> Pictures speak a thousand words and serve as a great intro to a blog post.
If pictures are so important, why would "nobody... take the time to hand draw a piece of art" or find a one of the many free stock photos? When I was actively blogging, I would doodle quick images to include all the time for this precise reason.
- Doesn't come across as consistent: You said pictures "serve as a great intro," making them a valuable addition, but simultaneously "nobody" is going to take the time to draw them? Why wouldn't an author take the time if pictures are such a great addition to their piece?
- It's also not true: you said "nobody" does this. I'm telling you I have. Here's another example[0] in this very thread of somebody who does the thing you're claiming "nobody" does.
Aside from that, the amount of time it took to write the post isn't even necessarily relevant. I think for many it's about trying to fully express an idea, presentation, enjoyment, clarity, compulsion, polish, [display in search results], or 100 other things.
People did it before and they do it now. Everybody doesn't do it, but it's not true that "nobody" does it. That could be part of why people's brains are honing in on it as a heuristic.
These statements are factually untrue or overly broad to the extent of being nonsensical. Hopefully, you can see how that would come off as incredibly disingenuous. [E.g. what did they autotune? What did they Photoshop? Probably some creative work that they or somebody else made.]
[Edit: Further, these don't really line up with what the comment you're responding to is saying. If all you did was write a prompt for an image, it gives the impression that you may have done the same for the text. At that point, if I care about what the AI has to say, I can just write a prompt to an AI myself.]
> What did they Photoshop? Probably some creative work that they or somebody else made.... If all you did was write a prompt for an image
Most serious AI artist are not just writing a prompt for an image. They usually have their own process and can describe it in the same detail any trad artist would.
But to your point about Photoshop/autotune, the basis of most AI artwork pipelines is some other creative work, like a reference image, just like you're imaging is the basis for those other examples. So the argument isn't disingenuous, you're just not familiar with how AI artists work.
For example, if an AI artist wants an exact composition for a scene, they can first create that composition by taking a photograph, or arranging it in a 3D editor like blender. Then they can use AI to "fill in" some elements of it.
I don't see that as any different from an artist using autotune to make their voice sound different.
Moreover, what about the synth example? What goes into synth music is connecting a bunch of wires and adjusting a bunch of knobs to tune the generated output of the machine. That's the same mechanical process as AI art.
I use AI all the time and do some paid work as an artist. Although I don't use AI directly in my own work, I am very familiar with the workflows in 2D, 3D, and video.
> 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.
The topic is "AI-generated images" in blog posts. Which, no, most of those aren't being generated with any of the more sophisticated techniques you're listing. And if they are, they're less likely to be the images people are complaining about and that are being discussed here.
People are complaining that search engines are overwhelmed by AI-generated writing and images. Several people in this thread are stating that they click-off when they see it. It may be developing similar to banner ad blindness, where people saw the pattern of spam and low quality output and developed a reflexively mental filter and stronger dislike of them. What number of potential readers is an acceptable loss? Most blogs are small, so probably not many. But even worse, as many have said here, it also harms their perception of the blog.
Outside of the many outright spam blogs generating tons of images, a lot of people creating the "AI-looking" art that people say looks "bad" or "obvious" are actually also putting time and energy into it too. Those things don't automatically equal quality or trust. In some cases they consider themselves the serious AI artists. These creators don't always know that their images "look like AI," which is part of why it's becoming a perceived quality signal. They'll say it doesn't, but people mistake some of my pieces (not AI) as AI. Art is in the eye of the beholder. (Incidentally, if you're reading this, ensure you're actually getting meaningful, critical critique and feedback. That's something that's an important cultural component in many creative communities.)
I take issue with how poorly phrased the comment's arguments are. Saying that people "didn't create anything if they used Photoshop", they didn't create with whatever "synth" is supposed to be, or that scientific research isn't real because of calculators are bad comparisons and inaccurate.
The author may be trying to make a point similar to the photography one mentioned elsewhere or something like "Well if AI generated art isn't art, art must not exist?" I'm literally confused by the post and honestly can't make out the point with how hyperbolic and outright wrong it is. It just reads as mud-slinging to me.
> What about the synth example
Does "synth" mean synthesized music? What about it? A synthesizer is generally deterministic and the musician is making a decision about exactly what nodes are being played. The use of something like an arpeggiator is predictable and deliberate choice (I'm not going to go into the artistic integrity tier list of every synthesizer module.) Text prompt-based generation is a much higher level of abstraction which often makes several compositional and stylistic decisions for the user, even with advanced prompting.
Comparisons like these are unconvincing, which is part of why the other comment isn't good.
For some group of users, images they perceive as "AI" now carry a spam association. So, is your music actually rising above the cacophony? Do people even see your banner ad? Do they instantly get a bad taste in their mouth?
Go ahead and use AI-images in your blog post, I'm not gatekeeping or going to stop you. If they're so great, use a bunch of them everywhere. But, I (and people in this thread or that I know) will assume it's blogspam and click away. And, if it's commercial setting and I'm your competitor, I'm going to view that as potential opening for differentiation.
> The topic is "AI-generated images" in blog posts. Which, no, most of those aren't being generated with any of the more sophisticated techniques you're listing. And if they are, they're less likely to be the images people are complaining about and that are being discussed here.
The person you originally replied to scoped their comment to "decent usage", which to me implied some more process than just prompting.
> Does "synth" mean synthesized music?
Yes.
> A synthesizer is generally deterministic and the musician is making a decision about exactly what nodes are being played.
Generally but not always. There's plenty of synthetic music that leverage stochastic components. The stochasticity is a useful design constraint and is part of the artform. There's nothing that says art has to be deterministic or that the artist can't leverage nondeterminism in their artwork.
> Text prompt-based generation is a much higher level of abstraction which often makes several compositional and stylistic decisions for the user, even with advanced prompting.
There's also a whole genre of synthetic music called "Live Coding" which is typing programs to create synthetic music in front of an audience. There's also nothing that says art is only about making low level decisions.
> Go ahead and use AI-images in your blog post, I'm not gatekeeping or going to stop you. If they're so great, use a bunch of them everywhere. But, I (and people in this thread or that I know) will assume it's blogspam and click away.
It all depends on who you're looking to attract. The people I've met in AI focused communities have been awesome, always looking to experiment, try new things. The people against them I find very conservative and resistant to change (not saying this is you, or that it's necessarily bad). Which is fine if that's your audience, you have to know your readership. It's sort of like the difference between startup culture and enterprise culture. One is known for being nimble and innovative, the other for being reliable and capable. Positive signals to one are anti signals to the other. Threats like "I and people I know and the people in this thread won't frequent your blog" are met with shrugs, because that just means you're not the target audience.
> One, fans here actually get to make anime in the US. Instead of needing to fly to Japan, speak Japanese, and preferably be Japanese to break into the industry.
Does this come off as wildly tone deaf to anybody else? "We love your product and what you do, but could we get it without associating with or paying you in any way?"
> ...Smaller and faster means more financially feasible so we can give better wages for artists and enable a new industry to thrive in the US.
I've been in Asia this week, speaking to artists and creators. The traditional systems do create challenges, but this just sounds like a U.S. AI-based company giving itself carte blanche to steal the cultural output of another country, wrap it up in and U.S. style business, and eventually push existing artists or long standing studios out of the space.
No, I don't think I want a smaller team of artists and animation professionals doing art and animation. That feels like a very sloppy outlook to me.
[Edit: While I'm sure the process is interesting for some, the introduction especially just leaves me wondering who thought this writing sounded good? Maybe the target market for this is AI investors or people who aren't actually interested in the artistic part of things, and that's why I find it such a turn-off.
E.g. "We could license good music," implying their music is bad? Maybe it would be less jarring if they didn't specifically call out the importance of writing?]
> Does this come off as wildly tone deaf to anybody else? "We love your product and what you do, but could we get it without associating with or paying you in any way?"
While there are valid complaints about animation production, I don't see any real comparison between the arts and broad manufacturing segments, especially when discussing arts tied so strongly to a particular regions and artists. I'm also not sure how your statement relates to this particular article and what they've written.
- Shutting down accounts with almost no way to recover them and nobody to talk to.
- Going back on promises of unlimited storage when you buy their products, then constantly nagging you about storage space.
- The worsening quality of search results.
- Cramming incorrect AI answers into the top of their search results, or pushing it in other products.
- Using their control over Chrome to try and end ad blocking.
- The wholesale enshittification and lobotomization of YouTube.
- They have $1800 phones they're putting restrictions around being able to run your own code on.
- The fact that when you search an app in the Play store, the first result is an ad for some other app.
- Their UIs is just death by 10,000 papercuts in general.
- Their engagement in politics, not just lobbying but a donation of $1 million to the inauguration fund for a wildly unpopular president.
[Modern] Google is a big company, with a lot of users, and more than enough problems for those users to eventually stumble into at least one thing that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
My current read of the situation is similar. If you go to other countries, there are slews of small shops, even in run down areas. On top of that, in places within Asia, the malls are also open and full of regional chains. It also feels like there's such a wider variety of certain goods available, because the little bakeries are doing their own thing, while in the U.S. seemingly everybody is eating Costco danishes.
"Passive income brain" people are not the only one's trying to "build revenue engines," that same sort of talk exists in corporate America. There are already people that that own companies which are there "to generate passive income for me," right now--there's a whole class of millionaires and billionaires that don't have to work. Passive income people didn't ruin the "content quality of the entire internet" and are far from the only ones doing so. Many of these folks are likely the ones that would have owned a hardware store if America didn't ignore it's regulatory duties while preaching about how "important" small business is.
In the U.S. situation really seems to have fossilized into a few big players/platforms, and they continue to freeze up through the process of things like private equity roll-ups. There's a thread on the front page right now about Amazon's alleged price-fixing tactics, which hurt customers and small businesses. Further: Real-estate is an investment, so for most being able to pay commercial rents is a pipe dream. Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side."
American's choose "convenience" when shopping and to put people in power that serve these large companies or their owners, not small businesses or communities. Dropshipping, creating a "sweaty startup," etc... it's all just people trying to make do within the system they're trapped in.
>Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side."
It has long been easy for anyone to buy health insurance without an employer in the US. If you are self employed, you can even pay for it with pre tax income.
The problem is it costs $500 to $2,500 per month per person plus $10,000 out of pocket maximum per year, which means you need a high income to be able to afford it.
I think we're saying the same thing. Most people don't necessarily [functionally] have the option (or at least don't think they do, there are sometimes ways through.)
But, public hospitals with low or no cost care exist in some of these places, and from my observation, I do currently think it's a contributing factor to why small businesses are more likely to exist. But, it's only one knob to turn.
What do you think happens when you get sick as a self employed person? Do you think a health insurance company pays claims? Self-employed health insurance = Orwell's 1984
At least when you work for a corporation you don't have to see the truly ugly side of health insurance claim denial. Many people don't see this until their 50s/60s when they lose employer health insurance.
> At least when you work for a corporation you don't have to see the truly ugly side of health insurance claim denial.
I cannot tell if I am being trolled. The only logical conclusion to this statement is you think “corporations” instruct the managed care organizations they pay to pay all claims. To which…lol.
A health insurance company can easily manipulate claim stats by paying claims to doctors/healthcare companies owned/operated by the health insurance company. Essentially moving money from one subsidiary to another.
First-principles.
____
A Fortune 500 company has teams of lawyers, HR departments to ensure that a basic cholesterol blood test doesn't need to be approved or fought to be covered. When you are no longer "protected" by the corporation you are fighting on your own.
It doesn't seem like you have any real world experience dealing with health insurance companies.
> A health insurance company can easily manipulate claim stats by paying claims to doctors/healthcare companies owned/operated by the health insurance company. Essentially moving money from one subsidiary to another.
No, they can’t. They don’t even own hospitals, where a good portion of the spending happens. Nor do they own the medicines that are the highest profit margin item in the whole healthcare chain.
> It doesn't seem like you have any real world experience dealing with health insurance companies.
You would be wrong, but to avoid appeal to authority, you can explain why the managed care organizations are terrible investments if they deny claims willy nilly. It is one of the wonders of the modern world, all 7 publicly listed managed care organizations are simultaneously pilfering their customers and their shareholders. And they have the same insurance prices as the non profit insurers, who all have to get their prices approved by 50 different state insurance regulators.
If the health insurance executives can pull off that kind of coordination to achieve that kind of theft, they deserve it.
> A Fortune 500 company has teams of lawyers, HR departments to ensure that a basic cholesterol blood test doesn't need to be approved or fought to be covered. When you are no longer "protected" by the corporation you are fighting on your own.
A fortune 500 company is likely self insuring. The managed care organizations wouldn’t even be affected by approving or denying the claims, the employer is the one paying. Smaller businesses are buying the same ACA compliant insurance as an individual would from healthcare.gov.
Optum Health: Delivers care directly to patients via local medical groups, urgent care centers, and surgical facilities.
Optum Care: A major component of Optum Health, this network employs or partners with physicians across the country to provide value-based care.
Optum Rx: Pharmacy care services.
International: Owns and operates healthcare facilities in South America and Europe.
It's not difficult to see how a Health Insurance company with 4,000 subsidiaries could easily move money around and manipulate claim stats.
While I agree with the sentiment, I need to point out your numbers are exaggerated. There are calculators available on these healthcare marketplaces. The calculator for my state shows I would owe less than $130/mo unless I earned above a particular amount ($36k IIRC). The next “bracket” would have me paying around $240/mo up to around $90k earnings IIRC.
If you were earning above six figures then your numbers may be correct but let’s be honest and not dissuade folks from doing their own research. Everyone’s goals are different.
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