Comment by mullingitover
21 hours ago
Relatedly: a tip for writers.
When an article has an obviously AI-generated slop image followed by a wall of text, I immediately know that the wall of text is also a mechanical product and I stop reading. There's nothing worse you can do to tarnish your personal brand than to open with obvious zero-effort graphics.
The text might be insightful, who knows, but the AI slop images are such an immediate red flag that there's no point in delving into it.
I say this as someone who uses agents heavily for work and has no bias against it for productivity. For creative work like writing think pieces, it's an immediate back button click.
I'm sure it's no loss to the author to lose out on close-minded readers. The author also added a little blurb to his article to address the concerns raised.
I’m very open to new ideas, my point is that the overtly displayed zero effort in production of the work imputes a low value product. Having boundaries and valuing the irreplaceable moments of your life doesn’t make a person closed minded.
When the material takes more of their time to read than it took you to create it, it’s an affront to the reader.
"Author" used loosely here
You are probably right but if you think it through, you would probably realize that's no different from using stock photos. Also, this piece you should really read. Its a bit better than the majority of opinions on this topic.
I disagree - finding a relevant stock photo requires you to do some searching and filtering. Using an obviously flawed generated image makes it look like you typed a vague prompt in and picked the first thing that came up without doing any refinement.
> no different from using stock photos
Thinking it through: yes, sprinkling stock photos all over your work as a writer is also weird and distracting, and would also blackhole a writer's credibility for me.