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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not so sure, at all. I think folks are woefully underestimating most people's desires for at least some level of "authenticity". For example, in the past 6-9 months or so, it feels like nearly every random blog post or corporate announcement I read feels the need to use an AI-generated header image. I understand why - "stock imagery" has always been used to paint a scene for an article. The thing is, though, is that, at least for me, it just cheapens the use of imagery in the first place. Every time I see one of these now I roll my eyes, I think they look cheesy and stupid. Even ones that are photo-realistic quality, you can tell by the composition that it's just generic AI.

If you make something ridiculously cheap to produce, it also has the effect of discounting the value people take from it.

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MJ 6 is only a few weeks old or so though (I think…internet time is weird, but not 6 months for sure!) and is quickly becoming nearly indistinguishable from real photos. And that’s not even mentioning the obvious future v7.

We’re crossing the uncanny valley and soon enough you won’t know if an image is real or AI. The tell-tale signs will fade (already are) and the “authenticity” you speak of will actually be there. So to speak.

I don't think it really matters though.

I can already take a photorealistic photo with my camera, no AI needed. We don't hire photographers just because they can create photorealistic images, we hire them because they can take the right photorealistic images.

Thanks very much for putting the point I was trying to make so well and succinctly.

It's similar to how people are worried about AI killing all programming jobs. Yes, I've also been blown away by the ability of LLMs to write some code, but my value as a developer comes more from being detail oriented, understanding when requirements are underspecified, thinking through edge-cases, and then finally being able to turn this into something a machine can execute. Compilers didn't put earlier assembly language programmers out of business, it just required most programmers to program differently.

While I do worry about the sheer number of jobs (because I think more junior, entry-level jobs will get supplanted, which makes it harder to move up the career ladder in the first place), I think people will still want the expertise of good photographers.

I don't see why we need AI for things that already exist in stock photo portfolios, but for very specific things, especially where they are clearly imaginary, it makes sense.

Stock imagery is annoying, hopefully AI can kill it.

Maybe we’ll get ubiquitous local stable diffusion, companies can just send the prompts and then we can just skim the text to get the idea if we don’t feel like rendering them.

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