Selecting a stock image doesn’t have this effect, even if it’s not related to the post. Even the most unremarkable stock image has the fingerprints of its artist, and the choice itself can reveal things about the author. They don’t have that hyper-polished unintentioniality and subtle uncanny hollow “wrongness” that generated images do.
And if you generated a pic I suppose you also generated your post, so I'm way less likely to pay attention to it.
I'd think in the former case it doesn't matter and it's mostly the text I care about to be interesting and personal. I don't read non technical blogs so I don't know what if ai images are a turnoff.
The "featured image" in Wordpress is what gets shown on the index page, in shared social posts, and other contexts. And certainly, the algorithms favor such posts over pure text posts, even if the text content in the spartan post is far better.
There are other factors at play, too. Many bloggers are lazy, some are severely time constrained, a few are fearful of legal repercussions associated with copying images off the Internet, and a majority are creatively or technically incapable of making their own images to include on a personal blog post.
https://disclosure.launchbowl.com/ https://launchbowl.com/ai_nutriscore
I think AI images can enhance a blog article as long as the reader is fully aware and trusting that it's just the auxiliary material to the blog has been generated, not the main body of value.
The point of repetition is to reinforce understanding by approaching the same place from different directions, so the reader can pin down your idea at the intersection of these various thrusts. Multiple arrows from roughly the same place going in roughly the same direction don’t constrain the expressed idea, instead they just make it fuzzier.
But please keep it coming. I need to spend less time idly browsing and the growing preponderance of AI is helping push me in the direction I want to go. My time spent on “social media” has dropped significantly over recent months.
Stock photos or AI generated images are always wrong. Real photos, no matter how bland, convey information from reality and are always right.
Rather than wasting time sorting all these out when the images are there mostly to break up a wall of text, some blogs simply use a few AI images. This way if those letters come, they can simply put them in the bin.
I don't object to this use of AI images at all.
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 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.
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.
> Other: Claude Code
Then the author said:
> I know there are plenty of things you can roast my blog for but at least you know for a fact you’re getting the thoughts of a real human being and not some LLM.
So it is OK for you to use AI generation tools like Claude Code and likely using it in your blog or using it to generate code, but it isn't OK for you to see someone else using AI to generate images?
With the above already stated, that means the author cannot guarantee that not a single use of AI was used in their blog at all given that we know they use Claude.
Why preach fake principles with virtue signalling and then break your own standards in your own blog post?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The actual content is written by me. If there are any code samples that were AI-generated, I'll call them out as such.
As someone who adds AI generated images on blog entries, I just do not give a shit if some people have opinions like this. Jog on?
The vast majority of bloggers in 2026 do so for their own edification, to their own preferences and choices. Whining about what they do is decided a beggars being choosers thing.
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 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.
I try to find something better when I can, but the need to put something on every post is exhausting.
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.
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?
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g...
There is negative value in wasting vertical space to put an irrelevant prompt output in an article. It makes me question the sanity of whoever is doing this stuff. Doubly so if they actually think they dumped a bunch of AI-generated text on the internet just for people to AI-summarize it. Like... what are they DOING?
If you push AI-generated content to make stuff look fancy, it's a bad idea. If you generate stuff to communicate more clearly, I don't see a problem.
Citation needed for this one. It could be because people don't do it very much? I think a very good piece of writing coupled with a crappy but intentional MS Paint piece could be very attention catching and memorable.
> OP’s blog of white text on black background will be forgotten quickly.
I actually get annoyed with the tech crowd always complaining at seemingly the slightest bit of flair or fun added to any blog. To each their own, of course. I've seen some really slick minimal blogs but I do like it when layouts gets creative--gawdy, even!--, so long as I can read the text. And you can always use reader mode.
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.
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).
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.
Often, you find ugliness and rule breaking as a backlash to an overly polished status quo. AM radio rock gave way to punk, hair metal gave way to grunge, and EDM gave way to hyperpop. The most iconic album cover of 2024 was the word "brat" badly rendered on a plain, garish background.[2]
[1] https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-s...
The latter, of course, which is why that's what I own. Aside from that, this is an absurd and grossly dishonest analogy -- that's not at all the choice here.
Some of the most fascinating games are between Stockfish and Leela. People who don't know this know nothing about chess.
Some of the most stupid things I have ever read are from those suffering from radical anti-AI hysteria, and it is becoming a primary means by which I judge people's intelligence. ("radical" is a key word here -- there are numerous legitimate reasons to be critical of numerous aspects of the AI boom.)
I won't respond further.
For me it's a reverse filter, the people I see doing the shaming, those the loudest most seemingly unhinged anti-AI folks - they get blocked / ignored and looked at as if they were the equiv of PETA activists.
Sigh
Images (incl. icons) can also be there to structure text and provide visual clues on what is where.
While AI images in a blog signify low effort high volume posting where the text likely was just copied from AI without any care.
So do with it as you wish, if you enjoy playing with AI and having it assist you with any part of it it's your corner of the net do with it as you absolutely wish and everyone else can kick rocks.
You can put it inline or at the end of the article: references, citations, further reading, "AI".
(It might also be the only way to stop training models on their own output)
Yes, this is what's insulting about it, the assumption that it won't be noticed.
People already tried to cancel others because they didn't agree with them. Eventually the most of people came to a conclusion that it is no good. I think at least that the most did just that. So I'm proposing another solution, just ignore what you don't like. No one is forcing you to read a blog that uses AI generated images or uses a wrong color for its background.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs
(Then again I was like 15 when this appealed to me…)
If the blog is otherwise not about being amusing or edgy, then the MS Paint is going to send a different vibe. In your examples the paint sets the vibe, which I think is what they were going for.
What about stock photography, IMO as much as I personally hate "overcooked" AI-generated imagery, it doesn't annoy me that much more than stock photography does on blogs.
I do however use it as a gauge of "if the images are generated by AI, how much of the text content is?" though, so...
Photography couldn’t qualify as an art in its own right, the explanation went, because it lacked “something beyond mere mechanism at the bottom of it.
I don’t see how blanket labeling all images made with AI as slop is any different from people rejecting photographs because they were made with chemicals and lenses.
In 100 years the same article will be written about AI art, and will probably feature the phrase “clanker slop”.
Speaking for myself, I have absolutely no interest in reading anything written by an LLM that I didn't prompt myself, under really any circumstances I can think of.
What a ridiculous conclusion jump.
It's the complete opposite of that. I prefer human things, human interaction, with human beings involved, which in some way reflect the human experience.
> most people make garbage,
That's fine, that's what sets truly great art apart. Not that it terribly matters, more care and ingenuity goes into even some shit instagram thirst trap picture than every clanker slop ever output combined.
These are lifeless things. Their only value is by referencing human creation which they debase with their very existence.
I've heard it all before.
Gate keepers wanna keep the gate as long as they can.
Ethical: favour the notion that humans should be who we look to for writing, and that some of them are hopefully meaningfully compensated for it
Political: favour the decentralisation of effort away from US cloud AI firms
Practical: there's too much to read in the world; a very useful quality signal is to favour things obvious people put obvious effort into
Personal: it is soul-destroying that we live in a world that suddenly devalues people and their efforts so completely.
I think perhaps you are showing your own bias here. But abusing people for their chosen principles is not a business-winning strategy.
If it were not for this, as a geeky photographer I'd get into it with you about whether Ansel Adams was really an artist, whether he's any particular benchmark or high water mark for photography, and whether individual creations are any less artistic than what he did.
I have a growing hatred for AI-generated images in blogs. It makes me wonder if the text in the blog posts is AI-generated to some extent. It’s always disappointing seeing these images in blogs run by individuals. I expect this from corporate blogs but not indie blogs.
I’d rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image.
I know there are plenty of things you can roast my blog for but at least you know for a fact you’re getting the thoughts of a real human being and not some LLM.
If you run a personal blog, please avoid AI-generated images.
Discussion over at Hacker News
[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.]
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.
It surprises me, that you don't know. But if you wanted to know you'd ask LLM, not me, right? So I'd rather spare myself from explaining it.
> I think it's totally fine (and even good) to talk about the flaws in stuff.
To talk about the flaws and public shame are different thing, don't you think?
Imagine if Kobalt, Craftsman and DeWalt were scummy as fuck, and a bunch of people went around on the internet shit talking anyone who used power tools, and calling anything they built with them trash. That's the reality we're in now.
If you read the summary/abstract and nope out because there's nothing interesting or insightful, whatever, but if you were interested in subject of the article and its assertions and you nope out because of an AI writing tic, that's just toolish.
I'm sure this has happened. If the author can speak with authority about everything that has written, then ya, I have to concede that is fine. It's obviously the most true when you are going to be engaging with the author. If you ask them a question and they respond, "I'm no sure, the LLM wrote it," that is a huge problem (and pretty pathetic, I might add).
> but if you were interested in subject of the article and its assertions and you nope out because of an AI writing tic, that's just toolish.
Meh, it I can find another article on the same subject written by a person then it's not too toolish. I've never liked this argument. It's the same thing with music. Even if I like a piece of music, and then I find out it's AI, I'm not going to listen to it. I can understand why people think this is stupid, but there is SO much music--even before it exponentially exploded with AI--that I can find something else I really like created by a person. Especially since when something really tickles my fancy, I like to read everything I can about the artist (which is an indirect form of engagement).
Have fun.