Comment by WarmWash

15 hours ago

It's more likely than not that every single person who uses the internet has viewed an AI image and taken it as real by now.

The obvious ones stand out, but there are so many that are indiscernible without spending lots of time digging through it. Even then there are ones that you can at best guess it's maybe AI gen.

People will continue to retreat into walled, trusted networks where they can have more confidence in the content they see. I can’t even be sure I’m responding to a real person right now.

  • As long as HackerNews community keeps the quality of the conversation high (with or without AI), I don’t think many of us will question this too much

    • Just the other day, I saw a comment on HN accuse another comment of being AI for no good reason. I personally thought the comment was fine.

      I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I don't really read too deeply into whether text is AI generated or not. On social platforms like HN I tend to just skim many comments anyway so it's not like the concept of "they spent no time writing so you shouldn't spend time reading" really applies.

      I know some people use apps like Grammarly to improve their language and stuff, which I can respect. But at what point do we draw the line between AI assisted text and AI generated text?

      I sometimes use AI to do research into the nuance of some topics to help me formulate a response and synthesize ideas, but if I ever get to the point where I'd be asking AI generate a response to the comment then I find it better to just not respond at all.

At the point now where basically any photo that isn't shared by someone I trust or a reputable news organisation is essentially unverifiable as being real or not

The positive aspect of this advance is that I've basically stopped using social media because of the creeping sense that everything is slop

Maybe not an actual argument for anything, but even before these image models everyone that used the internet had seen a doctored image they believed to be real. There was a reason that 'i can tell by the pixels' was a meme.

people only notice when they are prompted to look for AI or scrutinize AI

a lot of these accounts mix old clips with new AI clips

or tag onto something emotional like a fake Epstein file image with your favorite politician, and pointing out its AI has people thinking you’re deflecting because you support the politician

Meanwhile the engagement farmer is completely exempt from scrutiny

Its fascinating how fast and unexpected the direction goes