Images are already devalued on the web. Most people think that an article needs an image to not be a “wall of text,” with the result that many articles have bar

Images are already devalued on the web. Most people think that an article needs an image to not be a “wall of text,” with the result that many articles have barely relevant images that don’t add anything to the article at all. Like hotel room paintings, however nice they are, they are there to take up the space because an image is expected. Actually relevant images are real photos of the thing you’re talking about, charts and graphs, screenshots, diagrams, and so on. Illustrations can be important content (consider a bird field guide), but often they aren’t. Like the clip art and stock photos they will replace, these AI generated images aren’t a good substitute for the real thing, but I’m hopeful that at least people will have fun with them. It might be interesting to consider how AI image generation could be used for nonfiction. Could you give it five imperfect photos of a bird species and ask it to draw a good illustration? Or maybe auto-create a good infographic from a spreadsheet? You’d have to do something to keep it from making up data points, though.