6 ms·

"Handmade" or "manmade" is about to have a whole new relevance on the internet. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but the mere suggestion that some purportedly cre

"Handmade" or "manmade" is about to have a whole new relevance on the internet. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but the mere suggestion that some purportedly creative "content" (ugh, that word sounds like saying "sausage meat") is AI generated makes me completely lose interest. Soon enough that might make me lose interest in whole swathes of the internet, but I can't deny that's been an ongoing process regardless for a while anyways.

ActionHank 3y ago
After their recent over-censorship of Gemini I look forward to Google's fair, even handed, completely unbaised approach to the delicate topic of race relations and tensions as the world's population slowly seems to descend into more hatred for each other over silly differences. /s
greenie_beans 3y ago
agreed, but i see this as an opportunity for creative people to make art and communicate things that a computer can't. i'm skeptical that an AI can write a great novel about the matters of the heart and feels like it's alive (not without trying). i think, in the age of generic AI content, that some people will be seeking authenticity even more than we do now.
- rchaud 3y ago
  So as long as creative people can overturn the momentum of the largest corporations sinking billions of financial and political capital into making AI synonymous with computing, we'll be OK? /s
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
- dogman144 3y ago
  Creative people hate this trend and don’t work that way (see possible optimizations via the grateful computer overlords). Source - know a lot of artists and writers. The creative classes already trusted this stuff the first round in 2008+, and it ate their lunch.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    i think you're missing what i said. i'm a writer. the only thing i can do is keep making my art with the insight of the human condition, an insight that an ai can try to mimic but will never be able to replace. and i think that people will try to seek out human created art because they're bored by AI mimicry, they'll want real connection with a piece of art or a novel etc. the real ones will continue to make their art regardless of market success, a payday, or technological changes
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      I can really understand the fear of having your paychecks stop. Many artists will continue to be artists, but some found jobs doing what they love and there is a shakeup going. Everything will settle at some point, but the transition will be rough for many.
      - greenie_beans 3y ago
        you're right. it's hard for me to be sympathetic towards that though, because i chose not to make writing my day job. but my partner is a journalist and we're not over here freaking out. perpetual lay offs have always been a problem in media during our lifetime. we'll adapt.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      And new ones are created. I started selling AI art but never once sold a human made art. Art is evolving and so must artists.
  - xetplan 3y ago
    Yea all creative people are the same. No creative person would ever be interested in new mediums of expression. The truly creative are just looking to do the same things over and over lol.
Qwertious 3y ago
If the content is actually intended to be informative, then it's a poisoned well unless it's been manually vetted for hallucination. If it's entertainment though, then if it works it works.
JohnFen 3y ago
We may be in the minority, but there are plenty of people who share our opinion on this. Whole swaths of the internet became uninteresting to me a long time ago. AI promises to make the rest of it worthless to me as well. The fact that AI models are being trained on public-facing web content without the consent of the authors has already driven me and others to remove all our content from the public-facing web, as there is no other way to protect ourselves. That eliminates a large part of the value of the web right there.
- smnrg 3y ago
  What strategies did you use? Other than quitting social media, blocking crawlers and enforcing an "email-wall" is what I just started to do with my personal website. I feel that it's hard to stay on top of "pretty please" robots.txt requests, especially with new, undeclared ones. I prefer word-of-mouth diffusion of links, skipping the algorithmic promotion game altogether. I decided that I won't ever rely on my online writings, recordings, or photography as main income again (I did that once: it worked, but it felt gradually poisoned by the need to build engagement.) But it feels weird that we got to the point where I have to shield a blog from bulimic information machines that pollute valuable knowledge, and I wonder what the right strategy is.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > What strategies did you use? I see no other strategies that could possibly work. All it takes is one crawler to get through or ignore your defenses and your work has been used to help train a model. At that point, the horse is out of the barn. Any partial defense seems the same as no defense to me on this point. But it depends on what you're trying to protect. My concern isn't actually that my content may get reproduced through an LLM. I just don't want any of my work to be used to develop or improve these models, period.
    - smnrg 3y ago
      Yep, we agree on ethical stands. It's not that the uniqueness of my work is lost or anything like that. It's the choice of not feeding.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
You might be in the minority in the context of this site's bubble but I don't think you're in the minority overall.
kurthr 3y ago
Best solution I've seen so far is to make the publisher liable for "generative" content, if they can't point to a human creator. Also, prevent any copyright protection unless you can point to a transformative human creator. There might be people "faking" the creation, but then it's not a corp, just a human.
tmnvix 3y ago
I was thinking just the other day that a recognisable 'AI Free' badge on sites that want to assure people that none of their content is AI generated could gain a lot of traction.
- rchaud 3y ago
  If the badge ever gained traction, every garbage AI site would slap one on.
rchaud 3y ago
The web has been headed down this road for years. We've all seen reputable blogs sink to publishing "Here are our favourite smart speakers for Xmas", to keep the lights on. What is that but a soulless piece of data-driven sponsored content pushing products with the highest affiliate payout rates? Google only cares about these types of sites now, because they are the ideal customer for Google Ads. They churn out content constantly, they advertise heavily, with Google getting a cut of every click and impression. And let's face it, YouTube is basically QVC for electronics, toys and makeup, all multi-billion $ industries that Google is happy to slap ads on top of.
Havoc 3y ago
The era of artisanal internet is upon us! Everything AI and a couple of folks still doing it like on the good old days haha
touisteur 3y ago
I haven't touched the spice in years, but I foresee some kind of content butlerian jihad very soon. It's already started on music, where YouTube is filled with ai-generated 'songs' from e.g. Sia, si much that I stopped using YouTube but for recording of live shows, and I guess soon this will be enshittified too, bye YouTube. Maybe very little in the scheme of things but not a 'view' or click from me.
smashed 3y ago
Nothing wrong with AI generated content if it's info I need and it's factually correct. The problem I have is that it's usually junk fluff pieces with way too much text for SEO optimization. I feel anything computer generated should be short bullet points or comparison tables, not long form text as it's just not good at that. For example think of a blog post where the author walks you through its thought process, trial and error and ultimate solution. That is very humane and relatable, something an LLM can approximate/copy but it will never be genuine. I'd prefer in that case just the raw solution, not a fake and deceptive walkthrough.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I fully expect the norm to become some LLM layer which takes such fluff and condenses it into such fact dense text, maybe as a browser plugin.
  - bratbag 3y ago
    If that happens the next generation of SEO will be creating content designed to bubble up through that layer.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Of course! But at least there will be less text to skim through.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  except, translated to other languages with zero effort by the publisher. I agree with the sentiment, at the same time commercial drivers will fill the pipes with low-quality content quickly, because $MONEY. The literate, subtle and artsy are once again buried in commercial content. The only way forward is rebuilding chains of editorial recommendation. Ordinary browsing will become a junk-fest. It appears the pandora's box is opened once again. What was really jarring recently was to browse literate, subtle and artsy content only to be repeatedly interrupted by genuinely offensive and/or borderline scam content ads, then back to the chosen content. real.
ItsMattyG 3y ago
Interesting, for me this is only true as long as the AI generated content is worse. There's some things I really care about the human experience for, but much content it just matters to me if it's a joy to ride.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Yeah, right now most human written content isn't that good, either. Quality writing has largely been abandoned for verbosity and formality, offends no one, and often lacks substance or that human touch. I'm guessing AI content will be about as flavorless. But time will tell.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Yeah. It is difficult see AI supplanting humans for the things you go outside for, but any human involvement on the internet has always just been an implementation detail.

ActionHank 3y ago

After their recent over-censorship of Gemini I look forward to Google's fair, even handed, completely unbaised approach to the delicate topic of race relations and tensions as the world's population slowly seems to descend into more hatred for each other over silly differences. /s

greenie_beans 3y ago

agreed, but i see this as an opportunity for creative people to make art and communicate things that a computer can't. i'm skeptical that an AI can write a great novel about the matters of the heart and feels like it's alive (not without trying). i think, in the age of generic AI content, that some people will be seeking authenticity even more than we do now.

rchaud 3y ago
So as long as creative people can overturn the momentum of the largest corporations sinking billions of financial and political capital into making AI synonymous with computing, we'll be OK? /s
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement
dogman144 3y ago
Creative people hate this trend and don’t work that way (see possible optimizations via the grateful computer overlords). Source - know a lot of artists and writers. The creative classes already trusted this stuff the first round in 2008+, and it ate their lunch.
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  i think you're missing what i said. i'm a writer. the only thing i can do is keep making my art with the insight of the human condition, an insight that an ai can try to mimic but will never be able to replace. and i think that people will try to seek out human created art because they're bored by AI mimicry, they'll want real connection with a piece of art or a novel etc. the real ones will continue to make their art regardless of market success, a payday, or technological changes
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I can really understand the fear of having your paychecks stop. Many artists will continue to be artists, but some found jobs doing what they love and there is a shakeup going. Everything will settle at some point, but the transition will be rough for many.
    - greenie_beans 3y ago
      you're right. it's hard for me to be sympathetic towards that though, because i chose not to make writing my day job. but my partner is a journalist and we're not over here freaking out. perpetual lay offs have always been a problem in media during our lifetime. we'll adapt.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    And new ones are created. I started selling AI art but never once sold a human made art. Art is evolving and so must artists.
- xetplan 3y ago
  Yea all creative people are the same. No creative person would ever be interested in new mediums of expression. The truly creative are just looking to do the same things over and over lol.

Qwertious 3y ago

If the content is actually intended to be informative, then it's a poisoned well unless it's been manually vetted for hallucination. If it's entertainment though, then if it works it works.

JohnFen 3y ago

We may be in the minority, but there are plenty of people who share our opinion on this. Whole swaths of the internet became uninteresting to me a long time ago. AI promises to make the rest of it worthless to me as well. The fact that AI models are being trained on public-facing web content without the consent of the authors has already driven me and others to remove all our content from the public-facing web, as there is no other way to protect ourselves. That eliminates a large part of the value of the web right there.

smnrg 3y ago
What strategies did you use? Other than quitting social media, blocking crawlers and enforcing an "email-wall" is what I just started to do with my personal website. I feel that it's hard to stay on top of "pretty please" robots.txt requests, especially with new, undeclared ones. I prefer word-of-mouth diffusion of links, skipping the algorithmic promotion game altogether. I decided that I won't ever rely on my online writings, recordings, or photography as main income again (I did that once: it worked, but it felt gradually poisoned by the need to build engagement.) But it feels weird that we got to the point where I have to shield a blog from bulimic information machines that pollute valuable knowledge, and I wonder what the right strategy is.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > What strategies did you use? I see no other strategies that could possibly work. All it takes is one crawler to get through or ignore your defenses and your work has been used to help train a model. At that point, the horse is out of the barn. Any partial defense seems the same as no defense to me on this point. But it depends on what you're trying to protect. My concern isn't actually that my content may get reproduced through an LLM. I just don't want any of my work to be used to develop or improve these models, period.
  - smnrg 3y ago
    Yep, we agree on ethical stands. It's not that the uniqueness of my work is lost or anything like that. It's the choice of not feeding.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

You might be in the minority in the context of this site's bubble but I don't think you're in the minority overall.

kurthr 3y ago

Best solution I've seen so far is to make the publisher liable for "generative" content, if they can't point to a human creator. Also, prevent any copyright protection unless you can point to a transformative human creator. There might be people "faking" the creation, but then it's not a corp, just a human.

tmnvix 3y ago

I was thinking just the other day that a recognisable 'AI Free' badge on sites that want to assure people that none of their content is AI generated could gain a lot of traction.

rchaud 3y ago
If the badge ever gained traction, every garbage AI site would slap one on.

rchaud 3y ago

The web has been headed down this road for years. We've all seen reputable blogs sink to publishing "Here are our favourite smart speakers for Xmas", to keep the lights on. What is that but a soulless piece of data-driven sponsored content pushing products with the highest affiliate payout rates? Google only cares about these types of sites now, because they are the ideal customer for Google Ads. They churn out content constantly, they advertise heavily, with Google getting a cut of every click and impression. And let's face it, YouTube is basically QVC for electronics, toys and makeup, all multi-billion $ industries that Google is happy to slap ads on top of.

Havoc 3y ago

The era of artisanal internet is upon us! Everything AI and a couple of folks still doing it like on the good old days haha

touisteur 3y ago

I haven't touched the spice in years, but I foresee some kind of content butlerian jihad very soon. It's already started on music, where YouTube is filled with ai-generated 'songs' from e.g. Sia, si much that I stopped using YouTube but for recording of live shows, and I guess soon this will be enshittified too, bye YouTube. Maybe very little in the scheme of things but not a 'view' or click from me.

smashed 3y ago

Nothing wrong with AI generated content if it's info I need and it's factually correct. The problem I have is that it's usually junk fluff pieces with way too much text for SEO optimization. I feel anything computer generated should be short bullet points or comparison tables, not long form text as it's just not good at that. For example think of a blog post where the author walks you through its thought process, trial and error and ultimate solution. That is very humane and relatable, something an LLM can approximate/copy but it will never be genuine. I'd prefer in that case just the raw solution, not a fake and deceptive walkthrough.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I fully expect the norm to become some LLM layer which takes such fluff and condenses it into such fact dense text, maybe as a browser plugin.
- bratbag 3y ago
  If that happens the next generation of SEO will be creating content designed to bubble up through that layer.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Of course! But at least there will be less text to skim through.
mistrial9 3y ago
except, translated to other languages with zero effort by the publisher. I agree with the sentiment, at the same time commercial drivers will fill the pipes with low-quality content quickly, because $MONEY. The literate, subtle and artsy are once again buried in commercial content. The only way forward is rebuilding chains of editorial recommendation. Ordinary browsing will become a junk-fest. It appears the pandora's box is opened once again. What was really jarring recently was to browse literate, subtle and artsy content only to be repeatedly interrupted by genuinely offensive and/or borderline scam content ads, then back to the chosen content. real.

ItsMattyG 3y ago

Interesting, for me this is only true as long as the AI generated content is worse. There's some things I really care about the human experience for, but much content it just matters to me if it's a joy to ride.

ravenstine 3y ago
Yeah, right now most human written content isn't that good, either. Quality writing has largely been abandoned for verbosity and formality, offends no one, and often lacks substance or that human touch. I'm guessing AI content will be about as flavorless. But time will tell.
randomdata 3y ago
Yeah. It is difficult see AI supplanting humans for the things you go outside for, but any human involvement on the internet has always just been an implementation detail.