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Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

samdickie.me

21–30 of 177 posts

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#21

I'm still baffled how so many people are willing to gloss over all the heavy lifting the user has to do to glue all this together. Organizing a project is still and always has been the majority of the work!

It'd probably take them a lot longer to learn to make the images than to organize a project (which is something they already know how to do). Doubly so for the video clip.

Plus this was mostly copy/paste - that's not heavy lifting!

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#22
"I haven’t found a workaround for this yet but I can imagine this would be a game changer if future improvements allow precise blending placement from one image to another."

ControlNet allows you to sketch or use a pre-existing sketch to then use as the basis for image generation. Allows for very, ahem, /stable/ variations between different sub-prompts.

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#23
Appreciate the effort but these demos have really quickly become so boring. If you can design an entire website with the AI tools, it appears its almost certainly a website you don't need to create in the first place. Either it has already essentially been made by somebody who actually understood and cared about the code, or it's such a trivial mix of stuff you're better off making a squarespace site or whatever. At least that is hardened and tested as a product.

Like, we should maybe give pause to the fact that this is at least the 20th demo specifically about "making a website." If this technology is so powerful, saves so much time, democratizes the profession so much, etc why are the demos all the same? Either people are unimaginative, which they are not, or perhaps this is pretty much what we can get from this in general.

Coding involve care and inspiration, and should not necessarily be reinventing the wheel again and again, even if youre getting the AI to do the reinvention for you.

But beyond any principled thoughts, just not seeing the returns here that people are trying to get me to see. Lots of laymen have been making wonderful websites for 30 years. Its cool the computer knows what css people have been using for those decades, but it only makes brittle uninspired things that only incidentally work.

I'd really like to know, beyond the hype, if any serious engineers have actually used this stuff for an extended amount of time. Ive tried and tried to use it and convince myself its helping me, but it just leads to so much frustration with the hallucinations and misunderstandings and schizophrenic comprehension of its own context..

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#24

As a designer none of these make me worried about my skill set, they all look pretty bad with the slightest amount of attention. The real concern is how ugly a world the capitalists are willing accept to cut labor costs, and we know the answer, just look what capitalism did architecture. Dogshit buildings everywhere designed by contractors to avoid skilled labor. What an ugly time to be alive

>Dogshit buildings everywhere designed by contractors to avoid skilled labor.

This seems to be the opinion of everyone on HN, but I never encounter this in real life (and do not agree with it myself). Where I live (mainly London, but I've spent a bit of time in some US cities as well) the buildings being built/applying for planning permission look pretty good. It's the ones built in the late 20th century that are hideous.

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#25
While such examples are no doubt impressive, I haven't seen these AI tools do anything that couldn't otherwise be achieved by following a simple online tutorial. Bootstrap a fresh project, write hello world or fizzbuzz-equivalent code in a random programming language, generate a landing page...all of these tasks have long been commodified and aren't exactly worth big money. So I'm not scared for my job just yet.

"But one day they will..."

Maybe, maybe not. AI could take over the world, or it could easily be that we are seeing the very peak of what generative models can do. It is impossible to extrapolate the current state of the tech 5/10/20 years into the future and make predictions based on where you think it will be. Look at self driving tech for a close comparison. Research has been plateauing for 5+ years and the tech is even going backward now due to safety concerns.

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#26
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is day one. You're seeing the results of amateurs adapting unspecialized tools. They're using minimal effort and still deriving head turning results. A great analogy might be all the folks making Geocities websites back in '99. Look at how far we've come from that. Can you even fathom where we'll be in five years? (Or even just this fall, given the pace of research and new startups optimizing models/workflows?)…

> Websites of 2000-2020 will look as dated as magazine ads. New websites will be rich and interactive as never before. Why? Do we need any of that aside from specialized tools (e.g. data intensive) for which it actually makes sense to use tried and proven tech? Im sure new things are going to come out of AI, they’re already becoming obvious. But using AI to build things we already know how to do and just add more com…

I'm truly amazed at this opinion which seems to be prevalent on this thread. The models are tools that already have the ability to accelerate your work now, and will massively improve over the next decade. Comparing it to things we already know how to do provides the ability to benchmark and see how much value it brings to the table. Being on the forefront, exploring, and hacking on side projects has always been the best way to understand new stuff.

"Using cars to drive down roads we already know how to traverse with horses and just add more complexity is bound to not go anywhere useful in my opinion."

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#27
I’m always amazed at the dismissive comments recent AI advancement generates: it’s not really creation, a human would do much better, it’s getting old, etc

Think about it for a second: a machine understood your request in plain English and executed it adequately, instantly and free.

If you can’t think how that will affect every aspect of UX and creative job I don’t know what to tell you.

And that’s not even touching on the philosophical questions like a LLM suddenly displaying personality, like Sydney, and mostly passing the Turing test.

The floor is shifting beneath our feet. This is for real.

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#28

I’m always amazed at the dismissive comments recent AI advancement generates: it’s not really creation, a human would do much better, it’s getting old, etc Think about it for a second: a machine understood your request in plain English and executed it adequately, instantly and free. If you can’t think how that will affect every aspect of UX and creative job I don’t know what to tell you. And that’s not even touching…

> Think about it for a second: a machine understood your request in plain English and executed it adequately, instantly and free.

And the same general purpose publicly available free AI can perform at that level for a very, very wide range of tasks.

Even if the general purpose bot is just 'adequate', how long until fine-tuned versions for specific tasks come out, performing at superhuman levels?

Re: Creating a landing page using AI tools and no code

#29

As a designer none of these make me worried about my skill set, they all look pretty bad with the slightest amount of attention. The real concern is how ugly a world the capitalists are willing accept to cut labor costs, and we know the answer, just look what capitalism did architecture. Dogshit buildings everywhere designed by contractors to avoid skilled labor. What an ugly time to be alive

I mean, that's been the trend line of every paradigm, hasn't it? Quality & craftsmanship being sacrificed to scale & automation.

I'd say the good part of AI coding is the democratization of programming. It'll be shittier than hand-crafted stuff but more broadly available and empowering more people to make their own stuff.

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