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Comment by chrisjj | Hacker News Reader

> 4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text.

How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

> How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

I use a web of trust. I have a network of known writers who don't use AI. I avoid others...I mean, most articles on the internet are relatively useless anyway and just for entertainment so I don't really "need" those in my day to day life.

The ones in my web of trust are enough for me,

Not OP, but it’s extremely easy to tell if an article uses AI images.

Are there vague images padding the article for SEO purposes?

If so, is there attribution to an artist? If they contain images and don’t attribute, I avoid the website. Either they use AI to make SEO bait, or they steal artwork. I’ll avoid in either case.

AI text is much harder to detect, not sure of a good way to avoid it at the moment.

Lack of attribution doesn’t tell you anything. If they’re licensing their images from a stock photo site, attribution likely isn’t required.

Hadn’t thought about that, you make a good point. However in that case the author didn’t feel it necessary to explicitly say the image is not AI generated, which means they likely share very different views about AI artwork and I’ll probably avoid.

Even without that caveat, if they feel it beneficial to pay for stock photos for an article I’m probably good giving it a pass. Most major stock media companies are buying fully into AI generation anyways, and I can’t think of too many cases where stock images really add anything to an article aside from adding to the page size by an order of magnitude.

Generally speaking, the human brain likes pretty pictures, and we're more likely to be engaged by an article if it has a pretty picture. Text-only sites don't draw as many eyeballs. Sad but true!

>If so, is there attribution to an artist? If they contain images and don’t attribute, I avoid the website. Either they use AI to make SEO bait, or they steal artwork. I’ll avoid in either case.

I'm not sure why you think every use of AI generated images is "SEO bait". I'm sure some (most?) are, but it's perfectly plausible a well written article uses AI art in place of a generic image off unsplash or whatever.

> I'm not sure why you think every use of AI generated images is "SEO bait"

Most of the internet is SEO bait. It’s the safe default assumption.

> If they contain images and don’t attribute, I avoid the website.

And if the images have AI-generated attributions?

So what if his criteria has false negatives? AI or not, ignoring noticeable slop will be a net positive.

> So what if his criteria has false negatives?

Then he unjustly undermines the livelyhood of human authors.

The AIs will applaud him.

If I'm reading your post correctly, I meant the opposite, he's still better off dismissing AI content even if some of it gets through.

But even the case I think you suggest, dismissing some human works because they feel AI generated, won't undermine anyone's livelihood: All audiences dismiss works based simply on their tastes, and "feels like AI" is just a new distaste to account for, independently of AI being involved or not.

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