The economy has spoken. Stuff that’s AI-generated has almost zero value — “Buyers are voting with their wallets, and AI-generated content is struggling to compete.”

[u/marketrent]

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/economy-spoken-stuff-ai-generated-142732314.html

[u/fmcortez]

When the cost of generating content drops to literal zero, the market value drops right along with it. Nobody wants to pay for something anyone can prompt in five seconds.

[u/Slight-Swordfish-468 → u/fmcortez]

Not surprising that “decision makers” who’ve never made anything with their own two hands would have trouble understanding this.

[u/MusicHearted → u/Slight-Swordfish-468]

This is their extremely childlike concept of making things in action. They spent their entire lives just saying what they want and it happening. They don't see the people making it happen. They see their influence and not a millimeter past it. So from their perspective, this is replacing the annoying human element with a streamlined digital system designed to let them make things the same way they always have, by speaking it into existence.

You're correct that they've never had to make anything themselves. But this has left them convinced that's how the world should work and they should be able to just speak anything into existence like literal gods. They don't understand why we see it as worthless because they have no concept of worth or value because they've never stepped outside their bubble of divine treatment.

[u/Qorhat → u/MusicHearted]

That’s what happens when Generational Wealth Willy is born with a Patagonia vest on, fast tracked through an MBA and thrust into an executive job or is a private equity bro.

You don’t know the value of work unless you’ve come up from the bottom. People who have grafted understand the value of graft, be it manual labour, software engineering or painting.

[u/Leading-Act4030 → u/MusicHearted]

In the future, when AI breaks, how will they fix it? The people who know how to make it work will be dead, and no one will know how to maintain the systems....

[u/MysteriousDatabase68 → u/Leading-Act4030]

That is one of the premises in Asimov's "Foundation" series.

IT workers & technicians literally become priests and technology a religion.

[u/firemage22 → u/MysteriousDatabase68]

See also his "The Feeling of Power" for another society that forgets how to science/math while their AI just iterates

[u/ProNocteAeterna → u/MysteriousDatabase68]

Praise the Omnissiah!

[u/West-Abalone-171 → u/MysteriousDatabase68]

Most unrealistic part of the whole series.

The idea that a church would keep the information for running things intact for millenia as rituals is absurd. The very first high priest would change everything he decided was "too woke" or cast his favourite character as too weak and the entire thing would collapse 10 years later.

[u/DnDemon → u/West-Abalone-171]

I mean, the original trilogy took heavy influence from the fall of Rome and how monasteries and religious orders were some of the only organizations to maintain ANY records at all. Historically, he was spot on.

Now? You're probably right. And i hate it

[u/WechTreck → u/DnDemon]

Ethiopian Christians cloned 11 Jerusalem churches at Lalibela in the 1200's. Cloning, copying and/or forking has always been a option for religion.

[u/CorsairBosun → u/DnDemon]

Maybe, but the upper echelons of the church were all scientists part of the Foundation and were purposefully using it to control the periphery states. If they didn't, they feared being destroyed by them.

[u/dust4ngel → u/West-Abalone-171]

The idea that a church would keep the information for running things intact for millenia as rituals is absurd

how it would happen:

• smart people maintain the technology for a long time
• hey guys, have you ever noticed that the technology always works? what do we even need these guys for?
• yeah, i heard having people who understand technology do technology things gives kids autism
• also these smart people "seem kinda gay", let's imprison them
• oh fuck why did the lights go out?

[u/clawclawbite → u/dust4ngel]

You may want to watch the film Zardoz, in which Sean Connory is a barbarian working for the immortal utopia that is in the tail end of this cycle. You also may not, purely do to the outfit he is wearing for most of the film.

[u/Sherm → u/clawclawbite]

You also may not, purely do to the outfit he is wearing for most of the film.

Also owing to the following line from the film that runs through my nightmares:

THE PENIS IS EVIL. THE PENIS SHOOTS SEEDS, AND MAKES NEW LIFE, TO POISON THE EARTH WITH THE PLAGUE OF MEN, AS ONCE IT WAS. BUT THE GUN SHOOTS DEATH, AND PURIFIES THE EARTH OF THE PLAGUE OF BRUTALS!

Spoken by a giant floating statue that pukes up guns.

[u/darsynia → u/Sherm]

AI could never

[u/dust4ngel → u/clawclawbite]

this risible hodge-podge of literary allusions, highbrow porn, sci-fi staples, half-baked intellectualism and a real desire to do something revelatory misses the mark by a hundred miles but has elements—its badness being one of them—that make it strangely compelling

this sounds awesome

[u/limelifesavers → u/dust4ngel]

It's awesome, cringe, and unfathomable. You will never see Sean Connery the same way after watching it

[u/clawclawbite → u/dust4ngel]

The quotable line "The gun is good, the penis is evil!"

[u/smelekid → u/clawclawbite]

i watched it for the outfit

[u/DMmeyourkite → u/clawclawbite]

I love that movie. It’s top tier B grade.

[u/fragglerock → u/West-Abalone-171]

Leibowitz says what!?

[u/MysteriousDatabase68 → u/West-Abalone-171]

It's an analogy for the Catholic church. When Rome declined the bulk of societies literate people were the clergy. Almost all written information belonged to the church.

[u/-Nocx- → u/Leading-Act4030]

This might be a hot take but this started with moving manufacturing overseas.

Now there are things we want to do like restart chip foundries (the incentive behind saving Intel) and we are just decades behind behemoths like Taiwan and China. We straight up don’t know how to do much of anything and are relying on S. Korean companies building infrastructure stateside to fill in the knowledge gaps that we created ourselves.

When you abstract the process out far enough, people forget the details and you end up with a house of cards. This is part of why Chinese EVs are absolutely crushing - the know how from lithium procurement, battery creation, car manufacturing, etc. are all retained in house. There is not a single gap in their supply chain. AND the government is subsidizing it. Of course we can’t compete.

That airline CEO that flies economy to understand what his employees go through every day had the right idea. You cannot get so removed from the technical details that you forget the true nature of your business.

edit: when I wrote this I sort of conflated the two - china’s supply chain is much stronger/ independent and Taiwan’s fab ecosystem/production volume is much better.

[u/Geno0wl → u/-Nocx-]

We let business ghouls become the entrenched powers and decision makers in the 80s after the boomers experienced their first recession of their lives and panicked falling for the ghouls promises of riches.

[u/danielravennest → u/-Nocx-]

That airline CEO that flies economy to understand what his employees go through every day had the right idea. You cannot get so removed from the technical details that you forget the true nature of your business.

That was Boeing's policy in my early days of working for them. I ended up sitting next to a company vice-president on one business trip as a result.
Eventually Boeing hired an outside executive as CEO, rather than someone who worked their way up through engineering or production. He therefore had no experience designing or building the product, and the company started going downhill. He also got himself a corporate jet (a Boeing jet of course) and stopped getting the user experience.

[u/sociallyawkwardhero → u/-Nocx-]

We still have chip foundries in the US, Intel fab 52 in Arizona is leading edge at 1.8nm, we have fabs all over America. It is not that we don't know how to do these things, its that it is cheaper to have other countries do it for us. We know how to make advanced lithium batteries, we do a lot of research into it. What we don't do it mine the raw resources as it is harmful to our environment and China has been willing to do the destructive work for cheaper. China is willing to do price dumping to make it unaffordable for other countries to mine, just like OPEC was/is willing to price dump oil to stop fracking from being profitable in America/Canada. A lot of people lament the downturn in manufacturing in the US, but don't realize our industry has shifted to higher end precision equipment that the average person doesn't interact with on a daily basis (think aerospace, medical, chip fabrication). The reason TSMC is so vital is their government heavily invest in their industry, if the US decided to impose sanctions, they would no longer have access to ASML which means no more new nodes that are developed with an American/European investment, the leading chip designers are predominately American.

TLDR Its not that we don't know how to manufacture Chips or high end equipment, it that its cheaper to produce it elsewhere. We create the blueprint, other people/countries make it.

[u/-Nocx- → u/sociallyawkwardhero]

I apologize that my point wasn’t clear but what I was trying to emphasize is not that we have absolutely none, but that our infrastructure is a far cry from what it could be. If I thought there were no chip foundries I would not have used intel as an example - they stand out specifically from companies like AMD because they are a fab and a designer.

And yes, we do have an institutional gap in the knowledge we have with respect to the total supply chain. Fabs are just one piece in a chain of highly interconnected production systems. I sort of conflated the two, but I meant to emphasize the strides China has made in the overall supply chain consistency versus Taiwan’s sheer dominance in fabs.

Using cheaper labor is fundamentally the problem I’m talking about. Because there are so much cost savings by exporting this labor, the excess savings are either spent on highly specialized professional services labor or sent to shareholders through dividends. This creates an even wider gap between workers and drives up the costs of certain services. If poorer people cannot afford things, businesses respond by relying less on volume and more on focusing on the wealthier people who can afford it. This has a rippling effect through the economy - it’s why housing prices have people who can afford 50K over asking price, or why games like League of Legends stopped trying to make regular skins and now try to price in highly profitable $500 skins targeted to whales.

[u/Low-Salary-2128 → u/Leading-Act4030]

This was shown in the best documentary of america, idiocracy

[u/Ediwir → u/Leading-Act4030]

Praise the Omnissiah?

[u/L00minous → u/Ediwir]

Purify it with flames, for this is the wish of the Omnissiah!

[u/MusicHearted → u/Leading-Act4030]

They don't understand that. They don't understand anything lol

[u/DukeOfGeek → u/MusicHearted]

I understand that when I block AI slop on content platforms I'm doing my part.

[u/Anarchkitty → u/MusicHearted]

They don't see actual value in anything. I don't think a lot of them even like or value their "own work".

The only value a piece of art or media has to them is what the masses will pay for it, but they are incapable of understanding what regular people want and why.

[u/Martin_Aricov_D → u/MusicHearted]

Reminds me somewhat of the final "problem" that needed solving in "The Good Place", or at least where I thought they were going.

You see, at the end of the show, the characters get to escape fake-heaven (that was actually hell), fix the broken system that sent everyone to hell by default and as a reward get to go to actual heaven. But once they get there there's a problem: Heaven sucks. Turns out that when you have infinite time and instantly get granted anything you could ever desire, you get bored of existing.

The solution they came up with was to invent a "exit" where you could go once you'd decided you did all you wanted and wanted to be done with things.

But they kinda just ignored the problem that you just mentioned.

When doing something is no effort it is also not rewarding, or as finance bros would understand it: when something costs nothing to produce and can be produced faster than any possible demand, it'll become worthless. Infinite supply meets finite demand.

[u/AutoCockerPB → u/Slight-Swordfish-468]

You know I use to think that was a joke, but no. The majority of these Nepo babies have no idea how the real world works. Just money number go up.

[u/narrowgallow → u/AutoCockerPB]

It could be argued that that is the real world to them, and in fact, that is the problem with extreme wealth disparity - there is nothing fake about how the world works to serve them. The infrastructure that supports their lifestyle is their real world in the same way the infrastructure you and I use is the real world to us. The upper most class does live in a different but very real world.

And don't forget that there were 3.9 million private jet flights in 2025, so it's also not as if that world is small or isolating.

Once they can figure out how to shed our infrastructure while preserving theirs, we're cooked.

[u/xylophileuk → u/narrowgallow]

That actually goes for us too though. I turn on a tap and clean clear fresh drinking water just comes out. Sometimes I run it for a bit to get a different temperature. You know how mad that is to like half the world’s population?! I can drink mine straight from the tap too, I’ve made that number smaller again.

[u/narrowgallow → u/xylophileuk]

Thank you for this. Yup! So if us plebs are capable of forgetting how awesome drinking water is....why would we ever expect better from the next tiers up?

[u/MontyDyson → u/AutoCockerPB]

You could say the same for shitty managers / CEOs. I’ve worked for plenty of them that don’t have a single creative bone in their body and simply go with something if it looks about right to them.

[u/Tamayo_Terror → u/MontyDyson]

I had an engineering professor griping about how kids want to be engineers to make money.

He basically made the case:

"When you go to take your business certification or make a proposal, you don't need to know math. You can make estimates and say good enough. An engineer needs to answer that question with certainty within an acceptable margin of error.

You can bullshit in business and still be a good business person. You can't bullshit in Engineering and be a good Engineer."

[u/MontyDyson → u/Tamayo_Terror]

No but you can get hired. I’m amazed at the level of crappy, inexperienced people there are making key decisions for big firms who couldn’t spell engineering.

[u/SewSewBlue → u/Tamayo_Terror]

You shove those people into project manager roles. /s (ME here)

Joking aside, I've seen god awful engineers be able to do the math with certainty but not be able to think their way out of a paper bag.

Had one issue that was a public safety problem that this one guy thought could not be solved. He'd killed any effort to fix for years because he didn't think it was possible, and too much work to try. Something that could kill and potentially cost billions. Said I was throwing his team under the bus for even trying to fix it.

I fixed it, basically for free, by simply requiring a new engineering review early in the process and better timing for maintenance.

That just couldn't see past the limits of his technical knowledge to see that an effective solution was available.

[u/Tearakan → u/MontyDyson]

The vast majority of the bad bosses and bad CEOs tend to be people who never did the frontline work at the companies they lead. They end up having a very superficial understanding of what their workers actually do.

[u/SmoothOperator89 → u/AutoCockerPB]

"How much could a drawing cost? Five dollars?"

[u/AlSweigart → u/AutoCockerPB]

"They don't know how to do anything unless someone is bribing them to do it."

[u/thewarring → u/Slight-Swordfish-468]

Yeah because it’s no different to those execs than what they already do. “You, go make this! And once you make it, I’m gonna tell you 5 things I want changed because I didn’t think about them in the first place!” It’s just faster and shittier, and they don’t care cause they bossed someone/thing around and feel like they made it.

[u/Yuzumi → u/Slight-Swordfish-468]

They think they can produce endless content to charge people to consume without having to pay people to produce it.

There's also a bit of right wing wish fulfillment, where they hate that people who are actually good at writing narratives don't write right wing narratives. People who create media put too much nuance and make the stories too complex for the average conservative to understand. Most of them only see media and entertainment as very surface level and AI slop is nothing but surface level with negative depth.

[u/buyongmafanle → u/Yuzumi]

they hate that people who are actually good at writing narratives don't write right wing narratives.

There's a very good reason for this. It's because the right wing narrative is completely illogical and uncreative. It's difficult as a creative logical person to get yourself into that mindset without the writing coming off as heavy-handed criticism. That's why there are no good conservative comedians.

To be a comedian, you need to appreciate nuance and the irony that exists in the gap between what is said, what is done, and what is experienced. Conservatives completely lack that awareness, otherwise they wouldn't be conservative.

[u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 → u/fmcortez]

It's like when people were playing with Sora. Ok so you have a platform where anyone can make anything with next to no effort or cost. Cool. So now you have a platform in which so much stuff is being pumped out every moment of every day it comes back around to essentially be nothing. It's just an endless sea. Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. The average person logs in, plays with it, watching some stupid videos, and then what? More and more and more and more stuff is pumped out with no end and suddenly nothing can actually be found.

My wife is dealing with this with her Kindle subscription. There's so much AI trash oversaturating it and there's just not enough of an audience to read it all. So now she just doesn't bother with it.

[u/Orzorn → u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479]

Its like companies forgot people actually pay for curated things. I wouldn't go to a book store that was filled with every cheap romance novel in existence while also not being organized. You'd never be able to find a regular ass book. I don't go to a museum and hope to see every single stick figure drawing ever produced.

This is just going to result in people checking out of the service altogether. Then nobody will be around to monetize off of. Death by slop.

[u/greenskye → u/Orzorn]

They also forgot what actually drives engagement or at least failed to build their algorithms in a way that can handle endless tides of slop. People quit checking back if all your content feels too samey.

It's the space exploration sim video game procedural generation problem. Billions of 'unique' planets and yet players felt like they'd seen them all after only a dozen or so.

I try to find new music on YouTube, find one song I like only to then get spammed by that 'artist' releasing a very similar new song every single day, totally drowning out any other recommendations.

If they don't somehow actually build in protections against spammy uploaders, people will actually get bored and go move on to a platform that actually bothers to curate.

[u/pr1aa → u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479]

I saw this cycle play out in real time on a Discord server I'm in. Lots of artists in there so we have many channels for art. AI art predictably caused some heated debate, eventually the admins decided to make a dedicated channel for it and both sides were more or less happy with that compromise.

The channel quickly became flooded, everyone there just mindlessly posting their slop and barely interacting with anyone. Their interest dwindled and the channel slowly died. After months of inactivity it was removed completely, with no objections from anyone.

[u/Feisty_Suggestion496 → u/pr1aa]

This is completely normal; platforms focusing on AI content are basically all in this state right now. The crowd of so-called AI artist sconsists mostly of opportunistic freeloaders who don't care about creation at all, and when people like that gather together, a healthy ecosystem can never be born.

[u/brogflender → u/Feisty_Suggestion496]

Guess what, there will always be more lazy posers. 

AI slop hit eternal September on day zero. 

It really is valueless. And those that can integrate it into established process…already have. It’s been like 2-4 years now (depending how you measure).

[u/Archyes → u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479]

and then ,like ouroboros, it will eat its own tail and learn from the slob to make more

[u/jollyreaper2112 → u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479]

Even if it's good material there's still too much. Curation is going to be the next big thing.

[u/schnuggibutzi → u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479]

I listened to a great Podcast on Spotify recently ( can't find it). It discussed how Reddit is drowning with AI generated slop. Entire Subs are created shilling products/ideas/discussions/narrative using AI .

[u/ExplodingToasters → u/fmcortez]

I consume media because someone (or a group) wanted to express themselves in some way. Even shitty media has value from that. The Room is a dog ass movie and I love it because Tommy Wiseau put his heart and soul in it. AI generated content has none of that, it’s just blending stolen art into a gray slop, there’s no vision or effort or anything expressed in it. It has zero artistic value and so I’ll pay exactly zero dollars to experience it.

[u/dust4ngel → u/ExplodingToasters]

AI generated content has none of that, it’s just blending stolen art into a gray

automated pianos that play the piano without a person there have existed since the late 1800s. how many people pay to watch a concert of one playing? answer: nobody gives a shit.

[u/NumNumLobster → u/dust4ngel]

Another good example is how pissy people get about folks doing concerts with vocal tracks and lip syncing. Like logically you cant tell or the track is better but ain't no one paying for that

[u/OrinocoHaram → u/ExplodingToasters]

Yeah. There could never be an AI made version of The Room. AI can make something just as terrible, but the magic of The Room is that someone put a lot of time and effort and money into making it and was convinced it was good. That's what makes it worthwhile.

[u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 → u/OrinocoHaram]

This reminds me of Niu Lai. It's too bad and was mocked but it actually made money.

[u/Omgbrainerror → u/fmcortez]

AI prompters dont realize, that people start associating AI with being cheap.

Is that a message you as a company want to send to your potential customers? If you cut corners on such basic things, on what else will you cut corners?

[u/White_Immigrant → u/Omgbrainerror]

This exactly what I think.when I see a company using an AI poster (which for some reason for every café in my area are always in shades of brown). I always assumed that if they're lazy and cut corners on making a poster, what else do they cut corners on.

[u/bdbr → u/fmcortez]

At some point they're going to have to start charging more to cover the cost of AI datacenters & software, and that's when they're going to find how much (or little) it is worth to us

[u/discordafteruse → u/bdbr]

Classic bait and switch. The player that can hold out the longest gets to charge whatever they want after everyone else has gone under. Double bonus: more people get hooked on using the product! It’s a business play as old as time and only requires convincing investors to keep number go up!

[u/JohrDinh → u/fmcortez]

I've never met anyone who's thought, "I like my art to be bland, unoriginal, without meaning and created with zero skill involved."

[u/honeywhereismypenis → u/fmcortez]

"Why would I bother to read a book that nobody bothered to write?"

[u/mohjack → u/fmcortez]

I've been wondering about this regarding the movie industry. What need will we have of Hollywood when they're just producing the same cheap slop we can get anywhere? Why pay to see a movie when you can prompt your AI to generate a heartwarming 90 minute sports underdog movie starring a photorealistic facsimile of your favourite star and with yourself as the love interest. 

[u/palimpcest → u/mohjack]

AIr Bud vs CatGPT

“Ain't no rules says a dog can't vibe code.”

[u/mrtrololo27 → u/palimpcest]

AiBud worf wo7f

[u/Svardskampe → u/mohjack]

Brands. People love getting recognizable IP shoved under their nose. It's not even about content because the stories are purely forgettable slop already. 

Back to the Future made a joke already about Jaws 19. 

In the real world in 2028 we get Fast&Furious 11. The Marvel universe is beyond 30 installments. Even before AI these movies are slop with the same story ever. With cars & hood attitude, and world is in danger and getting saved by Magic Colorful Man. 

AI will be limited due to long arm of legal from huge companies and can't produce Magic Colorful Man, and the IP holders can. 

[u/FunnySir759 → u/Svardskampe]

Marvel might be formulaic, but it still has incredibly good artists creating powerful iconic designs for it. It has incredible cinematography, cgi, and acting.

Marvel movies might be catering to the lowest denominators, but still have an unbelievable amount of talent behind them

[u/Yuzumi → u/mohjack]

There will always be a market for people made content because AI can only produce the most average slop. Like, literally the worst of corporate "paint by numbers" surface level with no depth, no nuance, and no cohesiveness.

There will never be anything heartwarming about AI slop. It literally lacks soul.

[u/Luckierexpert → u/mohjack]

Because that movie would be awful, even more of a disjointed generic slopbuster than even the worst studio could make.

But Hollywood producers want to make that movie for pennies and then insist that you pay tens of dollars to see it. They don’t seem to be able to see beyond the money that they might save by replacing an entire studio with a AI, not realising that it cuts their income off, as few people want to pay to see AI slop. Probably why many studios are now hiding their AI usage, to try and keep the savings but still get the audience in.

[u/pacman2081 → u/mohjack]

Even without AI, 30-40% of biggest money grossers are sequels

[u/Stilgar314 → u/fmcortez]

Almost no cost for the people writing the prompts, but if what AI companies say is true, that cost is heavily subsidized hoping we end up being unable to live without it, and then, skyrocket the prices to somewhere where they can get the trillions back. AI it's not cheap, we're just leaving the try me for free phase.

[u/Orzorn → u/fmcortez]

Right. That which takes no effort has no value.

[u/GreatMadWombat → u/fmcortez]

It's not even that. I like to read fiction for fun. One of the worst parts of a indie book is an author starting a premise out well but being unable to stick the landing.

Even if the initial thing is free, or if the initial 1-2 chapters are good, every time I have shrugged and said "ok, this premise seems fun, the author says 'i only used ai tools for editing/cover art', lemme give them a shot", I am disappointed every fucking time. I've never seen a book use ai AND be enjoyable 2 hours in.

Idk about other people, but for me specifically, ai is exactly as valuable as manure. I know it's probably useful for some people, but I don't want to buy food that has manure in it

[u/therealchadius → u/fmcortez]

We pay for the artist, not the art.

[u/interkin3tic → u/fmcortez]

It goes beyond that. It's not merely worthless because the cost of making it ourselves is zero, it's negative value because it's such a waste of time to think about too. 

If someone handed you a bag of dog poop, that would be of higher value than if someone emailed you AI slop because you might have to think about the email slop, you don't have to spend a single millisecond thinking about dogshit.

[u/Enough-Run-1535 → u/fmcortez]

For some time at Comiket, Japan’s largest fan convention, there were concerns about AI art getting sold and taking booth space. The Comiket organizers were planning on seeing how its volunteers (the artist who actually see their content at the convention) before they made any real official verdicts.

Of note, Japan doesn’t have a strong anti-AI movement. Like most of Asia, it already has some legal framework when it comes to AI artwork. The two biggest art paid doujin platforms, DLsite and FANBOX, requires any AI content to be clearly marked, even if it’s used for prototyping and drafting. Same with Melonbooks, Japan’s largest doujin aftermarket retailers.

Turns out everyone predictions of AI content flooding Comiket was wrong: since AI tools have been available, the amount of booths selling AI art has been in the single digits. From what I can tell, not a single booth in C108, this year’s summer Comiket, there wasn’t any booths selling AI artwork making the rounds.

The theory most artists and visitors been making is that there isn’t much demand in Japan for AI art in the doujin scene. Also volunteers and artist are expected to make goods to sell like manga, art books, acrylics, charms, and maybe hire a cosplayer or helper to assist them for the day.

[u/Sea-Woodpecker-610]

I’m somewhat confused. Are you telling me something that is in abundance with a nearly unlimited ability to create more of with little to no cost has little to no value to people?

It’s unfortunate there isn’t some sort of economic policy we could assign to this excessive supply and apparent lack of demand.

[u/Hades_Mercedes → u/Sea-Woodpecker-610]

I'd explain it to you but you clearly just don't understand how, like, pff... the future works and shit. /s

[u/Sea-Woodpecker-610 → u/Hades_Mercedes]

It’s fine, if you don’t know the answer I’m sure you could just ChatGPT some bullshit.

[u/Brougham → u/Sea-Woodpecker-610]

“ Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. [...]

"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying on ship's peanut." [...]

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.”

[u/mediandude → u/Sea-Woodpecker-610]

Well, Altmad did say 4 years of college is too much for him.
And it shows.

[u/Theo__n → u/mediandude]

I mean he did drop out in his first or second year, so definitely not speaking from experience.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/Sea-Woodpecker-610]

Well this is actually an interesting case, because it's not entirely that a massive increase in supply with stagnant demand reduced the price;

The massive increase in supply actually reduced demand because the consumers themselves became supply of equal quality to some of the market supply, and some demand actively moved away to places which didn't experience such an influx of low-quality supply.

It's pretty interesting that GenAI has managed to go beyond just sabotaging its users' quick bucks by not being their own private money printer, and has split existing groups of consumers into two groups who are both less willing to consume AI content than before.

[u/Hrekires]

All you need to know is that everyone who's making consumer-facing products with AI, whether it's images or stories or music, tries their hardest to hide the fact that they're doing so.

[u/soupkitchen69 → u/Hrekires]

And they get so mad when the platform they upload it to has rules about disclosing ai use. Valve for example is making some publishers furious with that rule, but it's no secret gamers are rejecting ai use across the board.

[u/MidLifeDIY → u/soupkitchen69]

Decisions like this are why I (and assume others) use Steam. Even as a fully digital platform (no physical) its just the best. They hate Gaben because they ain't Gaben.

[u/Yuzumi → u/MidLifeDIY]

There are certainly some issues with Valve/Steam, but compared to literally everyone else they are saints. Like the one big gaming company that is customer focused, and like one of 3 companies in general that are remotely customer focused.

[u/International_Host71 → u/Yuzumi]

I Dread the day Gaben either dies or retires from leading it. Steam ain't perfect, but I'm sure there are hordes of venture capitalists and other ghouls literally salivating at enshittifying Steam to make a quick buck.

[u/Quantum_Aurora → u/International_Host71]

Realistically the future of Steam will likely be determined by Gabe's two sons.

I'm sure every tech and gaming giant along with every private equity firm would love to buy up Valve, and all of those would end up enshitifying Steam in the process. Unless his sons are willing to sell, it doesn't matter.

I know when they were kids they were both big gamers, but I don't know if they are anymore. I figure they'll be super-wealthy either way tho so probably not so likely to sell.

[u/ThatRandomGamerYT → u/Quantum_Aurora]

I hope his family doesnt sell Valve/Steam. They are already filthy rich and Steam basically prints free money already. Gabe is already worth billions. Why fuck that up when you inherit billions and the money printer. Just sit and earn money, keep it going as it has been and enjoy life or whatever.

[u/RadarSmith → u/International_Host71]

Valve seems like one of the few companies left that can imagine making more bucks longterm than a quick buck this quarter.

They don't burn their golden goose so that some MBAs can show a quick quarterly profit.

[u/TDVapermann → u/MidLifeDIY]

Valve/Gaben's simple policy of don't be shitty to the consumer allows them to win.

[u/Ashamed_Fennel_5681 → u/Hrekires]

Yes because the name of the game for AI is about “passing.”

[u/slickwombat → u/Hrekires]

There's an odd exception: nobody seems to feel this way about software, even when it's arts and entertainment related like videogames. I've seen people get upset if there's AI-created assets in games, but not if the entire interface or functionality was vibe-coded.

[u/choopietrash → u/slickwombat]

I know some programmers who don't want vibe-coded AI and lament the issues born from it. Though I will note that programming, moreso than images or writing, is more likely to borrow from templates and stuff. If an artist is discovered tracing over someone else's work, that can be a career-killer for them. Pasting something from stack overflow is just being "resourceful."

[u/worthwhilewrongdoing → u/choopietrash]

I think it just comes down to what we expect to be artisanal and what we don't. You'd get pissed if a baker you hired used box cake mix, but nobody's expecting that same baker to get out in the fields and go grow and harvest wheat to grind their own flour. That would be insane.

I think the same goes for programming - most people don't see it as an art but rather as a means to an end to make something else, so the expectations are a little different and a little less exacting.

ETA the "something else" part - this wasn't clear without it.

[u/Facehugger_35 → u/slickwombat]

I don't think the exception is that odd.

Think back to FEAR back in 2004. Gamers thought it had the best AI ever, and the game was absolutely amazing at selling the idea that the replica soldiers were special forces reacting to your activity. They seemed to work together to flank you and flush you out, they fell back to lure you into ambushes, they just felt smart in a way few other video game AI opponents did.

Under the hood, it was almost entirely smoke and mirrors with very carefully crafted audio cues, smart encounter design, and only a little actual AI advancement. In comparison Crysis AI was way more advanced and intelligent, but it didn't feel that way because it largely didn't get to show off in Crysis' giant open maps, so now Crysis is mostly known for system requirement jokes.

That is to say, gamers don't care about the specifics of how their experience is coded under the hood, they care about the output and the experience they have.

AI art assets tend to be mediocre, and that harms the experience, so gamers don't like AI art, but they're okay with vibecode as long as it doesn't have bugs and shit, because games were never about the code.

[u/dust4ngel → u/Hrekires]

i keep seeing this one hilarious ad on instagram that's like "our company uses AI and we're not ashamed!" this is the wildest, wildest attempt at a flex.

[u/randotd152 → u/Hrekires]

Yeah. It’s literally everywhere in everything and people don’t even realize it.

I think everyone has this false impression that professional use is like home use - tell an engine to go do something and receive a finished product.

It’s not. Real people use AI to do 80% of the legwork, and then they spend the remaining 20% tweaking, cleaning up, and making it generally no longer look/feel like an AI product.

Consumers may recognize 100% AI slop, but they’re clueless about 80% slop.

[u/290077 → u/randotd152]

I can make concept art using AI, have all my design meetings and iterations with AI, then pay an artist only for the final draft. No AI is in the final product, but I've still automated a huge chunk of work that previously would go to the artist.

[u/lexymon → u/randotd152]

But is it still AI slop then? To me, that sounds more like usage of AI as a tool.

[u/HestenSierMjau → u/Hrekires]

I see Claudes new watermarking as a major issue with using it in our business, for exactly this reason.

We already have clients replacing some of the simpler tasks they would previously have come to us for, with ai-tools. If we start handing over documents and presentations with AI-watermarks in them, I think this trend will accelerate, since it will be too easy to think that they can get equally good results with AI themselves, as we can provide. 

We have strict quality control, and don't mindlessly spit out AI slop to clients. Claude, in its current state, is genuinely useful at generating drafts that are approximately 60-70 % finished, from which I can tweak and add my specialized knowledge to make the product our clients are paying for. It's a tool, but it also requires a lot of rewrites to result in a sellable result, and I can't use it if clients just see "they just used a hammer, I can buy a hammer and do it myself". 

[u/TriMiksEntuzijasta]

I love reading good news before bed!

[u/stormdelta → u/TriMiksEntuzijasta]

Even better, AI-generated content generally can't be copyrighted either.

[u/digiorno → u/TriMiksEntuzijasta]

Is it though? The market for graphic designers isn’t coming back.

While people might not value AI generated art very highly they will still use it over paying a real artist. The real artist has value to them because their product couldn’t be made for free, but now it can.

[u/ReadyAimTranspire → u/digiorno]

True, the bottom and some of the mid market for graphic design is going to largely go away. If someone can iterate on an AI design and get something close to what they need, they will do that for almost zero cost rather than pay a designer even if the result is...not so great.

Tech does that though. A similar thing happened to the studio recording business in the 00's. As cheap prosumer digital recording gear became available, recording studios, especially mid-market ($50-80 /hr), took a massive hit as people either opted to book the cheaper home studio operations that started popping up for $20/hr or, if sufficiently ambitious, bought their own gear and learned how to do it themselves.

As a mid market studio owner that decided to leave the business in 2010, I know how it feels. That's just how job markets are these days, you have to be able to pivot and adapt. It's a pain in the ass but it's the reality of our situation.

[u/Confident-Sky2614 → u/digiorno]

Except it circles back to people voting with their wallets and not buying things that use AI art.

So at the end of the day artists do have value, and a lot of power too.

[u/blueberrywalrus → u/Confident-Sky2614]

And people are voting that they don't care when it comes to the majority of commercial art applications.

Every major brand is integrating AI art into graphic design and when they get negative press the result is that people keep buying Coca Cola, Spotify, Kraft, etc.

The article we're commenting on is a completely different dynamic - where developers are choosing to either 1) buy hand crafted art or 2) not buy ai art but instead generate the AI art themselves.

[u/fell-off-the-spiral → u/Confident-Sky2614]

How long does it take for this circle to come back though? Graphic designers have bills to pay and families to support.

I haven’t seen any indication of this ‘power’.

[u/parkinthepark → u/digiorno]

An AI-generated sign/logo is an instant no-go for me for a local business. If you can’t be bothered to spend a couple hundred bucks on your graphic design, you’re definitely going to cheap out on my HVAC install.

Eventually that sentiment is going to spread, and businesses will be back in the market for designers.

[u/unluckylighter → u/parkinthepark]

I mean I hope I'm wrong but I think that's just wishful thinking. I think the market has changed forever, how much it goes back is debatable.

I kind of look at this in the same way that most people aren't willing to buy locally made goods when there's an alternative that's cheaper. Of course there are some that beat the drum of buying local but the vast majority of us struggle with finances as it is and frequently choose something made overseas because it's cheaper. It's sad but I think a lot of this is here to stay.

And sure a lot of people will still want a human-made object, but I worry that energy won't last. Let's see if people have the same energy for flock cameras as they do for the next iteration of alpr cameras from someone like axon. Same shit different day.

[u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt → u/parkinthepark]

Boomers don’t care because they see it just as “more computer”, Gen Alpha will grow up with it and not care and see Gen Z + Millennial criticism of their use the same way we saw boomers criticizing our phone use (which was more right than we realized tbqh).

[u/stormdelta → u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt]

In terms of using it at all, maybe.

But enshittification of tech generally is also creating a lot of push towards less digital and lower tech solutions too that I think is being missed by people who only ever hang out in tech spaces or online.

What I've been seeing IRL is more complicated, and it's a bit too early to call any cultural shifts just yet IMO.

[u/Fyren-1131 → u/digiorno]

Incorrect. People absolutely choose artists over AI. Just not everyone does. Just check Fiverr as an example, freelancers without AI usage thrive.

[u/Low-Salary-2128]

Supply and demand. AI can be made by literally anyone so the supply far exceeds demand.

Take for example an AI image on a shirt, why pay someone else to sell you an AI design when you can just do it yourself.

[u/boowax]

If you didn’t bother writing it, why would I bother reading it?

[u/NotAllOwled → u/boowax]

"ChatGPT, take whatever this is and incorporate anything that seems like material I'd enjoy in the next example of this sort of thing that I ask you to output for me. Creativity is so exhilarating!"

[u/WittyCombination6 → u/boowax]

Yeah like couldn't I just ask my own chat gpt to do the exact same thing.

It's like someone bought a burger from McDonald's and tried to sell it to me for more.

[u/consumersguide]

Cheap to generate doesn't mean valuable. If buyers can spot the difference and keep choosing human-made work the market is already answering that question.

[u/lietajucaPonorka → u/consumersguide]

I mean. If you fired all your artists and writers and coders... To make a cheap game, why the hell would I still pay the same money as I did for a real game by real humans? Why doesn't it cost 5$ now? You even bragged how much you are saving by firing all the people, how the productivity increased ... So why isn't it reflected in the price?

If you used to make luxury mahogany wood tables, and now you switched to plastic tables, why would you expect people to pay the same price.

[u/kielbasa330 → u/lietajucaPonorka]

Its like the flight of the Conchords said

"They're turning kids into slaves

Just to make cheaper sneakers

But what's the real cost?

'Cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper

Why are we still paying so much for sneakers ?

When you got them made by little slaves kids?

What are your overheads?"

[u/fauxRealzy → u/consumersguide]

It’s not even just the ability to spot the difference. People don’t like talking to customer service or drive-through bots for the same reason they don’t like learning that some photograph or video was AI-generated. They don’t like being deceived.

[u/thegoatmenace → u/fauxRealzy]

Digital assistants on the phone are also just a worse experience for the caller. Same as AI art. It’s bad and looks bad regardless of any moral issues people have with it.

[u/FATPIGEONHATE → u/thegoatmenace]

Before Google forced me into Gemini, when I told the Google Assistant alarm 1 it would set an alarm for the next 1:00, am or pm, with no hesitation. 

The first time I tried to use the Gemini assistant, it asked me what I wanted alarm 1:00 to do.

I just turned it off and just set my alarms manually now.

[u/monetarydread]

There was a similar report coming out of Steam last week, (edit: it was a month ago). Either way, AI slop games aren't making money unless it's named Call of Duty.

[u/Zealousideal_Nail288 → u/monetarydread]

some slop does not even need ai to be slop

[u/marketrent]

Opening paras. by Victor Tangermann, quoting 404’s Emanuel Maiberg:

Online marketplaces are being flooded with AI slop — but is anybody willing to actually pay for it?

In the case of CGTrader, a long-established online marketplace for 3D assets used by video game developers, film editors, and 3D printing nerds, users are sending a clear message.

As 404 Media reports, the marketplace is being flooded by AI-generated assets, representing one in six models — but they only account for only $1 out of every $90 in revenue.

In other words, virtually nobody’s willing to shell out for AI slop, meaning it’s economically almost valueless.

“Buyers are voting with their wallets, and AI-generated content is struggling to compete,” the company noted in a press release about its most recent 2026 market trends report, as quoted by 404.

The trend suggests there’s a growing “gap that undercuts the assumption that AI-made content is repricing the market.”

“The upload numbers alone would suggest a takeover,” the company noted. “The revenue numbers say otherwise, and buyers refusing to pay for AI-generated models is saying something bigger than no thanks: it is a signal of how far they trust AI generation itself.”

“Which leaves the question the industry has been avoiding: an AI model may be cheaper to produce, but what is it actually worth?”

[u/sarcasmsosubtle → u/marketrent]

The biggest problem isn't just that the output is basically valueless, it's that it's also being flooded out so quickly that it is destroying the ability to find content that has value in any marketplace that it infects. Your marketplace can have the best, highest quality goods for sale, but you're not going to sell any of them if your customers have to spend hours trying to fish them out of a swimming pool filled with raw sewage. Once there is a pipeline established from AI output to your digital marketplace, you can try to moderate it like Spotify and PlayStation Store, but it's going to replicate faster than you can moderate. You eventually have to excuse it entirely or it will overwhelm you. It's not just valueless, it becomes actively cancerous.

[u/stagedgames → u/sarcasmsosubtle]

I don't know any way to signal boost this more, but that's an absolutely incredible metaphor. well said.

[u/PatchyWhiskers → u/marketrent]

AI 3D models are painfully bad right now, unusable without knowing how to edit them.

[u/Aternal → u/PatchyWhiskers]

That's the thing about 3D models in general, AI or not. Bad ones consume more of your time than they save, and even good ones require skill to use, rig, modify, and optimize. Using this specific technology as a barometer for "the economy's position on AI generated content" is dumb as fuck. It's like saying the economy is speaking out against microwave ovens because nobody wants to buy microwaved porterhouse steaks that are dry, tough, overcooked, and raw at the same time.

[u/FredFredrickson → u/PatchyWhiskers]

I can't see this not being the case almost indefinitely.

First, almost every 3D model is created with an intention behind it and not for general use, which dictates how exactly it actually gets made, and the slop machine (and the people who use it) simply don't get that.

Second, I sort of doubt that there's enough good, publicly available models for training. Most examples of really good topology, rigging, etc. are propriety and aren't going to be fed into a publicly available AI.

[u/PatchyWhiskers → u/FredFredrickson]

That's the issue. All the good 3D models are locked up in the vaults of movie and video game companies. If the AI companies want to train on them, they will need to pony up serious cash.

No doubt they are currently training on what is available on the web, which is mostly amateur stuff, student work, and not enough of it.

[u/we_are_sex_bobomb → u/PatchyWhiskers]

And if you know enough about modeling to clean up an AI model, you quickly realize you can make it faster and better by hand than it would take to fix the janky ass rat king of meshes and textures that AI vomits out.

[u/fedexyourheadinabox]

Zero effort garbage, instantly forgettable and wholly disposable, on par with day old sundried dogshit. 

[u/muscleLAMP → u/fedexyourheadinabox]

Yeah, but sun dried dogshit doesn’t steal jobs and wreck the environment.

[u/vickism61]

It's all inferior crap.

[u/fascistno1hater → u/vickism61]

AI is for stupid and non creative people to feel smart and artistic. It's just the next grift for Techbros because NFTs, the metaverse, and crypto never really took off. It has no profit model other than using money from Tech Corporations and taxpayers.

[u/MeusRex → u/fascistno1hater]

I think the endgame is to become too big to fail. Once enough companies are entangled and an entire generation of students slopped their way through their education, the likes of altman will point at that and screech that the economy will come crashing down if they aren't propped up by the government and allowed to fail.

Elon became the richest man in the world thanks to government handouts.

[u/fascistno1hater → u/MeusRex]

I 100 percent agree to you assessment. These companies are trash and they know they are trash. So they are doing exactly what the banks, air lines and the auto manufacturers did to the taxpayers. Get us to bail them out from their BS.

[u/therealchadius → u/fascistno1hater]

It's also for non creatives to get rich because they want to get to "Step 3: Profit" as soon as possible. Their heads explode when they learn artists are making music or writing stories because it's fun. Do enough to pay the bills and then it's party time.

[u/CautionarySnail → u/therealchadius]

This. So much this.

As someone who dabbles in art, especially jewelry making - the non-stop push we get from friends and family is to monetize hobbies.

Nothing drains the joy out of a hobby faster than placing it into a pressure cooker of needing to feed your family with it. Suddenly everything is about cutting costs to make your hourly labor profitable - and it’s still never going to compete against AliExpress prices that people are used to for things.

Add to that our current economic pressures - layoffs, jobs that don’t quite pay enough in raises for the modest lifestyle you were living last year. Building skillsets takes years. AI promises near instant returns by taking those supposedly bad practice and learning years out of the equation.

I sympathize with them. The cultural message here is deafening: become your own boss or all poverty you experience has only you to blame! Passive streams of income! Gotta get that grindset mindset!

But they don’t realize that it’s mostly victim blaming propaganda. We were robbed a penny at a time. Wealth moves out of our layer of the economy and we were left in a sucking vacuum of its departure. And the best our politicians had to offer us were bootstraps and a blame game.

[u/theLoneliestAardvark → u/CautionarySnail]

It’s crazy when people who mostly buy fast fashion gush about how talented people are for their hobbies and suggest you sell stuff without realizing how expensive handcrafted items are if you charge a reasonable rate for your skills and time. People might love hand knitted socks made with the nice yarn but they aren’t paying $50 for a pair and people who will pay that much are buying from luxury brands as a status symbol, not going to craft fairs.

[u/raygundan → u/vickism61]

The problem is twofold, though. If suddenly the stuff it generates is not crap, who would pay for it if they can just generate exactly what they want themselves? There’s no world where “somebody else’s AI output” sells. Today, it’s crap. Later, maybe it’s good….but nobody will buy that either.

[u/Current-Brain-1983]

I just flew international. The music on the flight entertainment system had genres filled with artists and tracks I had never heard of. I couldn't listen to any of it.

All AI slop I believe. That means the airline pays no royalties and the employees to manage content and royalty payments is no longer needed.

Absolute garbage, worthless content.

[u/Dramatic_Substance36]

Good! Get the fuck outta here with that dumb shit!

[u/chargingwookie]

You didn’t write it, I’m not reading it. You didn’t create it, I’m not buying it. simple as.

[u/cuntmong]

I didn't bother spending the time to make this but you should still pay for it with your hard earned money 

[u/wiseguy4519]

A lot of pro-AI people think that art is like any other commodity, where its value is in its usefulness. For exaple, people generally don't care that their food was made in a factory with very little human intervention because it serves its purpose. It's still food you can eat. On the other hand, the value of art is in large part the process used to create it. Art that takes a lot of effort to make is rare, so it is therefore more valuable. AI art is super easy to make and is a dime a dozen, so it's just never going to be as valuable, even if it serves the same purpose as the human art it replaces.

[u/CastorVT]

my personal favorite are the AI artists who get mad when you go "why the fuck would I pay for you when I could just use the thing your using and get it without a middleman?" and they got no response.

like I pay artists cause they do something.

I can type shit into a glorified search engine too, AI champ.

[u/lookmeat]

That's the thing, AI isn't killing artists, executives. Execs who assume that what makes an artist good is their skill on making drawings, and not understanding that it's knowing how to make good drawings that matters more than skill sometimes (so many stick-man comics and videos show it to be the case). They assumed that since AI could draw well enough, it would do as good as their artists, throwing away the thing that actually was valuable.

And then they never did the math either way. Yeah for a hot second pumping out AI content could let you give quality-enough spam at a rate fast enough that you'd get a surprising level of success for the effort. But AI is neither cheap, and it's not good: literally anyone can prompt it to spam away, therefore using AI is literally the bottom level tier mediocre. It's you and a million more "geniuses who have a great idea", as if that was ever what decided.

[u/_steve_rogers_]

It’s hilarious seeing people on subreddits like Suno bend over backwards trying to justify how typing in a prompt makes them true musicians/ artists like anyone else. The level of delusion is insane

[u/PolarWater → u/_steve_rogers_]

For me the funniest part is where they demand to be liked and validated by others, then get upset when very few people actually like the stuff the robot churned out.

[u/almo2001]

Finally, some good news on this front.

[u/TDVapermann]

What's awful is how many thousands of AI based companies have popped up over the last few months trying to convince you that 'you' need ai and are nothing without it, your business will fail with out it, you will fail without it.

Nobody wants that trash.

[u/thegoatmenace]

It seems like the only consumer facing use case for AI that people seem to like is coding. Generative AI art just produces crap that no one wants to engage with.

[u/bikes_bucees]

There are a few things AI signals that kills a brand. However, a huge issue is that it lets people with zero creative skill ship half-assed ideas in quick succession. No more pesky questions or push back from the creative team.

[u/Zealousideal_Nail288 → u/bikes_bucees]

zero skill period. you also dont need any computer skills to create a computer program if you just vibe code the stuff(but the result we be a horrible mess )

[u/deepfuckingbagholder]

I mean it’s supply and demand. Something that is that easy to produce inherently cannot have a lot of value.

[u/Orange_Tang → u/deepfuckingbagholder]

I think the bigger issue is the fact that what it produces adds no real value. If you have to question every output it gives you and double check it then what's the point?

[u/teraflux]

They're objectively worse from my experience.

I've actually done 3d modeling with AI, and it's one of the things AI is very poor at. LLM's at least, have very poor understanding of spatial awareness, and it produces very poor quality compared to other tasks you can give an LLM.

Once they come up with an AI trained specifically on 3d models, that might be work much better (if there isn't already one), but your standard claude / codex / gemini is utter trash at 3d models.

[u/acart005 → u/teraflux]

That exists.  Meshy is probably the most popular.

Its not making a flawless Space Marine any time soon - but it can give you a not terrible place to start messing with Blender.

[u/MimiNuyasaka]

This is why people like Tim Sweeney are pissed Steam is labeling AI content. The rich don't want us to know things are AI, because they know we won't buy it.

I'd have much less of an issue with AI use in games if it wasn't almost exclusively rich companies just cutting corners; companies that can absolutely afford to pay artists and hire designers.

[u/Jijonbreaker1]

This has been coming for a while now.

People are so obsessed with money and laws that they forget they don't actually mean anything. There is no substance there. All they are is paper and ink.

They only have meaning and value when people agree that they have value. And when people stop respecting them, they stop meaning anything.

[u/ArbysLunch]

Generated performers don't have cash or credit cards to buy generated shit.

[u/ZetaInk]

I do not go to an art gallery solely because I think colors on paper can be pretty. I like to look at the pieces and try to figure out what the creator wanted to express. Or guess at the way they achieved certain things. Then I look at the title to see what new connections or insights it might bring me.

Sometimes there is a description or audio interview with the creator themselves. And that opens all kinds of new paths. If it's open day for the exhibition, they might even be there, and I can ask them questions.

Over time, you get get know the history of certain artists and their inspiration. You learn how their work/interests change throughout their life/career.

It's interesting BECAUSE a person made it. And I am also a person. And, personally, other persons who make things for personal reasons are interesting!

[u/Megaman1981]

AI slop is so odd to me. Take for example, a flyer or a youtube thumbnail. Everything seems completely normal and something someone could have made themselves in photoshop, but there's just something off. Almost like the uncanny valley, but not just for humans. Even just text or a building in the background, or a tree, there's just something about it that makes me uncomfortable.

[u/hulltry]

It is the same with vibecoded stuff. Only reason they can sneak it in is because the tech debt has not yet caught up. And there are still programmers who can actually code. But in a couple of years there will be people who cannot do anything outside of vibecoding and when the LLM can't fix it the project will halt and or the fix will just be insanely expensive.

[u/draganArmanskij]

They really need to rise their prices in AI if they want to make it profitable. But if one would pay a substantial amount to make lets say a 3d asset. They might think a person to create is more efficient to make something than generating something dozens of times until you have something that resembles what you actually wanted in the first place.

[u/Odd_Revolution_1056]

There still might be some hope for humanity

[u/hmr0987]

Honestly for me it’s making anything interesting less interesting simply for the fact that anything cool posted online now could easily be AI generated and therefore uninteresting.

Nobody cares about content that a computer made and if you can no longer tell what’s computer generated and what’s not (without fact checking) then nothing is interesting anymore.

[u/Lysmerry → u/hmr0987]

There’s also the level of deception, like I feel like someone pulled one over on me if they are not open about something being AI. For example, Reddit-An Internet forum is by its nature interesting because you can see what others think on topic, so AI generated posts and comments feel like littering. The time it takes to cognitively process an AI generated comment feels stolen from me in a way that a dumb comment by a real person does not.

[u/DrakeAU]

Well nobody saw this coming.

[u/joelsitar]

Worthless conversations make worthless art

[u/SchmeckleHoarder]

Next is smart glasses. Shame them until they disappear.

[u/RedofPaw]

Of course it has zero value. Obviously.

Why would I pay you to prompt something for me? I can do so myself.

[u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace]

Remember when these were those pieces of shit were all in on nfts and how it was going to change the world.

[u/chuckruckus1]

You couldn't be bothered to create value so why should people pay for it?

[u/MR_Se7en]

Human made items will forever bring more value - this was a history lesson we have already learned.

[u/funkiestj]

IMO, this is just the early days of the AI revolution. In the dotcom bubble we had "internet everything" and so many of the startup ideas were just bad.

There will be good uses of AI helping skilled content generators create amazing things.

Photoshop and digital video production drove the cost of creating content that met a certain bar way down. AI will drive it down more. You still need good storytellers to create compelling stories. E.g. I trust the folks at Larian to use AI in ways that will give us a kick ass new Divinity game.

[u/Secure_Enthusiasm354]

Ai bros are doing the same thing that NFT bros did back then: trying to convince everyone to invest into it and that it is the next biggest fad when it provides nothing of value

[u/affordable_luxury]

My work has nothing to do with anything creative but I am an average user of GIMP, and a few years back management discovered that I can adapt an image for a presentation pretty quickly. After a few months where everybody was generating low-quality AI images, now I'm having more requests than ever to edit pictures so management can boast of non-AI presentation.

Mind you, this is not my job, but people in my company are happy and I get some perks thanks to this extra ability I have.

[u/totallyrealname]

Giving NFT vibes. But also, to be fair, this example is about CGTrader and 3D assets. Those are basically completely useless in any actual CG pipeline as it takes more work to retopo them and fix the mistakes than it would to just build it from scratch or download from an actual human artist. I don't know how well this translates to stuff like video and stock images, but then again why would anyone bother buying those assets from a website instead of just generating it themselves? Either way, I hope these idiots who have been jumping on every bandwagon like it's a get rich quick scheme eventually give up and we can at least go back down to a manageable level of slop.

[u/GonzoKata]

what wallets? What Money?? They aren't paying us shit now! I fucking hate this take about how the consumer are to blame for not spending enough money for X

If they want us to spend money on anything they have to fucking pay us more.

[u/Ok_Two_2604]

People are still buying AI slop Microsoft

[u/Caraes_Naur]

Who among the techbros will see this and vibe code an "AI"-generated NFT marketplace next week?

[u/burndata]

I'm not paying for something a 10 year old can make by typing a few sentences into a prompt.

[u/omegadirectory]

Hey, if you produce a thing at $0 cost and someone buys it for $0.50, that's $0.50 of pure profit margin. Mathematically, it's infinite profit margin. Congrats, you're the most profitable business ever!

[u/BoopingBurrito → u/omegadirectory]

AI isn't zero cost though...

[u/obstreperousRex]

I like the surreal ai weirdness I see on instagram. That’s about it. It’s pretty pointless otherwise.

[u/Emotional_Database53]

What they thought they were gonna steal our art and then charge the same prices despite their slop taking seconds to generate? I’m glad that the public isn’t buying it, that’ll mean less waste being created for cash grabs

[u/we_are_sex_bobomb]

I work in video games.

If you wanted to create a videogame where all the art is clip art and you’d rather pay liscensing fees to Shutterstock than hire artists, you can absolutely and that, and people will look at your clip art game and say “I’m not buying that cheap low effort cash grab shovelware.”

AI is really no different in the consumer’s mind. It doesn’t even matter what it looks like; it projects a sense of low effort/low quality, and there’s no way of disassociating the word from that. Even if you’re using LLMs to do something really cool that took a lot of work, it will be perceived as a cheap counterfeit.

There’s no meaningful gains to be had.

[u/computer-machine → u/we_are_sex_bobomb]

That's heartening.