alt Hacker News> If AI use produces obviously inferior work, how did it win in the first place?
they uses some AI placeholders during development as it can majorly speed up/unblock the dev loop while not really having any ethical issues (as you still hire artists to produce all the final assets) and in some corner case they forgot to replace the place holder
also some of the tooling they might have used might technically count as gen AI, e.g. way before LLM became big I had dabbled a bit in gen AI and there where some decent line work smoothing algorithms and similar with non of the ethical questions. Tools which help removing some dump annoying overhead for artists but don't replace "creative work". But which anyway are technical gen AI...
I think this mainly shows that a blank ban on "gen AI" instead of one of idk. "gen AI used in ways which replaces Artists" is kinda tone deaf/unproductive.
Replies
I've actually considered hiring artists to help me out a few times too under sort of comparable circumstances? I could use AI to generate basic assets, and then hire artists for the real work! More work for artists, better quality for me. Unfortunately, I fear I'd get yelled at (possibly as a traitor to both sides?)
Frankly, in the wider debate, I think engagement algorithms are partially to blame. Nuanced approaches don't get engagement, so on every topic everyone is split into two or more tribes yelling at each other. Folks in the middle who just want to get along have a hard time.
(Present company excepted of course. Dang is doing a fine job!)
> AI placeholders during development as it can majorly speed up/unblock
Zero-effort placeholders have existed for decades without GenAI, and were better at the job. The ideal placeholder gives an idea of what needs to go there, while also being obvious that it needs to be replaced. This [1] is an example of an ideal placeholder, and it was made without GenAI. It's bad, and that's good!
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1l9j2kz/new_amazi...
A GenAI placeholder fails at both halves of what a placeholder needs to do. There's no benefit for a placeholder to be good enough to fly under the radar unless you want it to be able to sneak through.