There’s also a class of “detailed agent written technical blog” that’s you can just scan and get the shape that it’s long paragraphs, tables of statistics, and dry LLM writing. You notice the blog has one or more such posts a day.
It’s a turnoff immediately if someone shares what their agent wrote.
It also has happened a few times they contain a fair number of misrepresentations and mistakes.
The same goes for your business. Your AI “art” isn’t eye catching, at first glance it’s lazy. A longer glance it’s unsettling. We’re heading for a really boring period in graphic design.
> I'd rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image.
So spot on!
And, with that Paint drawing, it'll probably illustrate what you mean and at the same time we establish some kind of trust; I'll know this is not just mere AI slop.
Public shaming and rejection are probably the best way to teach people it's wasting people's time and disrespectful. If you couldn't otherwise write it yourself for whatever reason it's best not to until you can.
"I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image."
Interesting because I'm seeing tons of YouTube channels using AI generated stick figure animations with AI voice overlays to trick people into thinking it's not AI generated.
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 helping to illustrate or explain the actual content then it seems very superficial to reject it based on how it was generated. In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand that could have been done an easier way.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
I find them very interesting and they make me more likely to remember your blog. I was reading that Gas Town post yesterday and despite all the backlash about the whimsical world and the ai images being sloppy and wrong, they still stuck in my brain more than anything else I’ve read this year.
The author say they’d prefer Microsoft paint images but actually I don’t think this is true of most audiences. People have the ability to make terrible paint images for decades and they’ve never caught anyone’s attention in a positive way, it’s not going to start now.
OP’s blog of white text on black background will be forgotten quickly. If I visit it again, I will have no recollection of ever having visited. I’m not saying they need to use AI, but to oppose AI with the opposite —- minimal design or even intentionally crappy design — will not have the intended effect of communicating “this is quality human-authored content”, it will just be forgettable.
Would photography discourage OP from reading a blog? Should I hand-paint my imagery? If I am the type of person that would use a camera, then maybe I'd be the type of person to hire a ghostwriter.
What I read , my western ego is so big I want to place my opinion everywhere possible .
Image is content , ai can generate art level images and an obvious slop . To read or or not is absolutely up to reader , not someone’s entitled opinion .
This hasn’t been my wife’s experience at all. She manually writes all her content, but uses AI images as sizzlers for the scenes (fan fic for popular shows). Short of getting the actors together for a million bucks, she’d be hard pressed to make these scenes a reality. It’s also supposed to be aspirational, like “what if the tv cast got back together for another season hey?” I think the average person just doesn’t really notice.
She’s had to figure out where the line is though. She tried using ElevenLabs to dictate her scripts, thinking it’d make things more convenient for her fans, and that lost her subscribers because they seemingly disliked the more obvious use of AI.
TFA is not about fanfic, which seems like a natural fit for illustration, but about technical blogs that really don't need it and are instead stuffed with distractingly fancy slop images.
My my knee jerk reaction is to agree, I really hate the obvious looking AI images, though I suspect ultimately it comes down to having good taste.
As much as I like to be on the anti AI bandwagon, for which there are plenty of good reasons. Some people use the tool (like any tool) well, to compliment their work.
Eg. this author uses great images to accompany their articles (except for one which is obviously AI), its hard to know if they are real or not but they support the text. https://tuhat.net/@jesusrrodriguez/
Regarding businesses, I think the use of bland stock images made most corporate sites awful years ago. AI is just accelerating and making it easier for the rest of us to create the lazy heartless "content" that has been so common from the corporate world.
AI-generated images discourage me from interacting with any entity AT ALL. Bar / restaurant posters, events, shops, anything. Because it makes the brand appear lazy. And in a weird way "anti-human". I don't have a better word than that.
It seems a particularly bad idea for bars/restaurants because people are very, very sensitive to food that looks _wrong_. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an ai-generated food image that didn’t look offputting.
Truth be told, they didn't put much effort into it before GenAI.
Those restaurants that use AI menus now? They just used free templates before. Few mom'n pop restaurants could afford spending money on graphic designers to work out a nice menu.
Usually they'd just use a template, send to the printer (or print it themselves), and that's what you got.
This is not surprising. Would you rather have handmade Italian shoes or factory made shoes sewn by a robot. Humans assign quality relative to themselves.
A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value.
For me the breaking point for images in texts was stock photos.
Before that, when there was a photo in the article it was a frame from a footage from the event or the photo, or the schematic of the device the article was about or something. Something relevant to that particular piece of information.
But then everything became click-bait factory illustrated by images that fit the mood.
AI images don't make it worse. Don't make it better. But they might if they get better at relevant infographics. For now they aren't good enough because they rely on a human for understanding of what are they to depic and humans often don't care enough.
I just sat through my first fully AI-generated presentation. The content was as bland and straight down the middle as possible. The slides were all generated by a standard design - a mix of text blocks, bullets, fonts, colors.
The whole thing was packed with information and completely worthless. I’m 100% convinced that before too long we’re all going to be allergic to this low effort crap, and craving actual people with an actual point of view.
I used AI to make a presentation that animated around (html). It had the look of the storyboard and the postcards had tweakable controls on them for the data I wanted to show. It was pretty slick, something that would take me forever (and I'd never get the time approval to do).
same here. our org just hired a new guy and he just did his first presentation, blatantly AI-generated. he said everything that had to be said on the first slid, then wasted 20 minutes going in circles.
llm writing style sounds so wrong once you say it out loud.
Eh. I tend to use stock photo stuff. Even easier than AI (and most stockhouses are now using AI, themselves). If it's important to the story, I'll generally generate it, myself (I tend to use OmniGraffle a lot). I'm quite capable of making my own images.
The biggest thing, for me, is provenance. I sometimes get amazed at how people just grab any image they want, and slap it into their blog. There's a whole class of scammer, that goes around spamming fake "we're gonna sue you" letters to sites (I have gotten them, for images that I know are completely clear of obligation). If the image really was ripped off, then they won't be scammers, sending the emails.
I'd rather someone use an AI-generated image; especially if it's just "window dressing," than they put themselves into legal jeopardy, by pirating images.
The main problem is, those AI generated images are only so jarring because they're so obvious.
As time goes on they'll be harder to spot. We're going to need a new way of determining quality as such obvious signals have a limited shelf-life.
Not that AI generated images are always bad. They are perfectly acceptable if used for (not an exclusive list): small separators between sections in large blog posts, or other decorative features; used to illustrate things for which no real image exists (as long as it's labelled as an impression/reconstruction/etc.). They're only really a negative signal if they're used dishonestly, to claim something existed when it didn't, etc.
"I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image."
The problem is, there are also AI generated MS Paint drawings that you can't tell is AI. We are only noticing the AI images that are in an 'AI' style. The AI tools allow you to make images you can't tell is AI.
145 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 67.1 ms ] threadIt’s a turnoff immediately if someone shares what their agent wrote.
It also has happened a few times they contain a fair number of misrepresentations and mistakes.
So spot on!
And, with that Paint drawing, it'll probably illustrate what you mean and at the same time we establish some kind of trust; I'll know this is not just mere AI slop.
Interesting because I'm seeing tons of YouTube channels using AI generated stick figure animations with AI voice overlays to trick people into thinking it's not AI generated.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The author say they’d prefer Microsoft paint images but actually I don’t think this is true of most audiences. People have the ability to make terrible paint images for decades and they’ve never caught anyone’s attention in a positive way, it’s not going to start now.
OP’s blog of white text on black background will be forgotten quickly. If I visit it again, I will have no recollection of ever having visited. I’m not saying they need to use AI, but to oppose AI with the opposite —- minimal design or even intentionally crappy design — will not have the intended effect of communicating “this is quality human-authored content”, it will just be forgettable.
There was zero depth to it.
Eventually it'll be perfectly normal to use AI-generated content (and use AI to summarize it), and nobody will bat an eye.
Image is content , ai can generate art level images and an obvious slop . To read or or not is absolutely up to reader , not someone’s entitled opinion .
She’s had to figure out where the line is though. She tried using ElevenLabs to dictate her scripts, thinking it’d make things more convenient for her fans, and that lost her subscribers because they seemingly disliked the more obvious use of AI.
As much as I like to be on the anti AI bandwagon, for which there are plenty of good reasons. Some people use the tool (like any tool) well, to compliment their work.
Eg. this author uses great images to accompany their articles (except for one which is obviously AI), its hard to know if they are real or not but they support the text. https://tuhat.net/@jesusrrodriguez/
Regarding businesses, I think the use of bland stock images made most corporate sites awful years ago. AI is just accelerating and making it easier for the rest of us to create the lazy heartless "content" that has been so common from the corporate world.
Those restaurants that use AI menus now? They just used free templates before. Few mom'n pop restaurants could afford spending money on graphic designers to work out a nice menu.
Usually they'd just use a template, send to the printer (or print it themselves), and that's what you got.
A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value.
Before that, when there was a photo in the article it was a frame from a footage from the event or the photo, or the schematic of the device the article was about or something. Something relevant to that particular piece of information.
But then everything became click-bait factory illustrated by images that fit the mood.
AI images don't make it worse. Don't make it better. But they might if they get better at relevant infographics. For now they aren't good enough because they rely on a human for understanding of what are they to depic and humans often don't care enough.
The whole thing was packed with information and completely worthless. I’m 100% convinced that before too long we’re all going to be allergic to this low effort crap, and craving actual people with an actual point of view.
llm writing style sounds so wrong once you say it out loud.
The biggest thing, for me, is provenance. I sometimes get amazed at how people just grab any image they want, and slap it into their blog. There's a whole class of scammer, that goes around spamming fake "we're gonna sue you" letters to sites (I have gotten them, for images that I know are completely clear of obligation). If the image really was ripped off, then they won't be scammers, sending the emails.
I'd rather someone use an AI-generated image; especially if it's just "window dressing," than they put themselves into legal jeopardy, by pirating images.
As time goes on they'll be harder to spot. We're going to need a new way of determining quality as such obvious signals have a limited shelf-life.
Not that AI generated images are always bad. They are perfectly acceptable if used for (not an exclusive list): small separators between sections in large blog posts, or other decorative features; used to illustrate things for which no real image exists (as long as it's labelled as an impression/reconstruction/etc.). They're only really a negative signal if they're used dishonestly, to claim something existed when it didn't, etc.
The problem is, there are also AI generated MS Paint drawings that you can't tell is AI. We are only noticing the AI images that are in an 'AI' style. The AI tools allow you to make images you can't tell is AI.