8 ms·

To me there are different motivations to include imagery and some of them are just fine with AI generation. If the imagery actually goes to the substance of hel

• amelius 3mo ago
  True until LLMs become smarter than humans. At that point, you __want__ the AI generated image because it signals that AI was used.
  • pjio 3mo ago
    Best case it won't make a difference and trust is the norm again (imo). Even if artificial super intelligence will be a thing, it will drown in the swamp that is communication just like all super intelligent humans do.
  • DaiPlusPlus 3mo ago
    “AI signals” are not a hallmark of quality; it’s the other way around. A superintelligent LLM/agent that wants its content to be read by humans (…which itself is suspicious - if not ominous) is not going to dress itself up as a slop-farm. Also I’d like to remind all the AI boosters and LLM glazers in the audience here that if something is interesting enough to read, it will be interesting enough to write; if you outsource production to an agent then it tells me you don’t actually care about the output, and I won’t care to read it.
    • RandomLensman 3mo ago
      Not necessarily disagreeing on writing/reading as such - and there is an understanding effect in writing, I think. That said, do you care in a similar way about important or interesting calculations being done by humans instead of machines? What is the cut-off function machine vs human?
• EdwardAF-IT 3mo ago
  [dead]
• warpspin 3mo ago
  This. If it's actually an illustrative part of the text, include it, even if it's AI generated. Not everyone who can write can do graphics. If it's only decoration, leave it out. No matter whether AI, stock or custom made.
  • jerkstate 3mo ago
    not everyone who can think and solve interesting problems can write prose well, but there's still a lot of complaining about AI-generated text.
    • seba_dos1 3mo ago
      One of the reasons is that, most of the time, LLMs can't do graphics or write prose well enough either; otherwise it wouldn't reek of LLMs so much to people who put some effort to read it. Also, even poor writing or drawing can be elevated with some intentionality and personality, and using LLMs pretty much guarantees blandness.
    • cpburns2009 3mo ago
      You can use AI as part of your editing process. But it needs to be a process, back and forth with human input, and human editing at the end. What people primarily complain about it pure AI text. It has sentences a paragraph long using every punctuation mark invented by man. If you look at book you'll notice the same style of punctuation used but it'll be at 10% of the rate. You won't see n/m-dashes, commas, colons, semi-colons, and parentheses all used in a single sentence.
    • fidotron 3mo ago
      One of the most tedious ideas of recent years is the "great engineers are great writers" meme, unsurprisingly spread by writers.
      • tripzilch 2mo ago
        Unfamiliar with this meme. But I'd still rather read a badly human engineer written blog post than an LLM generated one.
• onlyrealcuzzo 3mo ago
  For every AI snob that's not reading an article because they see an AI image, there's 10 non-snobs who appreciate a decent usage. If you're creating complete slop, no one is reading your article in the first place. Full stop. The image doesn't matter. As with anything, it's about what you created, and creating at all - not the tool you used to create. The snobs and haters will continue to b!tch and moan. They always have. Always will. Your two cent elitist opinions are still only worth two cents.
  • egypturnash 3mo ago
    A slop image header is a signal that the text is probably also slop. Why should I waste my time on the off chance that your text is not actually slop?
  • sunrunner 3mo ago
    > it's about what you created But you didn't create anything in this case. Not the images at least. Which then casts doubt on the rest of the writing in said blog post.
    • derektank 3mo ago
      There is an artistry in assembling other art into a single cohesive piece. The film director doesn’t design the sets or give the performances or do the makeup, but they place an authorial stamp on the production by selecting what will and will not end up in the frame.
      • sunrunner 3mo ago
        > There is an artistry in assembling other art into a single cohesive piece I never said there wasn't, but I also wasn't talking about human roles where people in larger creative teams have some kind of artistic say in the final output of a much larger process involving other talented humans. That is a very different example and I think you know that.
      • righthand 3mo ago
• Gigachad 3mo ago
  You can call it superficial, but I’m not reading your AI blog, I’m not eating at your restaurant with AI food pictures, and I’m not listening to your AI music. I’m quite happy without all the slop.
• raincole 3mo ago
  Come on. We all know what kind of images this post is talking about. No need to play dumb.
• Thanemate 3mo ago
  >In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. Communicating low effort used to be insulting to the consumer, yet now I'm expected to praise it? I understand that we're not talking about monetary exchange, but we're still talking about my finite time in this world, time that I could've been invest reading or looking at something else. So we're going back to my favorite adage these days: If you cannot spend time writing it, I refuse to spend time reading it. In fact, the moment I realize someone's content is AI generated, I just feed the links (youtube -> transcript, blog posts -> link) to chatGPT and have it generate a summary. That's because if you're in favor of using your time efficiently then so am I.
  • RandomLensman 3mo ago
    Should everyone draw their icons by hand, too?
    • officeplant 3mo ago
      Clipart exists, free use art exists, the Gimp Green Pepper stamp tool exists. I would read a blog with extensive pepper stamp art before something with over the top hacker aesthetic AI generated slop art.
      • RandomLensman 3mo ago
        So what about the use of the odd AI generated icon, not some extensive use?
        • officeplant 3mo ago
          Gotta use the green pepper stamp tool for bullet points. /s Little icons would be less noticeable at least.
        • PunchyHamster 3mo ago
          The thing is that if you do it "right" (screen usage, correct when it is needed), it probably won't be noticed as AI in the first place.
• mannanj 3mo ago
  Same problem for me for sending emails, outreach, and other behaviors that signal human identity but it turns out to be an AI post. The area with grace for me is how much effort a human spent on composing the message - I wouldn't expect a message a human wrote >50% of and had an AI help grammar check, proof read and edit need an AI disclosure. But otherwise, if the identity is >50% have an AI disclose it. This is how I'd like for human-on-behalf-of-human outreach to work too, i.e. if my human secretary sends a message under my identity and via my email client, I'd expect it to be under their name not mine. This points out some long standing issues with lack of accountability and deception by humans through our time. Think: humans have been doing these things: - human have other humans impersonate them and send messages on their behalf (i.e. via secretary, receptionist, email, a VA, via social media via a social media manager) - friends or family answering your letters if your a celebrity Those behaviors, deceptive and lies, are insults to you at the expense of the gain of the liar. We haven't held them to accountability or a standard of respect before AI, and so we are facing the same challenges we did before AI - we just have more humans doing the same thing with AI as the <insert old human role here>. Why have we been unable to hold them accountable to the deception before - lack if transparency, lack of power to hold accountability to the behavior?
  • spacer-dinos 2mo ago
    [flagged]
• bonoboTP 3mo ago
  It's like styrofoam stucco on the ceiling. Decoration and ornament have served always to signal extra effort that went into something, signaling that it is considered important and valued by the maker/owner. But people also have incentive to do cheaper mimicry. And then the viewers have incentive to distinguish real from fake to see where true, scarce effort went. These dynamics are crucial for understanding the feelings and emotions around AI. Value is almost never in the thing itself or some inherent quality but in the social signals and relationships. (somewhat less true in very utilitarian engineering machinery or for sustenance level basic necessities).
  • RandomLensman 3mo ago
    That is one use. Images (incl. icons) can also be there to structure text and provide visual clues on what is where.
  • Gigachad 3mo ago
    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.
    • bonoboTP 3mo ago
      The article author should have specified more closely which type of image. Stock image sites had already made generic photos and drawings cheap to include. And indeed they look cheap. The more airbrushed and high quality the cheaper it looks. If a dentist website has cheap beautiful stock nurse photos, it's less valued than real photos taken by a photographer at their location.
      • PaulHoule 3mo ago
        Once in a while you get a good one, one that stands out among all the others, and that's a worse outcome because the same image will be used by everybody including your competitors.
• SecretDreams 3mo ago
  > The problem comes when the imagery is placed as a false value signal. If it is designed to send a signal of "this content took a lot of effort to produce because an image that would be hard for a human to make is attached to it" - but the image was generated without that effort, then it's basically a lie and insult to the reader. Well, the issue is the majority of AI images seems to fall into this category, which then trains my brain to treat all AI images in this way, rather than sifting for the few golden use cases where it's legitimately adding value. At work, for example, I'm more likely to go brains off if someone presenting content shows an AI generated image in their slides.
• brightball 3mo ago
  The only reason most of my blog posts have an image at all is because social media seems to want some type of thumbnail image to go with the post. If I don't have something, many of them seem to just grab my logo instead which seems...spammier. I try to find something better when I can, but the need to put something on every post is exhausting.
  • richinfante 3mo ago
    This is my take. Most of my (https://rich.sh/blog https://rich.sh/blog) blog posts, are of actual things I can screenshot or take a photo of, and if I can I'll use that. But, for abstract posts, random bits of code, notes, etc - it looks bad to have them be all the same generic icon or my headshot for them it seems off-putting. I'm not a graphic artist, so I instead use MidJourney generated icons for social / post icons that match the topic of the post.
• ngcazz 3mo ago
  No. Even setting ethical considerations aside, AI-generated art is lazy, looks gross, and signals poor taste whilst wasting computing resources. I think it's a perfectly reasonable principle to claim, especially if we're discussing diagrams. I'd much rather look at a low-effort hand or MS Paint drawing, there's more humanness in that than any generative AI turd.
• michaelt 3mo ago
  The most important thing to keep in mind, when considering AI images for helping to illustrate or explain the actual content, is that AI-generated images have a big trust problem. Take a look at the Google Image Search results for 'Engine Diagram' https://www.google.com/search?q=Engine+Diagram&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=Engine+Diagram&tbm=isch In the first row I get two correct-looking diagrams, then a load of AI-generated ones. Three cylinder heads for four cylinders? Two crankshafts? Oil pan labelled Crankshaft? Oil pan labelled Connect in rod? A four-cylinder engine with seven valve springs? Parts labelled up to 39 but a 9-item key? Spark plug wires that loop back on themselves? A crank shaft where the pistons aren't offset in phase? Four-cylinder engines whose exhaust manifolds have three or five openings? Then in the second row, I get "Parts of a V6 engine" showing a four-cylinder engine - with an 'Exhaust malvol', an 'extaust manivol', an 'exsoust manivol' an 'oilolaivt manivol' Savvy technical audiences have noticed this - and so when a diagram has a whiff of AI about it, they become extremely skeptical and distracted. Personally I only use AI-generated diagrams very sparingly, and very carefully.
  • voakbasda 3mo ago
    To be fair, the problems you describe existed before AI, though I concede it has gotten worse. What baffles me is why anyone would think it a good idea to post and host these images? What’s that upside?
    • TeMPOraL 3mo ago
      Same reason fishermen put baits on the hooks, or hunters make weird sounds: it helps attract unsuspecting victims closer, increasing the chance of extracting some value out of them.
    • DaiPlusPlus 3mo ago
      > the problems you describe existed before AI No, the problem of mass-produced, outright wrong, educational graphics flooding image-search results did not exist before 2023.
    • michaelt 3mo ago
      > To be fair, the problems you describe existed before AI To an extent, I guess? But in the past if one wanted a diagram and didn't care about copyright they'd grab an image like https://i0.wp.com/www.engineeringchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Car-Engine-Parts-Names-with-Diagram.webp?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.engineeringchoice.org/wp-content/uploa... and reuse it unmodified. In the age of AI, one can hand it to an LLM and get https://mechaniclove.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/engine-parts-1024x683.jpg https://mechaniclove.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/engine-p... in a different style. And with messed up labels and the wrong number of holes in the gaskets.
• singleshot_ 3mo ago
  > In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand I believe they used to call that "art."
  • TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
    No, they used to call that "illustration." The belief that we were living in a golden age of hand-made visual beauty before AI arrived is obvious nonsense. The golden age of illustration ended when Illustrator arrived. After that, everything became a mess of cliches and clip art, culminating with Google's Material Design, where everything looks simultaneously soulless, heartless, and bland. AI brought some colour back. A lot of the imagery is kitsch, but illustration has always tended to kitsch, so nothing really changed there. This is the irony of the anti-AI purity hunt. Most human-made work is crap. It always has been. AI hasn't suddenly sent the quality of creativity off a cliff. It's commoditised the low standard of most previous hand-made work and made it easier to access. The high end - the real talent - still stands out. But most people can't afford it, and even fewer people appreciate it.
    • timmytokyo 3mo ago
      >AI hasn't suddenly sent the quality of creativity off a cliff. It's commoditised the low standard of most previous hand-made work and made it easier to access. Yes. That's why it's called slop. And now we're absolutely swimming in it. I guess a small number of people like it, but then there's no accounting for (bad) taste.
    • aDyslecticCrow 3mo ago
      > "The high end - the real talent - still stands out" It's a shame we made it economically infeasible to ever more produce or pursue. The value of even mediocre art used to be that it still took a human somewhere hundreds or thousands of hours to reach that skill-level; and its existence indicate true care by the creator or commissioner. Heck, most historic art in cathedrals and historic art museums is crap by modern standards; they simply didn't have the tools and resources to reach high level in the craft. > "AI hasn't suddenly sent the quality of creativity off a cliff" No it has. Because there is no point anymore, no economic value, no recognition of the time and effort required. Spend 1000 hours to be called worse than AI. Spend 3000 more to be accused of using AI. Finally spend 100000 more, and finally reach above the slop; only not being paid a dime because AI is 90% good enough. Want to spend those final 300000 to finally get paid for your work? Or do you prefer working minimum wage instead. Just go to google and use their work as is, and crop out the signature. At-least then you still acknowledge that there actually is a value to creating imagery left. Welcome to the world of slop.
• andai 3mo ago
  > In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. Nah, they just forgot to use the "slavishly drawn by hand" prompt! >Redraw the attached image in the most clumsy, scribbly, and utterly pathetic way possible. Use a white background, and make it look like it was drawn in an old computer painting program with a mouse. It should be vaguely similar but also not really, kind of matching but also off in a confusing, awkward way, with that low-quality pixel-by-pixel feel that really emphasizes how ridiculously bad it is. Actually, you know what, whatever, just draw it however you want. Source: one of the ChatGPT image presets
• latexr 2mo ago
  > In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. That is not at all what the author wrote. They said they would rather see a shitty hand drawing than an AI image, they’re not “insisting” you make a hand drawn image. You could just as well use one of the thousands of free stock photos out there just like blogs have been doing for years before AI images.
  • ghaff 2mo ago
    Or, more likely, they just lifted copyright protected photos from somewhere on the web without even attribution,
    • latexr 2mo ago
      No doubt many (I don’t think you can conclusively say “more likely”) did. There’s a crapton of blogposts out there and no one has verified them all. That doesn’t matter one iota for the argument in the submission, though. And it doesn’t really serve as any kind of defence either, when we all know generative AI is trained on a massive corpus of images without permission or compensation, to a much larger scale and much larger impact. Go ask image authors and artists which one they’d prefer: having all their works stolen to feed generative AI or having random bloggers using a single image in a blogpost. At least the latter have a good chance of being attributed to their authors (and if they’re not at the start, they will if the post gets popular enough and gets backlash).
• tripzilch 2mo ago
  > In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. Would you also say this about the writing? It seems to me from your description that you consider drawing something to be harder than writing something. Which is fine, but to be fair, I'd also prefer that people who find drawing easier than writing, to not outsource their writing to an LLM. By which I mean I would prefer not to read that.
• account42 2mo ago
  > In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way. Its not. Putting in the effort makes sure there was a reason for it in the first place and gives the author to re-evaluate his assumptions.