A lot of people in the comments say that the supposedly better examples in the article are still “horrible” because they can tell they’re AI and point to things that the AI did “wrong” and a human artist would do better.
That may be true if you’re working with a top of the line artist, but in my experience the average freelance designer online is significantly worse than AI. I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models. Will a great human designer produce better output than an AI? Maybe, but a small local event or business probably won’t have the budget to hire them or know where to find them. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to use AI to generate something that’s good enough for their purposes.
People also point out all the little flaws in the “good” examples and cite them as obvious tells that they were AI generated. I think it would be interesting to see if people could reliably distinguish between AI generated flyers and human made flyers. Sure, sometimes it’s obvious like when the AI adds those weird, cartoony people. But if the model is told not to create designs like that and stick to the styles used in the second half of the article, I expect people would have a much harder time distinguishing the human designs from the AI designs.
There's an amazing viral twitter thread where someone claimed a real Monet painting was an AI generated imitation, and it got an avalanche of comments from people who claimed it was an obvious fake and a poor imitation at that.
It's not tracking a real thing as much as people would like to think.
Yes, I think this is exactly right. The labelling of a thing as “AI Generated” or “AI Assisted” makes the viewer perceive it as worse in quality. And they really do think it’s worse.
It’s similar to a well known finding about price: people value things that are more expensive more, and tend to think they are of higher quality. You can give people the same thing for a high price or for free and they’ll say the high priced one is amazing the free one is lacklustre.
It’s like an optical illusion driven by labelling.
By many people’s criteria it automatically is worse, because part of what they value in art is thinking about the artist and their intentions behind their creation.
Similarly people may view an IKEA book stand as worse quality than one built by hand even if the hand built one has flaws. Or they might view a microwaved meal as worse than that created by a home chef.
People value the human intention and care that goes into creations. Without that it’s worse even if the output is fundamentally the same.
> By many people’s criteria it automatically is worse, because part of what they value in art is thinking about the artist and their intentions behind their creation
That’s a bit separate to what I’m talking about, but I don’t think there are many of these people. I think this whole thing is about AI anxiety coupled with American social norms, and as soon as one of those things changes the artists are going to be left out in the cold again.
There’s the idea of preferences and revealed preferences. People say their preferences and then their actions show what they really prefer. I suspect AI generated content, if curated by a human, would end up being people’s revealed preferences. There are a lot of bad artists and writers and whatever out there, AI would handily beat them.
I think at least for your niece’s drawings example, you’d probably prefer AI art if you had to choose one or the other until the end of time, not just one or two drawings that go on your refrigerator.
ajjenkins · · focus · HN ↗
That may be true if you’re working with a top of the line artist, but in my experience the average freelance designer online is significantly worse than AI. I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models. Will a great human designer produce better output than an AI? Maybe, but a small local event or business probably won’t have the budget to hire them or know where to find them. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to use AI to generate something that’s good enough for their purposes.
People also point out all the little flaws in the “good” examples and cite them as obvious tells that they were AI generated. I think it would be interesting to see if people could reliably distinguish between AI generated flyers and human made flyers. Sure, sometimes it’s obvious like when the AI adds those weird, cartoony people. But if the model is told not to create designs like that and stick to the styles used in the second half of the article, I expect people would have a much harder time distinguishing the human designs from the AI designs.
glenstein · · focus · HN ↗
It's not tracking a real thing as much as people would like to think.
Chance-Device · · focus · HN ↗
It’s similar to a well known finding about price: people value things that are more expensive more, and tend to think they are of higher quality. You can give people the same thing for a high price or for free and they’ll say the high priced one is amazing the free one is lacklustre.
It’s like an optical illusion driven by labelling.
paulhebert · · focus · HN ↗
Similarly people may view an IKEA book stand as worse quality than one built by hand even if the hand built one has flaws. Or they might view a microwaved meal as worse than that created by a home chef.
People value the human intention and care that goes into creations. Without that it’s worse even if the output is fundamentally the same.
Chance-Device · · focus · HN ↗
That’s a bit separate to what I’m talking about, but I don’t think there are many of these people. I think this whole thing is about AI anxiety coupled with American social norms, and as soon as one of those things changes the artists are going to be left out in the cold again.
paulhebert · · focus · HN ↗
What did you think about my other examples? (The bookshelf and the microwaved meal)
Chance-Device · · focus · HN ↗
I think at least for your niece’s drawings example, you’d probably prefer AI art if you had to choose one or the other until the end of time, not just one or two drawings that go on your refrigerator.
paulhebert · · focus · HN ↗
I would definitely choose my niece’s drawing for all time. Do you have young family members? That seems like a bizarre perspective to me.
Chance-Device · · focus · HN ↗
paulhebert · · focus · HN ↗
I’d go mad if the only art available was AI art as well!