alt Hacker NewsThe business model is strong. AI is stealing traffic/money from creators. That's not a problem with the business model, it's a problem with AI. AI hyperscalers shamelessly monetize other people's work without compensation. Truly an awful dystopia.
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I disagree. The bare minimum they could have done in all these years was build a proper high quality, tightly coupled component library instead of riding this "copy paste your way to a result" trend.
Not stuff like shadcn and Tailwind Catalyst, but a proper versioned, tightly coupled UI library with rich theming capabilities made for the 99% of users who aren't skilled enough at design to be cobbling together their own design systems or editing a Button component directly.
Instead they rode the wave (despite being best positioned to redirect the wave) and they're paying the price.
If it wasn't AI it'd be the first version of MUI that moves on from Material Design 2 as a default. Or Hero UI v3. Or literally anyone who brings sanity back to the space of component libraries and leaves "copy and paste code snippets" behind
If a business model can't withstand being disrupted, it is no longer viable. It's like Uber putting cabs out of business with something better. Selling templates is now no longer viable, and blaming AI will not do anything. As Darwin would say, adapt or die.
The output of AIs that is "churned out" wouldn't exist without templates like this being used as an input to the training. But that isn't "Copyright Infringement", according to the AI companies.