5 ms·

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 abo

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.

qlm 2mo ago
If you don't care about the images then don't have images.
- intrasight 2mo ago
  Or just have a podcast so that you don't have the option to have images.
  - pluralmonad 2mo ago
    It bothers my brain when a longtime followed podcast changes their cover image. You conditioned my brain for years to a certain image and pattern and now you change it? How dare you!
    - intrasight 2mo ago
      It's so weird that they all seem to update at once - which makes me think that it's my podcast player that's periodically checking. But that sort of an opaque process for me since it's not my area of technology.
- duplessitous 2mo ago
  No one ever said they didn't want images, this is a non-sequiturs
  - mejutoco 2mo ago
    > Some people have decided to offload image-creation to machines because what they care about is the text.
    - duplessitous 2mo ago
      Thank you for providing the text that reaffirms my statement. If you have the time to copy and past someone else's text, you should take the time to actually read it
bonoboTP 2mo ago
It's about experience visiting many sites and spotting a correlation. There is a very bottom of slop, the equivalent of the chumbox from earlier. But on the higher end it may be more like you say. If there are other indicators of quality, I wouldn't penalize it for AI use. It's like having lots of piercings and torn clothes and tattoos. You may be a genius scholar who is kinda into this as a hobby or you may be an actual lowlife who can't hold down a job and gets into trouble with the law all the time. People will always make snap judgments, you can't inspect every website in detail. So if you use AI, make sure there are some other signals of quality.
bee_rider 2mo ago
Yeah, everyone knows the best content is on a professor’s site from the 90’s, with no images. Maybe some figures, but if so, they should look like they were printed, physically cut out, and then scanned. Bonus points if the background of the image absolutely does not match the color of the webpage. So now we have this low-effort image generation tool. At least it doesn’t indicate that the author wasted a substantial amount of time looking at pictures. Still a silly waste of time, but at least it is a small one.
michaelt 2mo ago
Some use of hero images by bloggers is a deliberate style choice, to emulate the norms of professional journalism. A lot of traditional news outlets have a style rule that every article must have an image. Look at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news https://www.bbc.co.uk/news https://www.nytimes.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/ https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com etc - every article has an image. Even a report on something highly abstract - "BP reports record profits" - will be illustrated with a photograph of some BP-branded fuel pumps. Stories on things like cybersecurity and inflation get generic images like snippets of blurry computer code, banknotes etc. Some bloggers feel their blog is improved by adopting the style of professional journalism, and (among other things) put an image on every article. Even if for a programming blog good lead images are hard to come by. Interestingly, professional journalism organisations often have pretty strict codes of practice about images, and photoshop use. They have rules on everything from illustrating one rocket launch with a photo of another to posing the subjects to colour-correcting images to creating multi-image collages. So I don't imagine we'll see many AI-generated images in traditional news outlets any time soon.
- graemep 2mo ago
  > Interestingly, professional journalism organisations often have pretty strict codes of practice about images, and photoshop use. I seem to recall many instances of the use of incorrect photos, and the earliest I heard of was in the The Guardian in the 1980s before the general decline in media quality and standards.
  - michaelt 2mo ago
    Yes, the current standards did arise out of a lot of questionable behaviour. It's awfully tempting for a war photojournalist to pose the group of tearful women in front of the bombed-out building across town. Or for the celeb gossip reporter to collage together two photos without making it clear it's a collage. Or for the person colour-correcting a photo of a divisive figure to lighten or darken their skin. And the resulting rules are complex and at times judgement-based, because posing subjects is allowed in some circumstances, collages are sometimes allowed, some colour adjustment is allowed, and so on. Still, serious journalists aren't going to be illustrating their articles about US-Iran negotiations with chatgpt any time soon.
elictronic 2mo ago
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.

qlm 2mo ago

If you don't care about the images then don't have images.

intrasight 2mo ago
Or just have a podcast so that you don't have the option to have images.
- pluralmonad 2mo ago
  It bothers my brain when a longtime followed podcast changes their cover image. You conditioned my brain for years to a certain image and pattern and now you change it? How dare you!
  - intrasight 2mo ago
    It's so weird that they all seem to update at once - which makes me think that it's my podcast player that's periodically checking. But that sort of an opaque process for me since it's not my area of technology.
duplessitous 2mo ago
No one ever said they didn't want images, this is a non-sequiturs
- mejutoco 2mo ago
  > Some people have decided to offload image-creation to machines because what they care about is the text.
  - duplessitous 2mo ago
    Thank you for providing the text that reaffirms my statement. If you have the time to copy and past someone else's text, you should take the time to actually read it

bonoboTP 2mo ago

It's about experience visiting many sites and spotting a correlation. There is a very bottom of slop, the equivalent of the chumbox from earlier. But on the higher end it may be more like you say. If there are other indicators of quality, I wouldn't penalize it for AI use. It's like having lots of piercings and torn clothes and tattoos. You may be a genius scholar who is kinda into this as a hobby or you may be an actual lowlife who can't hold down a job and gets into trouble with the law all the time. People will always make snap judgments, you can't inspect every website in detail. So if you use AI, make sure there are some other signals of quality.

bee_rider 2mo ago

Yeah, everyone knows the best content is on a professor’s site from the 90’s, with no images. Maybe some figures, but if so, they should look like they were printed, physically cut out, and then scanned. Bonus points if the background of the image absolutely does not match the color of the webpage. So now we have this low-effort image generation tool. At least it doesn’t indicate that the author wasted a substantial amount of time looking at pictures. Still a silly waste of time, but at least it is a small one.

michaelt 2mo ago

Some use of hero images by bloggers is a deliberate style choice, to emulate the norms of professional journalism. A lot of traditional news outlets have a style rule that every article must have an image. Look at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news https://www.bbc.co.uk/news https://www.nytimes.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/ https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com etc - every article has an image. Even a report on something highly abstract - "BP reports record profits" - will be illustrated with a photograph of some BP-branded fuel pumps. Stories on things like cybersecurity and inflation get generic images like snippets of blurry computer code, banknotes etc. Some bloggers feel their blog is improved by adopting the style of professional journalism, and (among other things) put an image on every article. Even if for a programming blog good lead images are hard to come by. Interestingly, professional journalism organisations often have pretty strict codes of practice about images, and photoshop use. They have rules on everything from illustrating one rocket launch with a photo of another to posing the subjects to colour-correcting images to creating multi-image collages. So I don't imagine we'll see many AI-generated images in traditional news outlets any time soon.

graemep 2mo ago
> Interestingly, professional journalism organisations often have pretty strict codes of practice about images, and photoshop use. I seem to recall many instances of the use of incorrect photos, and the earliest I heard of was in the The Guardian in the 1980s before the general decline in media quality and standards.
- michaelt 2mo ago
  Yes, the current standards did arise out of a lot of questionable behaviour. It's awfully tempting for a war photojournalist to pose the group of tearful women in front of the bombed-out building across town. Or for the celeb gossip reporter to collage together two photos without making it clear it's a collage. Or for the person colour-correcting a photo of a divisive figure to lighten or darken their skin. And the resulting rules are complex and at times judgement-based, because posing subjects is allowed in some circumstances, collages are sometimes allowed, some colour adjustment is allowed, and so on. Still, serious journalists aren't going to be illustrating their articles about US-Iran negotiations with chatgpt any time soon.

elictronic 2mo ago

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.