11 ms·
AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
- ngvrnd 2mo agoOK.
- thridycom 1mo ago[dead]
- cyanclouds 2mo agoCorrection: Whenever you can tell it's an AI image, it discourages you
- softwaredoug 2mo agoThere’s also a class of “detailed agent written technical blog” that’s you can just scan and get the shape that it’s long paragraphs, tables of statistics, and dry LLM writing. You notice the blog has one or more such posts a day. 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 2mo agoOn the other hand, it could be great to have collapsed sections clearly marked as LLM with the name of the model, the prompt, the assumption the author somewhat checked it and didn't use it to write the article. 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)
- ipsento606 2mo agoAre you speaking in the abstract, or would you, personally, like that when reading a blog? Speaking for myself, I have absolutely no interest in reading anything written by an LLM that I didn't prompt myself, under really any circumstances I can think of.
- econ 2mo agoYou are thinking of something nice to have. At least half the idea here is that it would be nice not to have something. Usually there are many buttons and links one wouldn't click on. If authors can't resist having chunks of copy paste slop in the middle of their article they can do it in a way I don't have to see it. They also get a fair opportunity to impress me with a prompt that looks interesting enough. And they get to distance themselves from the idea that copying [say] a Wikipedia article into a blog posting is the same as writing something.
- palmotea 2mo ago> Are you speaking in the abstract, or would you, personally, like that when reading a blog? It's better than the current status quo, where people post LLM writing without attributing it to the LLM, hoping you'll get tricked into reading. At least if it's labeled like the GP describes, you know what you're getting and can make your own decision. On the other hand: > (It might also be the only way to stop training models on their own output) On the other hand, I think it's a moral imperative to make it so the models train on their own output. I have absolutely no interest in giving them clean input data. After reading about how ISBNdb is helping them destroy old pre-LLM books for input, I totally think someone who does not have small children should start creating print-on-demand forgeries of such books (with the same ISBN numbers) filled with the most garbage-quality LLM text possible.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoI don't mind it for footnote/reference-book type material, where you want to have some information available for the curious but 99% of your readers won't care. A few dense paragraphs about a database implementation that's ancillary to a story about the content of the database, for example; a small percentage of readers might want to reimplement or host A Thing locally and it could be helpful to know that it's this type of database with that number of tables and takes up x gigbytes on disk etc.
- nilsherzig 2mo agoI don't see a lot of value in that, but one could supply a lot of semi structured extra information which could aid the readers LLM to answer questions the reader might have with more accuracy / factual grounding.
- causal 2mo agoIt's a turn off both because you don't know if it's accurate at all, and because LLMs have a way of turning 1 sentence ideas into pages of diluted slop.
- dwedge 2mo agoEven if it used to be accurate. Percona were a great resource and now it's all giving LLM vibes. Maybe it's still accurate, it probably is, but it also feels like they don't care
- gillesjacobs 2mo ago[flagged]
- jpnc 2mo agoHeh you write like someone from 4chan. That's not what the author is saying though.
- duskdozer 2mo ago>Please, I NEED YOU TO TAKE A PHOTOGRAPHY AND DESIGN COURSE FOR YOUR BLOG. Go to art school or else I won't even consider looking at your website. Did you read tfa? >I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image.
- gillesjacobs 2mo agoAnd I'd rather see the Mona Lisa.
- cautiouscat 2mo agoThe same goes for your business. Your AI “art” isn’t eye catching, at first glance it’s lazy. A longer glance it’s unsettling. We’re heading for a really boring period in graphic design.
- inigyou 2mo agoFor over a decade, people have been dropshipping slop on Etsy and apparently making money.
- mr_toad 2mo agoIt’s not like stock photos of infeasibly attractive people eating ludicrously overstuffed burgers were ever interesting or believable.
- cautiouscat 2mo agoOf course not. Bad marketing is bad marketing.
- MotherFunker 2mo agoeither way, looks like we're staring down the barrel of mediocrity - the AI isn't a fix. You can't really AI yourself outside of 'the average x/y/z' that these models generate. being specific with your prompting still leads to the most average version of said prompt...rinse repeat.
- fwip 2mo agoAt least stock photos don't have the documented side effect of inducing nausea.
- sgt 2mo ago> 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.
- Avicebron 2mo agoPublic shaming and rejection are probably the best way to teach people it's wasting people's time and disrespectful. If you couldn't otherwise write it yourself for whatever reason it's best not to until you can.
- CuriouslyC 2mo ago[flagged]
- inigyou 2mo agoIt's actually practical advice to avoid wasting your time on nonsense.
- CuriouslyC 2mo agoPlot twist, 100% likely you've read and shared humanized AI content. 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.
- tempfile 2mo agoAI writing tics usually also make text hard to read. I figure you mean "tics which don't affect the readability" but these are pretty rare.
- sodapopcan 2mo ago> Plot twist, 100% likely you've read and shared humanized AI content. I'm sure this has happened. If the author can speak with authority about everything that has written, then ya, I have to concede that is fine. It's obviously the most true when you are going to be engaging with the author. If you ask them a question and they respond, "I'm no sure, the LLM wrote it," that is a huge problem (and pretty pathetic, I might add). > 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. Meh, it I can find another article on the same subject written by a person then it's not too toolish. I've never liked this argument. It's the same thing with music. Even if I like a piece of music, and then I find out it's AI, I'm not going to listen to it. I can understand why people think this is stupid, but there is SO much music--even before it exponentially exploded with AI--that I can find something else I really like created by a person. Especially since when something really tickles my fancy, I like to read everything I can about the artist (which is an indirect form of engagement).
- datakan 2mo ago"I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image." 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.
- XorNot 2mo agoThe key there is you still notice it. The format is less important then the fact that there's enough signal there telling you "something is wrong".
- zmmmmm 2mo agoTo me there are different motivations to include imagery and some of them are just fine with AI generation. If the imagery actually goes to the substance of helping to illustrate or explain the actual content then it seems very superficial to reject it based on how it was generated. In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. 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.
- Gigachad 2mo agoYou can call it superficial, but I’m not reading your AI blog, I’m not eating at your restaurant with AI food pictures, and I’m not listening to your AI music. I’m quite happy without all the slop.
- warpspin 2mo agoThis. If it's actually an illustrative part of the text, include it, even if it's AI generated. Not everyone who can write can do graphics. If it's only decoration, leave it out. No matter whether AI, stock or custom made.
- jerkstate 2mo agonot everyone who can think and solve interesting problems can write prose well, but there's still a lot of complaining about AI-generated text.
- seba_dos1 2mo agoOne of the reasons is that, most of the time, LLMs can't do graphics or write prose well enough either; otherwise it wouldn't reek of LLMs so much to people who put some effort to read it. Also, even poor writing or drawing can be elevated with some intentionality and personality, and using LLMs pretty much guarantees blandness.
- ModernMech 2mo agoI find them very interesting and they make me more likely to remember your blog. I was reading that Gas Town post yesterday and despite all the backlash about the whimsical world and the ai images being sloppy and wrong, they still stuck in my brain more than anything else I’ve read this year. 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.
- sodapopcan 2mo ago> People have the ability to make terrible paint images for decades and they’ve never caught anyone’s attention in a positive way 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.
- cryptopian 2mo agoOn the other hand, plenty of art can lean into being intentionally brash and be all the more memorable for it. The phrase "bad MS paint blog" immediately makes me think of Hyperbole and a Half[1] where the style feeds into the zany ADHD vibe of the blog. 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-spiral.html https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-s... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brat_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brat_(album)
- david-gpu 2mo agoYour one-short-paragraph blog post with a shallow personal preference discourages me from reading your blog. There was zero depth to it.
- CuriouslyC 2mo agoHuman slop is slop too.
- wateralien 2mo agoHuman slop is a much better kind. There were still humans involved.
- CuriouslyC 2mo ago[flagged]
- GPerson 2mo agoIronically, your post literally does nothing but virtue signal to the people who like AI a lot.
- CuriouslyC 2mo agoIt does more than that, it shames him for being lazier than the people he's attacking.
- tempfile 2mo agoPlease explain in your own words how "virtue signalling" differs from "expressing a moral position" and how the difference is visible in the comment you're replying to.
- carlosjobim 2mo agoI think that people upvote these kind of posts for the sake of seeing if can generate any interesting conversation in the comments.
- iamwil 2mo agoWould photography discourage OP from reading a blog? Should I hand-paint my imagery? If I am the type of person that would use a camera, then maybe I'd be the type of person to hire a ghostwriter.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoAI images are not photography.
- pixelesque 2mo agoI mean, it's a spectrum, surely... 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...
- sodapopcan 2mo agoYes, stock photography is also lame, but at least their creators gave permission. It's my dream that "AI" is going to make us look back and reconsider some of the pre-era slop we've accepted in the name of convenience. I doubt it, though.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoIt's not a specturm. It's quite simple; AI jpegs are not photography, because no photons were involved in the AI halucinations.
- CuriouslyC 2mo agoYet the kids can't stop doing either... Which was the OP's point.
- r_lee 2mo ago"the kids" it's mostly boomers falling for this and being obsessed with it "the kids" are the ones who can spot AI slop pretty easily from what I know
- kstenerud 2mo agoThese are all symptoms of the adjustment period following a disruptive technology. Eventually it'll be perfectly normal to use AI-generated content (and use AI to summarize it), and nobody will bat an eye.
- inigyou 2mo agoYes. Just like, shortly after the web, it became normal for 99% of content to be moneygrubbing adspam SEOslop. Normal doesn't mean good.
- noosphr 2mo agoEventually well formatted blogs won't be a symbol of effort and no one will care.
- kstenerud 2mo agoJust like published books were considered a symbol of effort that no one would have considered a blog as being anywhere near. When was the last time you looked up a book to find an answer to your question? That USED to be the normal. Then we just googled for a link to Stack Overflow. And the oldtimers waxed lyrical on Slashdot, bemoaning the loss of craftsmanship, and how it was too easy nowadays - no effort. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. The likely next normal will be agent-scraped content that it summarizes and tailors to its human. Slop, lacking real content, will be dutifully skipped by the agent, and the human won't care. Meanwhile, armies of advertisers will cry foul, and scramble for a new way to get in front of human eyeballs. And for those who want to continue reading blogs for pleasure, it's one agent pre-screen away. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
- inigyou 2mo agoBoth blogs and books are mostly spam now, anyway.
- j16sdiz 2mo agoJust like Taboola. They are everywhere now.
- maxdo 2mo agoWhat I read , my western ego is so big I want to place my opinion everywhere possible . 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 .
- bigfishrunning 2mo agoIsn't the point of a blog to "place my opinion everywhere possible"? Isn't that why there's an internet?
- wincy 2mo agoThis hasn’t been my wife’s experience at all. She manually writes all her content, but uses AI images as sizzlers for the scenes (fan fic for popular shows). Short of getting the actors together for a million bucks, she’d be hard pressed to make these scenes a reality. It’s also supposed to be aspirational, like “what if the tv cast got back together for another season hey?” I think the average person just doesn’t really notice. 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.
- bombcar 2mo agoAI generic blogspam "art" - as off-putting or worse than clipart or those weird flat characters that took over everything "corporate" a few years ago. Actually using AI to make a shitpost image relevant to the text? Amusing, fun, worthwhile.
- jollyllama 2mo ago> I think the average person just doesn’t really notice. Yes, this is what's insulting about it, the assumption that it won't be noticed.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- 8by3 2mo agoMy my knee jerk reaction is to agree, I really hate the obvious looking AI images, though I suspect ultimately it comes down to having good taste. 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/ 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.
- wateralien 2mo agoAI-generated images discourage me from interacting with any entity AT ALL. Bar / restaurant posters, events, shops, anything. Because it makes the brand appear lazy. And in a weird way "anti-human". I don't have a better word than that.
- brk 2mo agoYou're setting yourself up for a lonely life. 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.
- wateralien 2mo ago> You're setting yourself up for a lonely life. 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.
- cyanclouds 2mo ago[flagged]
- atomicfiredoll 2mo agoYou're just putting words in their mouth. They didn't say any of that. Re-read their comment.
- cyanclouds 2mo ago[flagged]
- atomicfiredoll 2mo agoWhat guys?
- merelydev 2mo agoThis is not surprising. Would you rather have handmade Italian shoes or factory made shoes sewn by a robot. Humans assign quality relative to themselves. 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.
- ModernMech 2mo agoI dunno which I’d rather have, but I do know the only kind I’ve ever bought is the factory-made kind. So if the aim is appealing to a wide audience, you’re arguing involving robots in the production process is key?
- bell-cot 2mo ago> A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how ... I'm thinking quite a few chess nerds could be interested - depending on how the game develops.
- jibal 2mo agoSome of the most fascinating games are between Stockfish and Leela. The quoted statement is grossly ignorant.
- jibal 2mo ago> Would you rather have handmade Italian shoes or factory made shoes sewn by a robot. 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. (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_84B_VwayU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_84B_VwayU -- this is narrated by National Master "Jerry", one of the most respected chess narrators on YouTube.) People who don't know this know nothing about chess. (And only immature clueless fish respond by challenging someone to a game. Lack of knowledge of chess was already established by their ridiculous claim. BTW, he has radically changed his response , which is now very different from his original claim. It's not my misunderstanding, it's his bad faith.) 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.
- scotty79 2mo agoFor me the breaking point for images in texts was stock photos. 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.
- dofm 2mo agoThere is no "before that", not on the internet. Stock photography as a business is more than a century old, and we were using it on the internet as soon as you could put an IMG tag in a page. Lazy use of stock imagery is a problem.
- asah 2mo ago[flagged]
- MotherFunker 2mo agoNot at all. Prevalence does not equal acceptance. https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/gen-z-ai https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g...
- JSR_FDED 2mo agoI just sat through my first fully AI-generated presentation. The content was as bland and straight down the middle as possible. The slides were all generated by a standard design - a mix of text blocks, bullets, fonts, colors. 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.
- r_lee 2mo agothis is what I've observed as well, it's supposedly impressive and packed with "information" and .. stuff but it's just kind of noise to me it's fatiguing to read that stuff as well
- chasing 2mo agoYeah, I have told people that I’m fully capable of typing things into ChatGPT or Claude myself. What I need from people are their own warty ideas. Sometimes real ideas are blurry or incomplete. Or have open questions. Making your own presentation can be a personal exercise in clarifying your thoughts. And sometimes the fact that ideas are half-baked or tricky is exactly why you’re having the meeting in the first place… I guess if you’re in an environment where the emphasis is put on busy-work and formalities, then you’re going to get this sort of shit. Deeper organizational problem at that point, though…
- legohead 2mo agoI used AI to make a presentation that animated around (html). It had the look of the storyboard and the postcards had tweakable controls on them for the data I wanted to show. It was pretty slick, something that would take me forever (and I'd never get the time approval to do).
- me_online 1mo agosame here. our org just hired a new guy and he just did his first presentation, blatantly AI-generated. he said everything that had to be said on the first slid, then wasted 20 minutes going in circles. llm writing style sounds so wrong once you say it out loud.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoEh. I tend to use stock photo stuff. Even easier than AI (and most stockhouses are now using AI, themselves). If it's important to the story, I'll generally generate it, myself (I tend to use OmniGraffle a lot). I'm quite capable of making my own images. 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.
- benashford 2mo agoThe main problem is, those AI generated images are only so jarring because they're so obvious. 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.
- swazzy 2mo ago[flagged]
- FrustratedMonky 2mo ago"I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image." 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.
- sbochins 2mo agoI don’t have a problem with ai generated media in blogs at all. Nobody is going to take the time to hand draw a piece of art for a blog that takes them less than an hour to write. Pictures speak a thousand words and serve as a great intro to a blog post. Embrace the future.
- jibal 2mo agoHurray for an intelligent comment. It's alarming how much idiocy results from this radical anti-AI hysteria. e.g., someone here said that a set of slides "packed with information" was "completely worthless" because it lacked "an actual point of view" from "actual people".
- atomicfiredoll 2mo ago> Pictures speak a thousand words and serve as a great intro to a blog post. If pictures are so important, why would "nobody... take the time to hand draw a piece of art" or find a one of the many free stock photos? When I was actively blogging, I would doodle quick images to include all the time for this precise reason.
- sbochins 2mo agoBecause it took too much time before and now it’s essentially instantaneous and free?
- atomicfiredoll 2mo agoMy point is that your statement: - Doesn't come across as consistent: You said pictures "serve as a great intro," making them a valuable addition, but simultaneously "nobody" is going to take the time to draw them? Why wouldn't an author take the time if pictures are such a great addition to their piece? - It's also not true: you said "nobody" does this. I'm telling you I have. Here's another example[0] in this very thread of somebody who does the thing you're claiming "nobody" does. Aside from that, the amount of time it took to write the post isn't even necessarily relevant. I think for many it's about trying to fully express an idea, presentation, enjoyment, clarity, compulsion, polish, [display in search results], or 100 other things. People did it before and they do it now. Everybody doesn't do it, but it's not true that "nobody" does it. That could be part of why people's brains are honing in on it as a heuristic. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169003
- wateralien 2mo agoI agree. The human experience is the only thing that matters. If AI tries to replace or supersede that, then it's bad AI.
- ertgbnm 2mo agoThis has been a frequent problem on fiction writing on royal road. Author promises that they don't use AI to write and then proceed to use AI to generate the cover for the series. They might be telling the truth, but I am not going to spend the time to figure it out for myself. They are really shooting themselves in the foot. A shitty MS paint cover would be less off putting.
- __alias 2mo agoFuck it, I love em
- ojinai 2mo agoniceeee
- mosura 2mo agoNo one is reading your blog anyway, they are looking for the video.
- anotherlab 2mo agoI use AI-themed images for the opener to my blog. It's typically a steampunk robot image that is not related to the topic of the post. The actual content is written by me. If there are any code samples that were AI-generated, I'll call them out as such.
- raincole 2mo ago> AI-themed images for the opener 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.
- r_lee 2mo agothat is exactly the kind of thing that makes me close the tab. like why? to me it just means "I'm an author that likes/makes AI slop and this article is probably half if not complete AI slop or not worth reading" I don't see how that would add any value or boost page visits
- anotherlab 2mo agoI find it entertaining. I'm doing it for me, not to boost any metric. I am my target audience.
- Otterly99 2mo agoI think you should learn from the reaction of most people in this thread and avoid it (if your audience is mostly technical people) for the following reason. A. If it's unrelated, it doesn't add anything to the post except aesthetics. B. On the aesthetics dimension: I don't think people are very impressed by the AI aesthetic, and tend to be annoyed by it. C. It seems that most people now assume that AI-generated image == AI-generated text. I personally do not care about AI images or not, but it seems that a portion of people do.
- ModernMech 2mo agoAlternatively, consider that the people who are so against this are posting here with great conviction, and everyone else who isn't against it just reading the blogs rather than writing on Hacker News.
- dspillett 2mo agoSame, I tend to assume it is a sign that AI is used across the board. 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.
- ibaikov 2mo agoSo much this, blogs add an image for the sake of having an image. At this point it would be much better to just have a random dog or a cat pic, it is as relevant to your blog post as your random generated thing, but I'd prefer seeing a random happy pup. And if you generated a pic I suppose you also generated your post, so I'm way less likely to pay attention to it.
- officeplant 2mo agoif cybersecurity blogs replaced AI hacker images with dog pics the world would be a better place.
- cpburns2009 2mo agoI have a compromise: An AI hacker image using a picture of your own dog.
- ibaikov 2mo agoExactly, I totally forgot there even are existing apis that return open source dog and cat pictures
- atomicfiredoll 2mo agoIf that dog is wearing Matrix style sunglasses... maybe a cute dog hoodie, I'm even more interested.
- mastazi 2mo agoI have the same reaction with AI generated YouTube thumbnails. Something in the back of my mind immediately goes "it's probably low quality content" and I'm less likely to click.
- mattferderer 2mo agoI have the same reaction with the "YouTube face" thumbnails.
- yitchelle 2mo agoIf a content is making a positive impact on your life, your mental health, your family's well being, your general outlook, your future, would it matter if is from AI or from human?
- ripe 2mo ago> If it is making a positive impact, would it matter if it's AI or human We're drowning in this stuff, and no one has enough hours in their day to find out if obviously AI-generated slop can make a positive impact on their life. Why don't you read it and let us know? We'll continue to not engage with it.
- Planktonne 2mo agoIt doesn't seem to be though, and there's no reason to assume it will magically become so. We don't do the same with every other negative: suppose global warming made you immortal, wouldn't that be great.
- fwlr 2mo ago“AI-generated images discourage me from reading” is a statement that’s true for me too, albeit for different reasons than offered in this post. For me, it’s the same kind of thing as “reading the text of your slides out loud”, or repeating the contention in both the introduction and conclusion. The point of repetition is to reinforce understanding by approaching the same place from different directions, so the reader can pin down your idea at the intersection of these various thrusts. Multiple arrows from roughly the same place going in roughly the same direction don’t constrain the expressed idea, instead they just make it fuzzier.
- rvz 2mo agoFrom [0] https://nelson.cloud/about/#skills https://nelson.cloud/about/#skills > Other: Claude Code Then the author said: > I know there are plenty of things you can roast my blog for but at least you know for a fact you’re getting the thoughts of a real human being and not some LLM. So it is OK for you to use AI generation tools like Claude Code and likely using it in your blog or using it to generate code, but it isn't OK for you to see someone else using AI to generate images? With the above already stated, that means the author cannot guarantee that not a single use of AI was used in their blog at all given that we know they use Claude. Why preach fake principles with virtue signalling and then break your own standards in your own blog post?
- pseudalopex 2mo agoSomeone who needed work listed a skill in their CV which many employers demand. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rvz 2mo agoThey did that all by themselves. > Someone who needed work listed a skill in their CV which many employers demand. Then don't preach that you don't like AI yet you use it at work.
- ilamont 2mo agoPart of the problem is many bloggers think an image is required for every post. This is reinforced by algorithms which favor such posts, and drives bloggers to the easiest/fastest sources of free images. The "featured image" in Wordpress is what gets shown on the index page, in shared social posts, and other contexts. And certainly, the algorithms favor such posts over pure text posts, even if the text content in the spartan post is far better. There are other factors at play, too. Many bloggers are lazy, some are severely time constrained, a few are fearful of legal repercussions associated with copying images off the Internet, and a majority are creatively or technically incapable of making their own images to include on a personal blog post.
- jrochkind1 2mo agoStill better than AI generated text.
- FinnLobsien 2mo agoI think there's a difference here between low-effort AI slop and something made with the help of AI. I always wonder how many AI images and articles we consume without realizing they were made by AI just because a human actually spent the time on making the AI create a good output.
- cpburns2009 2mo agoThis is more my problem with it. Obvious AI usage tends to be slop content, so any sign of it becomes a useful heuristic as to whether the subject is useless spam/slop. But I'm not anti-AI. It's a category of tools that can be useful. I think using AI as part of the editing process can be very useful. Unfortunately it also enabled more spam. And if it looks like spam, I'll instinctively treat it as such.
- FinnLobsien 2mo agoYeah exactly, I think the massive volume increase in content requires more aggressively filtering what you pay attention to. My tolerance for bad content has gone to nothing because the second I realize I can prompt the same article into existence except more personalized, I’m out - and the next time I see that company/person’s blog, I’m ignoring it. Not everything made with some kind of AI assistance is slop, but all slop is made by AI.
- hashstring 2mo agoAgree but how many times are the same articles and opinions reaching the top. It feels like we’re in a loop and it’s boring me out reading the same thing over and over and over again.
- cosmic_cheese 2mo agoI’m inclined to agree, but not as much because the image was generated with AI but rather because it’s rare for such images to exhibit taste. They feel like the visual equivalent of gilded twinkies, which is offputting. Selecting a stock image doesn’t have this effect, even if it’s not related to the post. Even the most unremarkable stock image has the fingerprints of its artist, and the choice itself can reveal things about the author. They don’t have that hyper-polished unintentioniality and subtle uncanny hollow “wrongness” that generated images do.
- dominicrose 2mo agoIf an LLM has any taste, it comes from its training data.
- chasing 2mo agoLLMs don’t have taste. Almost definitionally they can’t. They can parrot what they think other people think is tasteful, but they cannot have taste.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoTaste is about matching things. If you stick Van Gogh's Starry Night into a blog post about profitmaxxing because you know it increases your discoverability by 0.02%, you have no taste. If you stick a pleasingly-proportioned image of a sailboat bobbing peacefully on a calm sea at sunset on a blog post about getting away from it all, it might be a perfect fit.
- abustamam 2mo agoI haven't done research on this but I feel like a lot of stock image companies are using AI now
- cosmic_cheese 2mo agoProbably correct, which is why date filters come in handy.
- llm_nerd 2mo agoOk? That's nice. As someone who adds AI generated images on blog entries (a single context-appropriate genAI image that is used for OpenGraph sharing), I just do not give a shit if some people have opinions like this. Jog on? The vast majority of bloggers in 2026 do so for their own edification, to their own preferences and choices. Whining about what they do is decided a beggars being choosers thing.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- satvikpendem 2mo agoThis might be true for technical users, average users increasingly don't care about AI images and even AI prose.
- blargwill 2mo agoA while back I had the same feeling and hypothesised about a "nutriscore" for AI content in media: https://disclosure.launchbowl.com/ https://disclosure.launchbowl.com/ https://launchbowl.com/ai_nutriscore https://launchbowl.com/ai_nutriscore I think AI images can enhance a blog article as long as the reader is fully aware and trusting that it's just the auxiliary material to the blog has been generated, not the main body of value.
- chasd00 2mo agowhat percentage of readers does it bother though? If 2% of readers just refuse anything built/generated with AI then are they worth accommodating? It sounds crazy but i distinctly remember people slamming their fist on the desk saying they will always prefer to use the card catalog at the library instead of Google when search was really taking off. At some point you just have to move on.
- tauntz 2mo agoI'd rather read a blog post that includes relevant and decently made illustrations of the topic at hand (explanatory graphics etc) rather than just a wall of text. Makes no difference if these are drawn by hand or using X software or an LLM. But that's just me.
- fortran77 2mo agoIf you use images on your blog, even if you are scrupulous about sourcing them, purchase licenses, or go by the same low-resolution "fair use" rules that Wikipedia does, you will get several letters a year from law firms claiming they represent a client who owns the right to that photo. Rather than wasting time sorting all these out when the images are there mostly to break up a wall of text, some blogs simply use a few AI images. This way if those letters come, they can simply put them in the bin. I don't object to this use of AI images at all.
- avph 2mo agoIs this about technical blogs where the image is either of technical nature or something else? I'd think in the former case it doesn't matter and it's mostly the text I care about to be interesting and personal. I don't read non technical blogs so I don't know what if ai images are a turnoff.
- r_lee 2mo ago100%. if I see AI slop images or videos I just click off, it's become almost automatic for me now. I'm not gonna spend my mental bandwidth on figuring out if the thing is worth reading/whatever and that somehow the author just didn't realize that it's a net negative
- carlosjobim 2mo agoIf you're writing about something which exists in reality, then it is possible to take a photo of it. If you're writing about something which doesn't exist in reality, then it shouldn't be accompanied by any image. Stock photos or AI generated images are always wrong. Real photos, no matter how bland, convey information from reality and are always right.
- josefritzishere 2mo agoAgree. Ai art looks like garbage.
- Tepix 2mo agoI share the author's sentiment. But I have another hatred: Monospace fonts in blogs. Monospace makes text harder to read and ugly. It was a necessity. It no longer is. Get over it.
- Spacecosmonaut 2mo agoThis seems temporary. AI generated images will become the norm for many applications. Today we wonder whether a model in an advertisement is real or generated, 5 years from know this wont even be an interesting thing to consider. In many contexts, images are meant to illustrate a point. The human becomes the gatekeeper of generated content. The question becomes: does this picture illustrate the point I want to make. If so, you are adding your human approved stamp to the genrated output.
- RobKohr 2mo agoI think the issue is we all have read a bit into a AI article before realizing it is one and realize foolishly that you have been reading drivel. The original prompts might have had something interesting to say, but it is so layered with filler and platitudes that it is just a waste. After being burned enough times, we hunt around for signals that an article is about to waste our time. Not all articles with AI images are LLM written, but almost all LLM written articles have AI images. The author is telling you a hueristic is that people are using, and for this person here, I am totally doing it. A picture of a napkin doodle at this point is superior.
- davexunit 2mo agoThe moment I see anything LLM-generated it's an instant close tab.
- elAhmo 2mo agoYou can't cater to every single person out there. The author comes as quite entitled.
- gwbas1c 2mo agoI find images are good for speed-reading; they convey information that otherwise would require much more time-consuming attention. I'm significantly more likely to read a long article, after skimming it, if it contains contextual images. Personally, I'm okay with AI generated images as long as it's not obvious or slop: For me, a carefully-prompted image is on par with a carefully chosen photo, carefully chosen diagram, ect. I also hold blog entries to a lower standard than professional content: I'm much more likely (after skimming) to read an imperfect non-professional blog entry than (after skimming) imperfect professional content. (And professional content is where I expect images that are higher quality than AI prompting.)
- Invictus0 2mo agoBelongs on Luddite News Cheap AI image generation is a miracle and this article is dumb af
- Quai 2mo agoIMHO AI-generated images are not the problem; The low effort people put in to generating them and selecting which image to go with is the problem. Spend some time on it. Find your own style.
- jmull 2mo agoI don't think the internet as we know it is going to survive generative AI. Before, the simple existence of the content of some basic level of quality was a strong signal of effort, which corresponds strongly to value. If it's there, it's worth reading. Now, the existence of content of a basic level of quality signals nothing. It might have some value, but it's much more likely it's useless AI slop. This principle -- if it's there it's probably worth taking a look at -- undergirded so much of system of creation, discovery, and sharing that made the internet special -- blogs, open-source, posts, comments. It allowed the gatekeepers, middlemen, guided channels, and tolls to be removed from the creation, enjoyment, sharing, and consumption of content. I'm worried we're going to have to go back, just to get away from the avalanche of crap people are using AI to produce at crazy rate.
- heaney-555 2mo agoHave you seen Midjourney 8.2? Pretty soon, you will not be able to tell. What you really mean is "obvious AI-generated images".
- aakresearch 2mo agoLast time I checked, their landing page looked like, I imagine, an escort agency catalog would. And why would I go to a cesspit if I already disturbed enough by that "art" screaming at me from every corner of Internet?
- Ekaros 2mo agoWeirdly I might slightly prefer your AI-generated image if some thought is put into it to entirely average soulless and tasteless corporate stock photo. You know multicultural team or photogenic enough person doing some meaningless staged task. Those have no chance to adding anything to the text. Same really goes for clip art. At least with AI there might be some thought or idea behind it. Even it is lazy slop.
- squidbeak 2mo agoNot all of us can afford to hire illustrators for every blog entry, and while an MS Paint squiggle might suit this blog's author's tastes, I can sympathize with anyone who might prefer something more sophisticated. I don't see what the problem is with AI images, if some thought has been put into the image itself and if it's relevant in some way. I'd far rather see something playful and on-topic than the generic stock images littering blogs previously or some random example of the writer's photography with little connection to the article. But really, whatever I like or don't like is besides the point. The blog using AI images isn't my blog. And if I was one of the blog authors who've sent this author into full prig-mode, I'd say to him, "No worries, Nelson. Have a happy life." I'd wager the blog author's own life wouldn't be any happier for bowing to the sensibilities of the Nelsons of this world.
- sumeno 2mo agoAI images are not more sophisticated, they are less sophisticated
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoThat’s very rich coming from a person that uses monospaced font for a blog.
- SyntaxError2505 2mo agoFinally. Same effect with stock imagery. I like using a creative imagery. Hacky looking tuis like sl or pipes.sh. They have some eyecandy and make my blogs have a uniform style.
- snaveen 2mo agoI stopped reading blog posts/tweets that have been AI generated.
- jmartrican 2mo agoSome content creators are too focussed on their work that they might not have noticed the debate going on online about AI-generated images and all they wanted was a cool image for their content. They might not have known that they walked into a hornet's nest.... but they will find out soon enough. Should they have gone down the alternative route, where they spend time and money hiring someone to do it... who will probably use AI anyways. Telling someone not to use AI is like telling someone to not drive and instead take a horse and buggy (circa 1920).
- sergent_moon 2mo agoI seriously doubt there is anyone making content for the internet who is not acutely aware of the AI debate.
- functionmouse 2mo agoTotally false equivalence.
- NichoPaolucci 2mo agoIt’s not about using new technology, it’s about the signal of effort. Blind copy-pasting an AI image anywhere is a poor signal of effort, because it was a deliberate decision by the author… “I didn’t do the work to make this look professional, but my hope is that people THINK it looks professional.”
- mikeyinternews 2mo agoyou are but one person
- bigfishrunning 2mo agoI'm another one. There are at least two of us. I'd bet there's more.
- erelong 2mo agoAnd then there's people that use the AI-generated images to intentionally drive away the people that don't like the pics and AI so as to cultivate a reader base of like-minded people who are ok with using AI
- trentor 2mo agoIf I don't recognize that it's AI and it helps me understand the article I am fine with it. Generative AI images don't need to be slop even if most of them are.
- blightful 2mo agoSame with YouTube thumbnails for me. If it is obviously some exaggerated image nothing like what is in the video then i ask youtube to not recommend them. I should just stick to subscriptions but fishing gets me sometimes.
- GrinningFool 2mo agoIndeed - instead of pointless hero images, now we have pointless ai-generated hero images.
- nialse 2mo agoGenre images are frequently used to give a post an aura, as a kind of decoration and serves no other purpose than that. Then there are the images that does not quite fit in, that gives that AI ick. Few, if anyone, like them. They demonstrate lack of effort and demand your attention anyway. An imbalance in the force most can immediately sense. There needs to be some originality, some original thought or expression, a creative threshold needs to be passed. Which tools were used to create an image is not important, it is the who and why that is.
- pixlmint 2mo agoCouldn't agree more - down to the shitty ms paint recommendation
- eqvinox 2mo agoI've recently started doing crude drawings on my reMarkable when needing something like explainer diagrams. It looks like a toddler did it, but, you know what? It works. I just stopped feeling weird about it. Pen-type input systems are pretty cheap these days (no need to go reMarkable, I just use it because I have one.) It's not a super frequent need but having something of that type in general I'd consider valuable enough to spend the money.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoOnly if it has that AI look. What you don’t realize is that you can generate images that don’t have “the look” rather easily if you have an eye for it.
- varnaud 2mo agoI recently complained to the marketing team about an AI generated image used on our website main dashboard. I described everything that was wrong with the image the more you stared at it. That if I was a customer, I would feel that if they are ok to show a low quality image there, what does it means to the products I'm buying. Their first reaction was to say they didn't see any problem with the image, then they changed it for an abstract image that I couldn't tell if it was AI or not, which is a huge improvement. I thought I was alone in feeling this way, but turns out people from the sales team told me privately that they were happy I had spoken up.
- mrloopex 2mo agoSame thing with dark mode.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoIf I do it, I make sure it's a good image, not just slop that I prompt and paste in, because I can. And on rare occasions when I do, it's on my own gaming system with Stable Diffusion so I can have as many takes as I like, fairly quickly. Never do it because you can - that is a no-effort thing.
- winwang 2mo agoI used Claude to generate technical SVGs (which are verifiable correct) because I wasn't going to take the time to draw the grid/arrows/etc.
- chasing 2mo agoIt just makes me wonder what else in your content is AI-generated. Just sows a little seed of distrust. The goal of someone putting actual ideas out into the world should be to establish trust, not create questions about whether the ideas are theirs or plagiarized from ChatGPT.
- pwillia7 2mo agoWhat if my blog is mostly about AI generated images? :P
- superjan 2mo agoWhen I was working on a post recently, I rediscovered that it is actually fun to draw. Much more fun than debating with an AI tool to generate an image for me. And given the time I already spent on the subject matter, the effort was not that much more. I can recommend drawing on paper. You can correct mistakes after scanning.
- hackitup7 2mo agoI write a blog and have always avoided AI images for exactly the reasons cited here. AI images feel like a more cynical version of stock imagery, for some reason. I think it's actually too bad because in a lot of cases AI images would actually be really great to include and a lot more evocative... but there's just no way to do it that doesn't inspire revulsion.
- nashashmi 2mo agoThe problem with illustrations is that AI fills in so much nonsense, it is difficult to tell of the picture’s thousand words which ones were intended.
- q8zd3 2mo agoI find AI generated text way worse than images. I get a migraine from reading it.
- bigfishrunning 2mo agoThe AI image is a good quick signal that the text is likely AI generated without even reading it. I say let's keep them around as a shibboleth.
- arjie 2mo agoFair enough. I dislike word-expansion AI text so I get it. When I write on my blog, part of it is as memory like a diary for myself and I find that I can create these images that help remember the scene well. As much as I'd like people to read my blog, I get that they have preferences, and if many decide against then that's their prerogative. Here are two examples with AI images from Nano Banana: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-20/Drops_of_Water https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-20/Drops_of_Wat... https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-07-23/Sixtless_in_Seattle https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-07-23/Sixtless_in_... I think I'll probably keep doing what I'm doing there.
- nemomarx 2mo agoThe painting style does make these look less obvious than the default, so that helps. I think this is the best generated art I've seen so far. Although if it's for a mental diary maybe you could get a nice camera for it?
- novaleaf 2mo agothat's pretty nice illustration work, I'd agree, keep doing it :D
- arjie 2mo agoI thought Nano Banana did a great job! I used a trick I saw someone describe elsewhere where I inserted the annotations on the photo / google street view of the scene. It seems like the model does a better job of instruction compliance when you annotate on the image itself rather than provide text. So an arrow to place the penny farthing guy and so on.
- Palomides 2mo agoit seems kind of perverse to to generate an image of a scene (fundamentally not derived from how it actually looked) to remember how it looked; you even immediately point out a way that it's inaccurate ("They looked younger and in better shape but you get the picture.")
- zby 2mo agoI know it is overused on tweeter - but all this really seems to be about status. Like Robin Hanson said - people read stuff because it seems prestigious.
- entontoent 2mo agoHmm... where have I encountered this worldview before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art
- FeteCommuniste 2mo agoYou heard it here first, not liking slop means you're a Nazi.
- entontoent 2mo agoYou heard it here for the thousandth time in the history of art: condescension towards new mediums does not make you morally superior, just conservative in a predictable and recurring way.
- FeteCommuniste 2mo agoIt's not a new medium, just a faster way of pumping out (mostly crappy versions of) the same thing.
- learn_more 2mo agoAI images are low-res information masquerading as high-res. It's a lie. It tricks the reader looking for deeper meaning. Though hastily chosen non-AI images may do this too.
- deadbabe 2mo agoSome people are discovering the trick of “humanwashing” AI images by tracing over them by hand in standard drawing programs and applying their “taste” to produce something that looks like a human created it in the first place. What do we think of this?
- senfiaj 2mo agoI'd say I don't like images that feel too AIsh and have errors/quirks. Still, some AI images are decent, depends on the person and his taste.
- harlanji 2mo agoBarely longer than a Tweet. Low effort slop. /half sarcasm. I record 20-40 minutes of "uneditied, one take no fake" Podcast/Vlog per day and have been using AI to generate the cover image + video description and sometimes title for YouTube lately. Also somewhat low effort, I admit. I have project ideas to upcycle the raw takes. (iSpooge Daily on YouTube, support links on channel page). My likes and views are consistently up since using Gen AI for said tasks. It's extremely niche, just yapping about existence and ideas as a homeless unemployed software engineer in Christ on daily walks. Some of the most authentic stuff online, in my opinion, criminally underrated. The AI art covers and generated metadata are better than I could do even given unlimited time + resources.
- lattalayta 2mo agoI wonder if this sentiment will endure, or if younger generations that grow up around AI will be less discerning?
- xinan 2mo agoI for one, wish they don’t change what they’re doing, and that people don’t give them advice—let them use AI to generate anything that want. That will help me easily distinguish and avoid bad bloggers (or any kind of merchants).
- iqbal1980 2mo agoSo people should stop expressing themselves, however they see fit so you can read their blog? Ok!
- kdheiwns 2mo agoAI images are the antithesis of self expression. Self expression would involve some actual creation. I don't pick a book off a shelf and call it my own self expression. That's someone else's output. I also don't consider a machine's randomly generated output my own self expression. No actual person without financial incentive would.
- iqbal1980 2mo agoYou are missing the point, let's take "2001: A Space Odyssey" the novel book cover was not made by the writer Arthur C Clark. But by artist Robert McCall. Well not everyone can afford to hire an artist. You can be creative in your field, and still hire a human or use an AI to do art instead. What's the difference!
- nemo 2mo agoUsing AI to generate content isn't expressing yourself. It's expressing non-human AI content that's actually not a part of your self - AI content is the opposite of self-expression, it's other-expression. That's why people dislike seeing it peddled as self-expression.
- iqbal1980 2mo agoYou are missing the point, let's take "2001: A Space Odyssey" the novel book cover was not made by the writer Arthur C Clark. But by artist Robert McCall. Well not everyone can afford to hire an artist. You can be creative in your field, and still hire a human or use an AI to do art instead. What's the difference?
- nemo 2mo agoIn traditional publishing publishers view the cover as a marketing tool - Arthur C Clark had negligible influence over what appeared on the covers of his books in his career when 2001 was released. That's not self-expression by any definition. You could hire a human to do art for you if you like, that's also not self-expression, nor is using an AI to do art for you. There's no meaningful self-expression in the act of having other people make things for you, they're doing the expression, you're enjoying (or not enjoying) the result.
- santiagobasulto 2mo ago563 upvotes for a 2 paragraph post of someone complaining about AI images in someone else's blogs? This is "Bicycle face" level of hatred (or fear) against new technology.
- bytter 2mo agoI'm personally growing an hatred for the genetic fallacy...
- cdrnsf 2mo agoI'd prefer no images to AI-generated ones.
- oliwarner 2mo ago> at least you know for a fact you’re getting the thoughts of a real human being No, we don't. For all we know this whole blog is an agent larping as a neverLLMer. Your stance says nothing about who wrote what. Just as using images freely generated by ChatGPT for a PERSONAL blog post because the author liked it but couldn't express it themselves doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the post. It tells you they're not an artist. It tells you that they prefer some imagery over blank space. The rest is you and your projections. And that's okay too. Jog on.
- kdheiwns 2mo agoI've developed an internal heuristic that tells me people who think an AI image to fill some blank space in any way improves anything aren't saying anything of value. There's a strong likelihood they're just trying to promote some product or scam. I came to this conclusion after seeing 100% of sites with AI images plastered on them being scams and BS with no actual value. Meanwhile, a blog that's basic HTML and text and looks like it's fresh from 1998 is generally high quality info. People who are willing to write like that and publicly share it have confidence in what they're writing. And if that blog spreads, it's because the content is good. Not because it was eye catching at a glance.
- oliwarner 2mo agoHow does your heuristic handle your qualitative and quantitative words here? If you land on a blog post with a single, pertinent illustration (from a LLM), do you assume the post, site and author are all robot trash and run away? Investigate the other posts before reading further? The point of my caps, above was that I'm writing for me. If I think my post is improved by me prompting a LLM for an illustration, that's up to me. I'm not writing for your heuristic, I'm trying to express myself every way I can. The time where you find individuals untainted or unaided by these tools is over. I'd try to just content by it's content rather than it's illustrations.
- kdheiwns 2mo agoI don't assume it's trash. I know with absolute certainty. It's the same as seeing someone posting with one of those old NFT monkey avatars. You know they have nothing of value to say, and they're most often going to try selling you something of no value.
- maxglute 2mo agoOld man yell at cloud. I suppose it matters as long as old man cohort with purchasing power.
- peheje 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- firefoxd 2mo agoShout out to Pixabay. I most often use them of cc0 images, though recently I had to start using their filter to exclude AI generated. Never understood the need to upload AI generated pictures there when anyone can just generate them on their own.
- GMoromisato 2mo agoIf you're writing a personal blog (as opposed to a company blog), you should not care what people think. A blog is an expression of your own taste. Write about things that interest you. Write in a style that you like. Add whatever images you want. And don't let some random stranger on the internet influence your blog. Otherwise, it's not your blog anymore.
- 1matin 2mo agoCouldn’t agree more. Then express yourself freely. Don't let stupid grammar limit you. Otherwise it's not your blog anymore.
- GMoromisato 2mo agoNot sure if this is sarcasm or not, but if someone wrote a blog post that said, "Bad Grammar Discourages Me from Reading Your Blog" I would have the same response: Don't write your blog to please other people.
- egypturnash 2mo agoI just assume that if you think it's fine to shit in my eyes with an AI image then you're probably also about to shit in my eyes a lot more with AI text.
- drblast 2mo agoIn the 80's, many, many people looked down on electronic and synthesized music because it wasn't real music played with real instruments. And now it's just another instrument and has whole genres of music dedicated to it. C64 SID chips are sought after for 8-bit music creation because it has a unique aesthetic. Same with TR-808 drum machines. The AI complaints feel a lot like that. I'm betting in about 15-20 years there's going to be a revival of terrible AI images and videos because people are nostalgic for 2024 when AI images were obvious and sit firmly in an uncanny valley. And I think AI will inspire a massive artistic revolution, both because it becomes just another tool in the toolbox that makes creation easier like drum machines and synths, AND it takes over the pop-music space previously occupied by boy bands and pop queens - generic rehashes of inoffensive crap that so saturates the market entire counter-cultures develop. But someone will use it to make something uniquely creative and new. Rap and hip-hop wouldn't exist without cheap drum machines. In other words, you're old enough to start disliking new stuff, but not old enough to have seen this happen multiple times and realize that this is just another generational cycle. The younger generations will absorb AI tools and continue to do what humans have always done, which is be creative with the tools at their disposal.
- chrsw 2mo agoMost of the people that do this don’t have the basic human decency to start with a clear message like “All or some of this content is AI generated.” If you say that, and I stay engaged with your content, that’s on me. But if I keep reading, and I find out later you’ve done this to me, then I probably can’t take you seriously anymore. I don’t care of it’s one picture in a ten thousand word essay.
- radley 2mo agoI think the discouragement started long before AI, probably before GUI, based on the terminal-like website you host.
- imagetic 2mo agoMe too. Same goes watching videos that have AI generated thumbnails.
- jonathaneunice 2mo agoThat may be your preference, but it's quite contrary to mine. I have successfully used AI to generate generates "concept art" and logos for projects, presentations, and publications. It seems to make the outcomes more approachable, more understandable, and certainly more aesthetically pleasing. It is not a matter of replacing human effort or skill, and certainly not a matter of adding cheap ornamentation. If AI weren't available, I usually wouldn't have the time, money, energy, or will to pursue those illustrations. I say this as someone who has historically spent what seems like a vast amount of time, energy, and money sourcing art. In a former life as as publisher I even hired full-time artists and insisted on custom artwork. But my current work no longer has that luxury. I still want the best possible looks, and the best possible outcomes.
- spopejoy 2mo agoSee other top HN article rn about "expertise is essential for using LLMs". Nobody is debating whether illustrators, graphic designers or marketers are going to use AI. In addition to being a thoroughly sailed ship, the sheer demand for constant content and image generation makes it a job skill at this point. TFA is about blogs written by people with non-graphic expertise, who think it's great to, e.g., punctuate every other point with a way-too-detailed picture of a panda bear coder orchestrating fleets of squirrel agents. (Yes I'm looking at you Steve Yegge.) Nobody needs to be abused with this crap, and it all has the same overpolished overdetailed look, the "it's too good to be drawn by the author but is obviously NOT drawn by anybody with any visual sense". It's not just blogs -- bands are now making these ridiculous "pro" fliers, food carts have stupid pictures of their owners on them -- but in blogs that ostensibly are written by humans for humans, AI images are worse than distracting and a very negative signal.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoFair. The same is true of stock images and a lot of other visuals. Some writers just include images that are relevant, but a lot of them read some study indicating that imagery generated X% more page views and y% longer reading times and just developed the habit of sticking something on every post. If you think those studies are valid and are still inclined to do this, consider mining Wikipedia or some other site for obscure but interesting things and including a thoughtful caption, as well as a link to the full resolution image.
- rroose 2mo agoThis is why I started creating all illustrations on my blog by hand. Maybe they are crappy but they are my crappy drawings.
- justafewwords 2mo ago[dead]
- dverv 2mo ago100% agree. If I see an AI-generated image in a post, there’s almost no chance I’ll read it. The same goes for YouTube thumbnails.
- xtiansimon 1mo agoThis is the weirdest thing—-I didn’t think anyone was paying attention to graphics and images anymore to care who produced them. My personal signifier of fake content is that voice on videos. It’s most found in ads about foods. Or says, “the thing they won’t tell you…”. I associate it with foreign language speakers making ads or content spam on YouTube. Or farming views with voice overs about WWII battles. I recently heard it on a YouTube viddy about ICE https://youtube.com/shorts/56btguFIhP8 https://youtube.com/shorts/56btguFIhP8 This voice seems fake to me.
- nedruod 1mo agoI use them, and the reason is simple - they attract users. All these directions to not use AI here, not use it there, not use it anywhere, they're all basically missing the point, which is what someone was trying to do in the first place. Without AI images, maybe some stock images? Or no image? No image is statistically shown to get less engagement on platforms that show images, so using no image is conceding to someone with a better marketing department. Stock images can avoid it being AI, but can be quite bad unless I have a lot of time. Make my own? Well, now I need a new skill, and instead of expressing my idea through one medium, I have to be skilled in two? And, next, don't use AI as an editor right? This is similar to the images trade-off. The writing is better when you have an editor. Sure, a professional editor is better (for now), but professionals are the ones with access to those. I just want to express an idea. Why does it have to be so difficult? Well, of course, one, because expressing yourself is hard on it's own, but two because of competition. I have no problem taking responsibility for the first, but these rules around the second are annoying. The anti-AI rules are just the tip of the iceberg here, but I think some awareness that appropriate use of AI is an attempt to overcome what were often dumb rules and biases. I totally get how the non-appropriate AI use is creates anger, and how that bleeds over to the appropriate use. But you know, I wish there was something similar about all of the non-appropriate things that are obstacles to communicating that pre-existed before AI.
- Roselol 1mo ago[dead]
- deterministic 1mo agoI really don't get the AI hatred. I have seen impressive work created with AI and really shitty work created with AI. The problem is not AI. The problem is the person using the AI.