Fair. 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.
AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
411–420 of 493 posts
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Because it took too much time before and now it’s essentially instantaneous and free?
My 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.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a blog, real images signify you spent a lot of time creating the post, it was very important to you, and you likely made sure the details in the text were accurate. While AI images in a blog signify low effort high volume posting where the text likely was just copied from AI without any care.
I don't think it signifies any of those things. This is all new stuff. Some people have decided to offload image-creation to machines because what they care about is the text. This stuff you say it signifies, it says more about you than them.
If it looks like cheap generic crap it’s probably cheap generic crap. Most AI imagery looks like cheap generic crap.
It’s flooded the market to the point average users are starting to turn away. Look different or be relegated to obscurity.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#414This is why I started creating all illustrations on my blog by hand. Maybe they are crappy but they are my crappy drawings.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I just don't think there is anything special about "art" and I don't think there is some specific definition for what art is. People create that's art. You can put different amounts of time and effort into it but I think it's just as lacking in imagination or respect for human creativity to distill this down to he worst case. If somebody spends hours prompting various resources and curating it, is that then "slo…
To summarize, this is a "you" problem. Just because YOU do not think there's anything special about art, it does not mean there isn't. Your lack of respect for art does not undermine the thing itself. You cannot have your GenAI products included with "art" simply because you want to. You aren't entitled to having your prompt outputs held in the same esteem. > If somebody spends hours prompting various resources and c…
> Your lack of respect for art does not undermine the thing itself.
Don't you see how this can be said for your feelings about AI art?
Everything you're saying about AI art, someone once said about some other emergent art form. Photography, CGI, digital illustration, synthetic music... with just as much conviction as you're displaying here. But you'd agree those other things have become artforms, yes?
To preempt the typical retort "Yeah but in those cases humans put in some extra X" okay why can't humans put in some extra X while using AI as a tool as well?
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to articulate this stuff, and especially hard to explain it to the AI infatuated among us because they don't really want to understand why people dislike the tooling they're obsessed with. AI is good at many things, digesting vast quantities of information, and code being most of them. Everything else to me looks/sounds like shit. AI music sounds dull and overproduced in a way that a lot of middling pop mus…
The biggest mistake is thinking that your aesthetics are "correct". You make it a personal slight when you espouse, that your aesthetic preferences are universal and then farther malign people with different preferences by saying that they are not aesthecticly minded.
> The biggest mistake is thinking that your aesthetics are "correct".
Good thing I didn't say that then.
> You make it a personal slight when you espouse, that your aesthetic preferences are universal and then farther malign people with different preferences by saying that they are not aesthecticly minded.
Aesthetics are just taste and taste is subjective and will vary by person. That said you can, broadly, achieve "good" or "bad" aesthetics based on opinions at scale. The predominant opinion right now is that AI art is bad. You feel what you feel about that, but numerous prominent people, numerous companies who provide services, etc. are all responding to the fact that people find AI art ugly in a variety of ways. Any stock photo site I use has an option to filter AI art, and if it doesn't I don't use it. Projects in the public space that are outed for using it get backlash. Various social media sites are demonetizing generated content.
And to be clear, me saying people are not aesthetically minded is not meant as an insult. Plenty of people I respect do not care how shit looks or feels. But they are a minority in my experience, and frankly, anyone working in an even remotely creative field probably does care. YMMV.
Be that as it may, though, aesthetics do matter to a lot of people, even if they don't discuss it openly or lack the vocabulary to do so. People will say it just "feels wrong," or it's "soulless." It seems to activate our brains very similarly to things deep in the Uncanny Valley, where it looks allllmoooost right, but then fumbles something subtle in a way that makes it off-putting in retrospect.
I don't think we'll ever get rid of AI entirely. I think it will remain in the margins as cheap solution-oriented ways to make graphics, and maybe video again if they can ever figure out how to make it profitable. But I have a feeling an AI video commercial would run on TV in a similar time-slot to recycled Billy Mays ads, and with similar function: cheap, already there, get the job done, and the audience is not discriminating. It's "fine" in the broadest sense of the word.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#417Fair 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.roshang…
that's pretty nice illustration work, I'd agree, keep doing it :D
I 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.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> especially hard to explain it to the AI infatuated among us because they don't really want to understand why people dislike the tooling they're obsessed with Your comment is an example of what the parent comment is discussing; the reflexive "you can't really tell and anyway you can do it better to stop people being able to tell and also soon it will be better so no one will be able to tell" is a gallop like the nar…
"AI Slop" seems to be misunderstood despite its simplicity: "this is sloppy/low-effort/unskilled work ... enabled by generative AI tools". > "People are telling you they can tell, and that they do care." In the same spirit, one could argue that "AI Slop" is actually constructive feedback to a small degree. It's a short-hand for "this is sloppy/low-effort/unskilled work with obvious utilization of generative AI tools"…
I do deeply enjoy that apparently among gen-Alpha, it's a common thing to say when someone says something really stupid, or makes something of poor quality, to call it "AI."
The kids are alright.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
On 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)
Are 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.
I 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.
Re: AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
#420That 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…
See 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.