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Ask HN: Do AI-generated images ruin technical posts for anyone else?
Every time I see technical posts with AI-generated feature images, I get extremely turned off. My assumption is that, subconsciously, it makes me think that most of the text is written by an LLM rather than by the actual expertise of the writer.
- unraveller 2y agoAs long as they are topical and not distracting the hero images are just there to let you know you are on the right tab. I'd prefer one included by any means as it can show a bit of extra effort in curating that image. I wouldn't want to see images just auto generated in the next.js markdown to html build step from the post's tags (like stock images used to be summoned code-monitor-out-of-focus.jpg) though I'm sure that's going to be a thing.
- MrMember 2y agoThere's a YouTube creator I follow who started using AI images for his thumbnails and it's very off-putting. It makes me not want to watch his videos.
- arresin 2y agoYeah same here. It cheapens the post for me (justly or unjustly).
- taylodl 2y agoAI-generated images and AI-generated text both have their "tells." Just because an author chooses to use an AI-generated image doesn't mean they didn't write the post.
- jslakro 2y agoBy the very nature of ai-generated content, a typical internet user is going to be exposed to a huge mass of ai posts. Then, to associate ai images with ai text is a logical step.
- taylodl 2y agoIs it? People tend to have a much easier time creating prose than they do art. Look at us here, right now!
- the__alchemist 2y agoDoes this bother you more than stock photos?
- jayceedenton 2y agoNot all stock photography is corporate cheese.
- ben_w 2y agoNeither is all GenAI; in both cases there are certain patterns — woman laughing at salad, the actors holding soldering irons by the hot part, hackers wearing black hoodies and having their faces illuminated by a projector showing a text editor with some HTML, etc.
- konsalexee 2y agoNot so much. I believe in the wild there are less stock images in tech posts, as engineers would not even bother to search something generic.
- jayceedenton 2y agoYes, please just choose a good photo. There are plenty that are free for all uses.
- minimaxir 2y agoIt just replaces one overly-generic aesthetic with another.
- ghaff 2y agoYeah. The reality is that many templates, etc. more or less require an image of some sort however generic.
- K0nserv 2y agoOr just don't use a photo at all if it doesn't add something substantial. A nice photo from Unsplashed is much better than AI slop, but it's often largely superfluous.
- i80and 2y agoIt's severely off-putting to me, and gives all the technical blogs which do this a real sense of homogeneity.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- onionisafruit 2y agoai images are the current version of those word clouds that used to be on so many blog posts.
- minimaxir 2y agoOne article header image I made was a word cloud style-transfered into an AI image, making absolutely no one happy except me.
- XenophileJKO 2y agoYou made me happy. What all these comments miss is it gives the author a way to be creative. AI image generators are amazing at what they can create. Be creative and go wild.
- hotep99 2y agoYes, it's a flag that the text of the post itself will be AI slop.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoTell that to Boing-Boing, with their AI-generated images of politicians ...
- tobr 2y agoI don’t think this is specific to technical posts. Using a cheap illustration makes the rest of the content look cheap too.
- recursivedoubts 2y agoYour concern is valid, as AI-generated feature images can indeed affect the perception of technical posts. The use of AI-generated images can lead to a subconscious assumption that the text is also generated by an AI Language Model (LLM) rather than a human expert. This can undermine the credibility and authority of the writer, potentially diminishing the value of the content.
- thierrydamiba 2y agoI think pretty soon in the future your LLM writing(prompting) style will be a differentiator.
- recursivedoubts 2y ago;) i'm not sure some folks got the joke
- ben_w 2y agoI was wondering. Trouble is, you can't see a cheeky grin in someone else's writing, so the alternative is that it wasn't a joke but a bot.
- bloopernova 2y agoI wonder what symbol or emoji could indicate "I am using genAI as a joke"?
- GaggiX 2y agoIf you notice that they are AI images, it means that there is something distracting in the first place.
- Frummy 2y agoI like it
- baggy_trough 2y agoI don't really like it when it's obvious. Many of them have the same style, which gets tiresome.
- Animats 2y agoYes. Any technical post with an irrelevant image indicates a lack of real results.
- setsewerd 2y agoIrrelevant images definitely cheapen the perceived quality of an article, but let's not conflate "AI image" with "irrelevant image." AI images are often at least as relevant as a stock photo, if not more so (assuming the creator spent the extra 30 seconds to make a prompt that's more tailored to the content)
- JohnFen 2y ago> AI images are often at least as relevant as a stock photo That's damning with faint praise, as stock photos are rarely very relevant or add to the writing they're tacked onto.
- setsewerd 2y agoI agree, I just don't understand this newfound hatred of AI-generated stock photos, when stock photos have always been bland and almost never a value-add for content. I'm especially confused about this for feature images, because I would expect in most cases any helpful image (like a graph or diagram) would make for a really unattractive or incomprehensible thumbnail, and thumbnails are where featured images get the most exposure (social media previews etc).
- exe34 2y agoI don't judge the book by its cover - I'll give an article a quick skim to decide if I want to read it. if it seems useful, I'll read it more carefully. if it's rubbish, I'll close it.
- konsalexee 2y agoIts impossible though to be unbiased. And I reflectm on my own biases, thus this observation.
- exe34 2y agoI don't need to be unbiased, I read mostly for pleasure, and whatever I read for work, is stuff I can test objectively whether or not it works.
- tandav 2y agoYes, dystopian soulless vibe of AI images is unpleasant.
- jfvinueza 2y agosoullessness that's ai generated content main trait
- bloopernova 2y agoI wish Kagi could downrank results that use genAI for text, images, or both.
- viraptor 2y agoWe don't have the tech yet. It would have massive amount of false positives/negatives.
- elpocko 2y agoOh look, someone has managed to mention Kagi casually on an unrelated post at HN; that doesn't happen very often.
- bloopernova 2y agoI first wrote out, instead of "Kagi", "a search engine that allowed user control of ranking" but it looked too clunky. I'm not affiliated with Kagi, apart from being a subscriber.
- some_random 2y agoNo not really, they definitely increase the risk of slop but not by _that_ much in my experience
- romanows 2y agoAny examples? I can't say I've noticed them in particular; I think my brain probably ignores AI, stock photo, and advertisements, equally.
- gffrd 2y agoNot so much ruin, as make me ask questions. I'll admit, I feel a certain cruelty to using AI-generated imagery alongside writing or information: it's disrespectful to the audience, and it cheapens the work.
- rapsacnz 2y agoWhen I see an AI generated image, I just think of the digital artist / photographer who missed out on a cut because of this image. That in itself is a pretty big turn off.
- ghaff 2y agoIf someone uses an AI generated image, the alternative is almost always going to be a CC-licensed or otherwise free image. Almost no one is paying for photography for a non-commercial blog post.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoIn many cases, I think it's far more likely that an image would not be included if it required paying an artist. It could be stock art or photos almost as easily and with that, not many people are getting paid for it.
- 123yawaworht456 2y agohow is their labor any more valuable than thousands of other occupations that were replaced or made redundant by technology already? besides, all those shitty blogs were using shitty stock images and bland twitter memes. budding artists generate revenue primarily by drawing risque pictures (primarily of someone else's copyright protected characters, but no one likes when this is brought up)
- fragmede 2y agoKeep in mind that website comments section are filled with a special brand of people and aren't actually representative of the population at large. People who can't stand AI generated pictures and get triggered by the very idea of it are going to rush in here to complain about it, people who are like "meh, it's fine" aren't even gonna bother loading the post.
- elpocko 2y agoI'm tired of all the AI hate here. It ruins HN for me.
- rpigab 2y agoSounds like something a replicant would say.
- pixelpoet 2y agoEh, every place is going to have its biases. HN just happens to not be the place to discuss solutions to the trustless distributed ledger problem, for example.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- talldayo 2y agoI've heard people say this defending everything from Theranos to cryptocurrency. HN isn't going to change.
- krapp 2y agoTell an AI to build you a Hacker News with blackjack and hookers and blind uncritical faith in the e/acc AI cult, then.
- elpocko 2y agoI've had a lot of fun running generative AI, and continue to do so. It's a lot more fun than paying attention to, or talking to shitty trolls like you.
- krapp 2y agoAnd yet here you are.
- wasteduniverse 2y ago[dead]
- lxe 2y agoNo. Let authors have fun. To me they have the same vibe as gifs or badges of the early 2000s internet: just something that people add to their content just for fun. In spirit, this is great.
- nektro 2y agoyep
- acheron 2y agoNo? Why would it matter if it’s an AI image or a stock photo?
- owenpalmer 2y agoI don't like it at all
- pixelpoet 2y agoI'm not a fan, but if I had to choose between AI images in technical posts and Pinterest in image search results, it's not even close to being the same level of cancer.
- signaru 2y agoI find memes to be more annoying as the meme stock images are far less likely to be relevant and to add any value. AI generated images, on the other hand, are sometimes used to illustrate something useful. Given a choice, I would personally still prefer non AI images though as I appreciate the effort and the "personal touch".
- hbn 2y agoWhenever I see an AI image I immediately start scrutinizing the details and looking for all the things wrong with it
- nonrandomstring 2y agoI struggled with this a few months ago and decided to not use any more gen AI images as a choice [0]. In the end there are many reasons to dump gen-AI for this specific use of generating post thumbnails. 1) The negative associations of readers mentioned by OP. People do assume that because some AI is used, all of the content is suspect by proximity. 2) The quality just ain't that good. Although we deliberately chose to limit to cartoon/non-photo-real, after a while you notice an ineffable sameness about all the AI stuff. 3) It takes away the fun of 5 minutes in Photoshop/Gimp 4) Maybe this has changed, or got worse, but we got a creepy sense of sinister censorship and embedded values in the AI, especially around race and gender bias. I got really tired of finding Gordon Freeman lurking in almost every image, whether prompted for or not. 5) Which raises the thought... maybe we are just shit at using AI image gen? In which case, why not use the tools we are good at (digital image tools) and have spent 20 years mastering. The whole AI image episode reminds me of something I saw when working as a music producer. In the middle of an album, a band took receipt of a cool new drum machine (actually the tech companies just give expensive new toys to big bands and names) and it caused problems. It wasn't that the machine was "bad", it was just so cool and distracting that it sucked the creative energy out of the band and became the focus. Eventually the tail started to wag the dog and some members even started to ask "How are we going to use the MPC in this track?", as if it had become necessary. That was the 1990s but I've experienced the same lesson about tech many times since. It's great to use new stuff. You should jump-in and know what is all about. But there's a time to walk on past the latest novelty and hype and not get hung up on it. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/nomoreai https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/nomoreai
- xk_id 2y agoWow, a great example of healing in response to internal tensions.
- JohnFen 2y ago> The whole AI image episode reminds me of something I saw when working as a music producer. The music world is full of this sort of badness. The same thing happened with the vocoder, autotune, and so much more. Until people learned how to use the tools, the use of the tools made the music much worse. I think the same effect threatens to happen with the use of generative AI for artistic purposes. The results of that use are going to be pretty bad until everyone figures out when and how it should (and should not) be used.
- wasteduniverse 2y ago[dead]
- xk_id 2y agoAbsolutely. I have become very “AI-phobic” and any author who unironically uses, or references AI I automatically consider discredited and therefore don’t engage with the content. This is not an irrational reaction or something that can cause regret later; in relation to my personal definition of “quality” and “value”, any affiliation with AI has consistently proven to be a very reliable heuristic for what I should not be wasting my time on. Apart from memes, that is the only major benefit AI is having for me; and it is actually saving me quite a bit of time.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoI'm genuinely interested to hear more about this. I really like most of the AI images (see post below), but it was subtle pressure from other people saying what you are saying that changed my mind. After putting a lot of effort into authentic writing, sometimes with in-depth research, does it really cheapen it to have an obvious AI thumbnail? I guess the signals are quite sublime. Does it say "trying too hard"?
- rurp 2y agoA generic AI image generated from a simple prompt is kind of the opposite of a deeply researched and well written article. Throwing the two together is incongruous. It doesn't personally bother me as much as some, but I certainly don't think they add anything to the article. At least the images are easy to scroll past. Useless AI features that actively get in the way of real functionality are much more off-puttting to me.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoThanks. Where I think I went wrong with it was to say; I'm a writer not a visual artist. I can do a bit of creative photoshopping but it's not really my talent. So why not use the tools available? That will free me up to spend more time on the bit I'm good at. It seems logical but it ignores a holistic aesthetic that, as you say, is incongruous. A good AI image is worse for the overall product than an authentic but awful bit of amateur art, or even a hastily chosen stock image.
- JohnFen 2y agoAny time I see obviously AI-generated image or text, I assume that the entire work is equally low-effort and tend to discount it. Doesn't matter if the work is technical in nature or not. Not saying that's right or wrong, just saying that it is.
- jgb1984 2y agoAI generated ANYTHING is an instant turnoff for me.
- srhtftw 2y agoIt has the feel of the fractal craze of the late 80's and the goofy websites of the 90's and I have yet to see an AI-generated image that improved the quality of a post on a subject other than AI-generated imagery. To me it's a signal the author either doesn't care about the overall quality of their post, or doesn't know or care that it's no longer special. Which may be fine for some kinds of posts but not a good look for anything significant.
- nazgu1 2y agoHave the same. Also I realized that recently I’m subconsciously looking for some weird phrases or sentences that might be AI generated and when I spot it I lose trust in what I’m reading…
- konsalexee 2y agoLike the article having the word "Delve" into the very first sentences
- StewardMcOy 2y agoAI artwork can definitely be more a distraction than a benefit for an article, especially if it's an image that you would never accept from a human artist. For me personally, I tend to notice and obsess over an image's details when I see something's off. When AI art catches my attention this way, I end up going over it for a few minutes, which detracts from the time I have to read the actual article. In some cases, I just decide I've spent too much time and close the tab. The image should be there to support your article, not distract from it. If you're going to use AI art, make sure it's indistinguishable from non-AI art.
- zzyzxd 2y agoWell, personally, not more ruined than before. I find most of the header pictures in online articles (not limited to tech posts) useless anyways... I saw Postgres post with a picture of elephants from Africa, Docker post with a picture of a whale in ocean. Like, why do you even want to waste your website's bandwidth for that? Nowadays there are too many of them that my brain just automatically ignores them.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoDon't care - it's a tool like any other. It can be over-utilized, applied wrongly, or any number of other misuses. Judicious use for illustrative purposes is fine by me. I don't get upset when someone uses Bootstrap to do their site layout or React to handle interaction, despite the fact that a designer didn't get paid or a programmer wasn't hired to hand-roll the code.
- sys_64738 2y agoGen AI images always seemed freaky to me as they cause folk to want to generate bizarre and freakish images and spread them. I don't like horror movies for a reason and don't want to see AI generated garbage at all.
- politelemon 2y agoIt reminds me of the trend just before, massive hero images for no good reason. This seems to be the next step in the wastage of screen real estate.
- krapp 2y agoI'm more concerned about the AI generated images that make it into scientific papers and textbooks[0]. [0]https://venturebeat.com/ai/science-journal-retracts-peer-reviewed-article-containing-ai-generated-nonsensical-images/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/science-journal-retracts-peer-rev...
- happytoexplain 2y agoAbsolutely. I think genAI is awesome - I love having fun with it. But when I see AI art used as an article header, it makes me cringe. The ugliness of AI art is a very specific kind of ugliness, and it has a particular effect when presented as article or advertising content. The vibe it gives off is something like cheapness, low-class, lack of caring, a sort of boring cutesiness, even a little disrespectful - I can't really give a succinct description. I'm sure there are plenty of good uses of AI art in this space too (I think I've seen one or two creative AI images that worked well with the content), but the bad examples are overwhelming in number, and they stand out.
- rsynnott 2y agoYeah, it's a turn-off; if they're using some cheap low-effort filler crap, who is to say they're not using more in the text? I'm a little surprised it has become so common; it can't possibly _add_ value.
- beej71 2y agoI don't assume the entire post is AI generated, but I do have AI-fatigue when it comes to images that stick out like a sore thumb. Just because you can put an image there doesn't mean you should. When the generative AI boom started, I thought it would be fun to use it to generate my next book cover. But I changed my mind some time ago. Gotta have the humanity in there, and AI just feels cheap, somehow.