Comment by gyomu

They're both pointless filler, but because stock photos are from the real world, they don't suffer from "detail collapse" - sure, there's not much meaning to be found, but the detail stays coherent as you keep looking at them for longer so your brain quickly realizes they can be safely skimmed.

Your visual system looks for detail, it's consistent with your world model but empty of meaning, it doesn't trigger your attention network, you can ignore it and keep going.

AI images do suffer from detail collapse - the longer you look at them, the less sense it makes. Look at the image in the linked post - the sculpture makes no sense, the code inscribed on it looks like real code - oh wait no it's not, the characters quickly blur into garbled scratches, and oh ? there's a smaller block of even more "meaningless" code nested into the first?

Your visual system looks for detail, it's inconsistent with your world model, so it triggers your attention network in search of the meaning behind it (things that are not consistent with our internal world model are of utmost importance to our attention), but there's none to be found. You've just wasted mental cycles on slop, whether you consciously realize it or not.

In either case shitty MSPaint drawings would be much better as they would express personality, and there'd only be the level of detail that their author judges useful, but that would require actual effort.