the slightest bit of flair or fun added to any blog. To each their own, of course. I've seen some really slick minimal blogs but I do like it when layouts gets creative--gawdy, even!--, so long as I can read the text. And you can always use reader mode.
Often, you find ugliness and rule breaking as a backlash to an overly polished status quo. AM radio rock gave way to punk, hair metal gave way to grunge, and EDM gave way to hyperpop. The most iconic album cover of 2024 was the word "brat" badly rendered on a plain, garish background.[2]
[1] https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-s...
There was zero depth to it.
What about stock photography, IMO as much as I personally hate "overcooked" AI-generated imagery, it doesn't annoy me that much more than stock photography does on blogs.
I do however use it as a gauge of "if the images are generated by AI, how much of the text content is?" though, so...
Eventually it'll be perfectly normal to use AI-generated content (and use AI to summarize it), and nobody will bat an eye.
There is negative value in wasting vertical space to put an irrelevant prompt output in an article. It makes me question the sanity of whoever is doing this stuff. Doubly so if they actually think they dumped a bunch of AI-generated text on the internet just for people to AI-summarize it. Like... what are they DOING?
Image is content , ai can generate art level images and an obvious slop . To read or or not is absolutely up to reader , not someone’s entitled opinion .
She’s had to figure out where the line is though. She tried using ElevenLabs to dictate her scripts, thinking it’d make things more convenient for her fans, and that lost her subscribers because they seemingly disliked the more obvious use of AI.
As much as I like to be on the anti AI bandwagon, for which there are plenty of good reasons. Some people use the tool (like any tool) well, to compliment their work.
Eg. this author uses great images to accompany their articles (except for one which is obviously AI), its hard to know if they are real or not but they support the text. https://tuhat.net/@jesusrrodriguez/
Regarding businesses, I think the use of bland stock images made most corporate sites awful years ago. AI is just accelerating and making it easier for the rest of us to create the lazy heartless "content" that has been so common from the corporate world.
I think it is like CGI in movies, in the beginning it was often obvious and jarring. Over time as it gets better the obviousness of AI images will be much harder to spot and they will be common without being noteworthy.
What a ridiculous conclusion jump.
It's the complete opposite of that. I prefer human things, human interaction, with human beings involved, which in some way reflect the human experience.
A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value.
I'm thinking quite a few chess nerds could be interested - depending on how the game develops.
The latter, of course, which is why that's what I own. Aside from that, this is an absurd and grossly dishonest analogy -- that's not at all the choice here.
Some of the most fascinating games are between Stockfish and Leela. People who don't know this know nothing about chess.
Some of the most stupid things I have ever read are from those suffering from radical anti-AI hysteria, and it is becoming a primary means by which I judge people's intelligence. ("radical" is a key word here -- there are numerous legitimate reasons to be critical of numerous aspects of the AI boom.)
I won't respond further.
Before that, when there was a photo in the article it was a frame from a footage from the event or the photo, or the schematic of the device the article was about or something. Something relevant to that particular piece of information.
But then everything became click-bait factory illustrated by images that fit the mood.
AI images don't make it worse. Don't make it better. But they might if they get better at relevant infographics. For now they aren't good enough because they rely on a human for understanding of what are they to depic and humans often don't care enough.
Lazy use of stock imagery is a problem.
young people will get used to GenAI as a style and it'll become the new normal.
you can see it in the flowery AI writing that's proliferating into email and docs.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g...
The whole thing was packed with information and completely worthless. I’m 100% convinced that before too long we’re all going to be allergic to this low effort crap, and craving actual people with an actual point of view.
The biggest thing, for me, is provenance. I sometimes get amazed at how people just grab any image they want, and slap it into their blog. There's a whole class of scammer, that goes around spamming fake "we're gonna sue you" letters to sites (I have gotten them, for images that I know are completely clear of obligation). If the image really was ripped off, then they won't be scammers, sending the emails.
I'd rather someone use an AI-generated image; especially if it's just "window dressing," than they put themselves into legal jeopardy, by pirating images.
As time goes on they'll be harder to spot. We're going to need a new way of determining quality as such obvious signals have a limited shelf-life.
Not that AI generated images are always bad. They are perfectly acceptable if used for (not an exclusive list): small separators between sections in large blog posts, or other decorative features; used to illustrate things for which no real image exists (as long as it's labelled as an impression/reconstruction/etc.). They're only really a negative signal if they're used dishonestly, to claim something existed when it didn't, etc.
The problem is, there are also AI generated MS Paint drawings that you can't tell is AI. We are only noticing the AI images that are in an 'AI' style. The AI tools allow you to make images you can't tell is AI.
The actual content is written by me. If there are any code samples that were AI-generated, I'll call them out as such.
Yes, this is the exact kind of AI image usage that discourages me (and presumably this post's author) from reading the rest of it.
But please keep it coming. I need to spend less time idly browsing and the growing preponderance of AI is helping push me in the direction I want to go. My time spent on “social media” has dropped significantly over recent months.
And if you generated a pic I suppose you also generated your post, so I'm way less likely to pay attention to it.
Sigh
People already tried to cancel others because they didn't agree with them. Eventually the most of people came to a conclusion that it is no good. I think at least that the most did just that. So I'm proposing another solution, just ignore what you don't like. No one is forcing you to read a blog that uses AI generated images or uses a wrong color for its background.
That's a wild stance. If you don't like what someone else made - AI assisted or not - you can just move on and not purposefully set out to publicly ruin them...
It will be wrong sometimes, but mostly it's not. OP has a point.
I’m quite happy without all the slop.
I think the deception involved here signals something thats been wrong and accepted with humans who have been held accountable for a while too: - humans used to have other humans impersonate them and send messages on their behalf in social media - secretaries or VAs would send messages as though its the person (via email or other)
Those behaviors, deceptive and lies, are insults to you at the expense of the gain of the liar.
Decoration and ornament have served always to signal extra effort that went into something, signaling that it is considered important and valued by the maker/owner. But people also have incentive to do cheaper mimicry. And then the viewers have incentive to distinguish real from fake to see where true, scarce effort went. These dynamics are crucial for understanding the feelings and emotions around AI.
Communicating low effort used to be insulting to the consumer, yet now I'm expected to praise it? I understand that we're not talking about monetary exchange, but we're still talking about my finite time in this world, time that I could've been investing reading or looking at something else.
> most people make garbage,
That's fine, that's what sets truly great art apart. Not that it terribly matters, more care and ingenuity goes into even some shit instagram thirst trap picture than every clanker slop ever output combined.
These are lifeless things. Their only value is by referencing human creation which they debase with their very existence.
If you push AI-generated content to make stuff look fancy, it's a bad idea. If you generate stuff to communicate more clearly, I don't see a problem.
softwaredoug•39m ago
It’s a turnoff immediately if someone shares what their agent wrote.
It also has happened a few times they contain a fair number of misrepresentations and mistakes.
econ•13m ago
You can put it inline or at the end of the article: references, citations, further reading, "AI".
(It might also be the only way to stop training models on their own output)