alt Hacker NewsAI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
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What if my blog is mostly about AI generated images? :P
100%. if I see AI slop images or videos I just click off, it's become almost automatic for me now.
I'm not gonna spend my mental bandwidth on figuring out if the thing is worth reading/whatever and that somehow the author just didn't realize that it's a net negative
Indeed - instead of pointless hero images, now we have pointless ai-generated hero images.
Have you seen Midjourney 8.2?
Pretty soon, you will not be able to tell.
What you really mean is "obvious AI-generated images".
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.
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.
That’s very rich coming from a person that uses monospaced font for a blog.
The moment I see anything LLM-generated it's an instant close tab.
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.
Some people are discovering the trick of “humanwashing” AI images by tracing over them by hand in standard drawing programs and applying their “taste” to produce something that looks like a human created it in the first place. What do we think of this?
It just makes me wonder what else in your content is AI-generated. Just sows a little seed of distrust.
The goal of someone putting actual ideas out into the world should be to establish trust, not create questions about whether the ideas are theirs or plagiarized from ChatGPT.
I find images are good for speed-reading; they convey information that otherwise would require much more time-consuming attention. I'm significantly more likely to read a long article, after skimming it, if it contains contextual images.
Personally, I'm okay with AI generated images as long as it's not obvious or slop: For me, a carefully-prompted image is on par with a carefully chosen photo, carefully chosen diagram, ect.
I also hold blog entries to a lower standard than professional content: I'm much more likely (after skimming) to read an imperfect non-professional blog entry than (after skimming) imperfect professional content. (And professional content is where I expect images that are higher quality than AI prompting.)
I think there's a difference here between low-effort AI slop and something made with the help of AI. I always wonder how many AI images and articles we consume without realizing they were made by AI just because a human actually spent the time on making the AI create a good output.
Same thing with dark mode.
If a content is making a positive impact on your life, your mental health, your family's well being, your general outlook, your future, would it matter if is from AI or from human?
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.
If I do it, I make sure it's a good image, not just slop that I prompt and paste in, because I can. And on rare occasions when I do, it's on my own gaming system with Stable Diffusion so I can have as many takes as I like, fairly quickly.
Never do it because you can - that is a no-effort thing.
This might be true for technical users, average users increasingly don't care about AI images and even AI prose.
Weirdly I might slightly prefer your AI-generated image if some thought is put into it to entirely average soulless and tasteless corporate stock photo. You know multicultural team or photogenic enough person doing some meaningless staged task. Those have no chance to adding anything to the text. Same really goes for clip art.
At least with AI there might be some thought or idea behind it. Even it is lazy slop.
If you're writing about something which exists in reality, then it is possible to take a photo of it. If you're writing about something which doesn't exist in reality, then it shouldn't be accompanied by any image.
Stock photos or AI generated images are always wrong. Real photos, no matter how bland, convey information from reality and are always right.
I agree. The human experience is the only thing that matters. If AI tries to replace or supersede that, then it's bad AI.
OK.
You can't cater to every single person out there. The author comes as quite entitled.
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.
Only if it has that AI look. What you don’t realize is that you can generate images that don’t have “the look” rather easily if you have an eye for it.
I stopped reading blog posts/tweets that have been AI generated.
If I don't recognize that it's AI and it helps me understand the article I am fine with it. Generative AI images don't need to be slop even if most of them are.
Belongs on Luddite News
Cheap AI image generation is a miracle and this article is dumb af
Barely longer than a Tweet. Low effort slop. /half sarcasm.
I record 20-40 minutes of "uneditied, one take no fake" Podcast/Vlog per day and have been using AI to generate the cover image + video description and sometimes title for YouTube lately. Also somewhat low effort, I admit. I have project ideas to upcycle the raw takes. (iSpooge Daily on YouTube, support links on channel page).
My likes and views are consistently up since using Gen AI for said tasks. It's extremely niche, just yapping about existence and ideas as a homeless unemployed software engineer in Christ on daily walks. Some of the most authentic stuff online, in my opinion, criminally underrated. The AI art covers and generated metadata are better than I could do even given unlimited time + resources.
Agree. Ai art looks like garbage.
you are but one person
If you use images on your blog, even if you are scrupulous about sourcing them, purchase licenses, or go by the same low-resolution "fair use" rules that Wikipedia does, you will get several letters a year from law firms claiming they represent a client who owns the right to that photo.
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.
Ok? That's nice.
As someone who adds AI generated images on blog entries (a single context-appropriate genAI image that is used for OpenGraph sharing), 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.
From [0] https://nelson.cloud/about/#skills
> 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?
I don’t have a problem with ai generated media in blogs at all. Nobody is going to take the time to hand draw a piece of art for a blog that takes them less than an hour to write. Pictures speak a thousand words and serve as a great intro to a blog post. Embrace the future.
"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.
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.
Clearly this was written by AI
niceeee
> 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.
Fuck it, I love em
meh - you're just acting old.
young people will get used to GenAI as a style and it'll become the new normal.
you can see it in the flowery AI writing that's proliferating into email and docs.
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 .
Still better than AI generated text.
No one is reading your blog anyway, they are looking for the video.
I share the author's sentiment.
But I have another hatred:
Monospace fonts in blogs.
what percentage of readers does it bother though? If 2% of readers just refuse anything built/generated with AI then are they worth accommodating? It sounds crazy but i distinctly remember people slamming their fist on the desk saying they will always prefer to use the card catalog at the library instead of Google when search was really taking off. At some point you just have to move on.
This seems temporary. AI generated images will become the norm for many applications. Today we wonder whether a model in an advertisement is real or generated, 5 years from know this wont even be an interesting thing to consider.
In many contexts, images are meant to illustrate a point. The human becomes the gatekeeper of generated content. The question becomes: does this picture illustrate the point I want to make. If so, you are adding your human approved stamp to the genrated output.