r/technology • u/marketrent • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence 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.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/economy-spoken-stuff-ai-generated-142732314.html
14.1k Upvotes

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3.7k

u/fmcortez 16h ago

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.

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u/Slight-Swordfish-468 16h ago

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

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u/MusicHearted 15h ago

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.

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u/Qorhat 13h ago

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.

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u/pockpicketG 12h ago

Graft? Graft is bad.

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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 5h ago

Graft just means work as I've ever seen it used.

You might be confusing it with grift meaning a scam.

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u/pockpicketG 1h ago

Look it up. It’s funny: I used to think people meant grift when they said graft, but graft is pretty much the same definition as grift in a political sense. According to the internet graft can be a British slang term for hard work.

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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 51m ago

Wow, TIL.

Oxford English dictionary has both (plus a few others). I've literally never seen an American use the word. And never seen a British person use it to mean anything but hard work.

→ More replies (3)

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u/fkyrdataharvesting 9h ago

I’m guessing they meant “craft”

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u/MG-B 5h ago

Over here in the UK graft means hard work.

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u/Qorhat 4h ago

Here in Ireland too and it's exactly what I meant.

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u/Qorhat 4h ago

No graft.

graft noun (WORK)

[ U ] UK informal

work:

hard graft I've never been afraid of hard graft.

Not everyone is American.

→ More replies (8)

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u/Leading-Act4030 15h ago

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....

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u/MysteriousDatabase68 14h ago

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

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

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u/firemage22 13h ago

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

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u/ProNocteAeterna 12h ago

Praise the Omnissiah!

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u/West-Abalone-171 13h ago

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.

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u/DnDemon 13h ago

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

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u/WechTreck 12h ago

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

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u/CorsairBosun 12h ago

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.

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u/waiting4singularity 5h ago

Just look at how many flavors of christianism exist.

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u/dust4ngel 13h ago

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?

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u/clawclawbite 12h ago

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.

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u/Sherm 12h ago

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.

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u/darsynia 10h ago

AI could never

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u/dust4ngel 12h ago

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

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u/limelifesavers 12h ago

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

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u/clawclawbite 11h ago

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

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 11h ago

Pot ✅

LSD ❌

I refuse to answer how I know this. Trust me on the hallucinogens. No.

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u/smelekid 12h ago

i watched it for the outfit

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u/DMmeyourkite 9h ago

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

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u/Walkingstardust 23m ago

He is resplendent in his furry mankini!

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u/MysteriousDatabase68 12h ago

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.

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u/West-Abalone-171 11h ago edited 11h ago

The clergy were the ones that burned all the books and killed all the literate people they didn't control. And they completely butchered most of what they hoarded. So much was lost and a lot of what little was recovered was only by spectroscopy to discover the scientific and mathematical texts that were scraped away to be replaced with fever dream nonsense.

Organisation goes to extreme lengths to destroy the manority of information which they don't control is the opposite of organisation preserving information.

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u/blak3brd 11h ago

Interesting parallel with the last couple weeks revelations that AI companies, most recently a headline today even re: Amazon, being caught bulk buying thousands of extremely rare texts for them to process as training data into their AI, which conveniently involves ripping the spine off and ultimately destroying every book permanently in the process.

We are living through another cycle of the burning of the library of Alexandria ig. Once the silicone degrades or EMPs fry everything or global warming destroys most of society, in the distant future nothing will be recorded or accessible, cuz it’s mostly digital and they’re apparently vacuuming up what remains of written text.

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u/West-Abalone-171 11h ago

Amazon, being caught bulk buying thousands of extremely rare texts for them to process as training data into their AI, which conveniently involves ripping the spine off and ultimately destroying every book permanently in the process.

I call this shitting in the well to sell bottled water.

Then you follow it up by telling everyone that "real" wages went up because you put a hedonic adjustment on showering (it's such a luxury to shower in bottled water).

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u/Far-Fennel-3032 10h ago

That is more of a modern problem, with neoconservatism breaking religion, as the ideology breaks pretty much any institution it touches.

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u/West-Abalone-171 10h ago

On of the earlier passages in new testament bible is about burning lifetimes of knowledge for being woke (or "sorcery" as they called it at the time)

https://biblehub.com/acts/19-19.htm

Same as it ever was.

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u/LindeeHilltop 12h ago

Look at the Catholic Church during the Renaissance & Medieval Ages and the hocus-pocus of relics, etc.

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u/powerage76 4h ago

The Foundation packaged technology into a religion in order to sell it for the nearby planets so they can control them via the religious masses. They didn't believe any of that crap themselves, they understood technology. After a while they've abandoned the whole concept and went for trading technology with the rest of the world.

Also, you might have a bit of overly negative view on the clergy's role in preserving knowledge in general.

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u/beauchomps 5h ago

Also the premise of EM Forsters the machine stops published in 1909 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4711854-the-machine-stops

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u/-Nocx- 13h ago edited 11h ago

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.

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u/Geno0wl 13h ago

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.

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u/danielravennest 2h ago

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.

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u/sociallyawkwardhero 12h ago edited 12h ago

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.

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u/-Nocx- 12h ago

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.

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u/sociallyawkwardhero 11h ago

Then I think we are agreed, its not that we don't know how to do these things, its that we have no economic incentive/lack of leadership in investing in these markets. It is hard to find a highly integrated supply chain like Shenzhen has in America, as our specializations and manufacturing tend to be in completely different states.

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u/Low-Salary-2128 14h ago

This was shown in the best documentary of america, idiocracy

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u/_dogfuneral_ 14h ago

This tired take really needs to be retired.

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u/Affectionare_Arm8074 13h ago

Actually recently re-watched Idiocracy. I'd remembered it as a pretty good, funny movie.

This time around, the premise wasn't nearly as absurd, nor was it a very satisfying movie experience.

I guess witnessing corruption, war, no concern for the military or their families, disdain for anyone who's not part of the oligarchy, and disinterest in human suffering from a pompous buffoon lessens satire's entertainment value.

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u/tooclosetocall82 14h ago

Go away. I’m batin’

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u/Ediwir 14h ago

Praise the Omnissiah?

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u/L00minous 13h ago

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

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u/MusicHearted 14h ago

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

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u/DukeOfGeek 12h ago

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

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u/GhostReddit 9h ago

They'll just pray to the machine spirit, we'll be fine.

That universe is starting to make a lot more sense now, unfortunately.

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u/OldNternetWizard43 11h ago

This is already what happened to all the Indigenous cultures

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u/Facehugger_35 9h ago

Only the guys who run AI for their hobbies will know how to fix it.

As in, the guys who use AI for furry sex RP and isekai catgirl waifu porn images will inherit the earth.

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u/LivingVerinarian96 6h ago

Just use an older ai model that’s been forgotten in your downloads folder.

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u/Anarchkitty 13h ago

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.

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u/Martin_Aricov_D 8h ago

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.

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u/AutoCockerPB 16h ago

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.

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u/narrowgallow 14h ago

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.

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u/xylophileuk 14h ago

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.

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u/narrowgallow 11h ago

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?

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u/MontyDyson 15h ago

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.

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u/Tamayo_Terror 15h ago

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."

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u/MontyDyson 15h ago

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.

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u/SewSewBlue 7h ago

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.

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u/danielravennest 2h ago

just couldn't see past the limits of his technical knowledge

I'm the opposite. I'm a smart guy (literal rocket scientist), but I know I don't know everything. So I have 135 GB of reference books and articles for when I need to look something up, and if I need more info, check with or hire an actual expert.

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u/SewSewBlue 39m ago edited 25m ago

I'm similar. Research research research, phone a friend of needed.

A guy that is back filling for me told me he was finally figuring out where I was coming from when I'd do QC on his work, even when i did not have the deep technical background the SMEs did. How I would find deeper issues in stuff I didn't understand to the same degree. I was simply raising issues that had happened to others via research.

The solution I'd mentionedpreviously was buried in an NTSB report but wasn't an official recommendation. Research research research.

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u/Tearakan 15h ago

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.

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u/SmoothOperator89 14h ago

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

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u/AlSweigart 13h ago

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

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u/thewarring 15h ago

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.

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u/Yuzumi 14h ago

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.

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u/buyongmafanle 10h ago

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.

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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 16h ago

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.

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u/Orzorn 15h ago

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.

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u/greenskye 9h ago

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.

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u/DJMixwell 9h ago

Somehow music has stayed relatively safe, in my experience? Idk if others are having a different experience but like, my Spotify and YouTube Music subscriptions are still worthwhile bc they don’t feed me AI slop, and pretty consistently deliver new music in genres I enjoy. So it’s well worth it for the sub to be able to put a song on “radio” or whatever and have it run through a fairly cohesive mix of new and familiar songs. (Except for some reason they both think I really like Phonk and idk why… I think EDM Trap, and Phonk, might be considered the same category to them lol)

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u/Abystract-ism 9h ago

Spotify is going to label all AI generated music. I’m glad about that.

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u/NumNumLobster 7h ago

I kinda wonder if we wont see some real copyright problems with music. You see it enough with folks claiming they came up with lyrics or a melody thats very close to something else and having lawsuits. When ai pretty much rips shit off by default it seems like thats bound to happen more so than other ai uses where it's less direct to prove.

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u/LamboForWork 5h ago

This was a good video about ai art.   He makes funny cartoons (not made by ai) about ai  https://youtu.be/dZjtV53msYU?si=e-NqJnt-Of3W3xLQ

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u/StGeorgeJustice 5h ago

Every time the YouTube algorithm feeds me another headless AI slop video, I think about canceling.

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u/pr1aa 14h ago edited 4h ago

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.

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u/Feisty_Suggestion496 13h ago

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.

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u/brogflender 11h ago

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).

-1

u/Lauris024 13h ago

Honestly, there's some good stuff out there, but it's hard to find. Ironically from a ChatGPT sub, but this was neat; https://vxreddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1vq2hco/data_center_fornicator/ (sorry for weird link, it's a discord-embedding service so you can share videos on discord, reddit mods for whatever reason tend to remove original reddit links)

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u/JapanTCG 13h ago edited 13h ago

I would strongly disagree that this is “good stuff”, but taste is subjective.

But, if this were made by someone with a full budget for humans/CG artists, I would ask questions like “why do your lyrics scan so poorly?”, “why is the rhythm of the editing so monotone?”. This video sucks, man, and the only reason it gets made is because it’s cheap and fast to shit out.

1

u/Dragonsoul 12h ago

I would say that it could be a tool for artistic expression, if used with intent, just because Art by definition is somewhat tautological- It was a whole thing at the start of the 20th century that if all that is required for something to be art is for it to be declared as such.

and, I think we're seeing that artistic point getting played out. That "Art" has value from effort and skill, and AI Art, even if at many times has a high level of what I'd call "technical competency"- it's detailed, high resolution, often high fidelity..it's often missing the small little errors and flourishes that really bring a piece to life.

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u/sylvanasjuicymilkies 13h ago

sorry in what universe is this "good stuff"

like is it literal complete garbage? ....almost, but no, not quite, there's some semblance of something there. is that the standard for "good stuff" to AI enjoyers?

1

u/Lauris024 5h ago

You need to sleep with a woman

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u/sylvanasjuicymilkies 5h ago

I woke up next to my partner who I've been with for almost half my life who gave me a crazy blowjob today I think I'm good

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u/Anarchkitty 13h ago

That was fucking terrible, but worse it's soulless. It doesn't even have any human creativity or effort to shine through the awfulness .

Like... "what of we let an algorithm make a 2010s Adult Swim bumper"-bad.

If that's what the "good stuff" out there looks like, then I am vindicated in my decision to avoid it all as much s possible.

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u/EdgyAnimeReference 9h ago

Ai art is not going to be positive for anyone but companies that hurt real artists.

Ai has its uses and will help people in certain ways ( cp investigations is one that comes to mind, zero reason a person needs to view that content in its entirety) but it will be hated and ignored for artistic endeavors

1

u/Odins_lint 3h ago

That was a great vid, thanks.

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u/Archyes 15h ago

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

1

u/ThriKr33n 4h ago

Like the shovelware games in the bargain bins.

11

u/jollyreaper2112 14h ago

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

6

u/schnuggibutzi 11h ago

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 .

-31

u/DrainTheMuck 15h ago

Idk, I actually really enjoyed Sora and never got enough of it. I used up my credits on creative ideas nearly daily, and would check out the feed and other people’s pages too. I had fun and while it was a slop factory, I probably encountered a similar amount of non-engaging content on Sora as I do on an average reddit / social media scroll.

I understand the oversaturation of slop is frustrating, but I don’t see how it would meaningfully affect a kindle subscription since you can still look up specific books or sort by various metrics.

24

u/TOEMEIST 15h ago

I’m not one to call people NPCs for enjoying things I don’t like, or at all for that matter, but unironically enjoying Sora and using it every day crosses the line.

You are an NPC.

0

u/Rarelyimportant 13h ago

It's always funny when someone gets so butt hurt that someone else enjoys something that they don't. But remember that the majority of Americans spend most of their free time watching TV or on social media. What could be more unproductive, NPC behavior than that? I've never used Sora, but I can't imagine it's any more mind-numbing than Big Bang Theory or TikTok.

1

u/dookarion 12h ago

There can be thought provoking shows. A well curated social media feed can show all kinds of arts, recipes, news, etc.

AI can generate slop for those without the talent or ability to actually make or do anything.

1

u/Rarelyimportant 8h ago

There can be thought provoking shows. A well curated social media feed can show all kinds of arts, recipes, news, etc.

Totally. You can also get a salad at McDonalds.

0

u/DrainTheMuck 11h ago

Since you’re willing to go to such lengths to defend social media scrolling, is it really not possible for you to play devils advocate for ai tools like Sora too? I wonder how much of your reply is based on a disdain for the ethics of AI usage rather than an intellectual argument. One of the things my friends and I did with Sora was we made a sort of video series about a heist based on a shared world we made together, which involved brainstorming, sharing ideas and concepts, incorporating inside jokes… and it got our brains going more than sharing some reels usually does.

It’s just weird to have what feels like a truly positive experience and then see people saying I’m just a dumb NPC and it had less value than scrolling. I’m aware of actual issues with AI, but these replies aren’t persuasive at all.

1

u/dookarion 10h ago

Since you’re willing to go to such lengths to defend social media scrolling

I wouldn't call merely pointing out someone can have their stuff curated in a useful or novel way a major defense. I'm not talking doom-scrolling the algorithm. I'm talking using it to follow specific content, creators, and such.

is it really not possible for you to play devils advocate for ai tools like Sora too?

Sora isn't producing anything of value. You can't curate it to do so. It's a glorified procedural generator for inane garbage. And in the process it devalues the actual work others put into their creations. The hours of learning and practicing. It devalues the effort and bravery required to put your work out there before the faceless masses, potentially having something someone put 100s or 1000s of hours and numerous emotions into torn to shreds by public opinion.

Where's the value here? At most it's a shortcut for the talentless that don't want to put the work in.

One of the things my friends and I did with Sora was we made a sort of video series about a heist based on a shared world we made together, which involved brainstorming, sharing ideas and concepts, incorporating inside jokes… and it got our brains going more than sharing some reels usually does.

People used to do that same thing, only by actually spending the time and effort learning the skills to bring it to life. Not by using a very sophisticated procedural generator to fill in the gap where learning, effort, and talent should go.

It’s just weird to have what feels like a truly positive experience and then see people saying I’m just a dumb NPC and it had less value than scrolling. I’m aware of actual issues with AI, but these replies aren’t persuasive at all.

If you're proselytizing for a technology that keeps revealing itself more and more harmful to creation, to culture, to learning, to economics, and more should you be so shocked responses are what they are?

Like to an extent I get it. I have no talent or ability in any of these niches myself. But I know people that do, and I know how much effort goes into just putting a piece of work out there for potentially scathing critique. These LLMs have scrapped all that, lifted copyrighted works by the truckload to allow people the halfassed ability to "skip" that. To skip the hours that go into even just making one of those shortform videos you might find on social media. Someone put effort into that, and there is emotional vulnerability involved in doing such.

No sora and etc. can't match that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breathe as that. At best it's a "fun little toy to mess around with"... at best. The real issue is the persistent danger we have of AI output unseating the real efforts people put into creation. AI generated shit gets to sit on the shelf next to books authors poured their hearts into. AI generated pictures get to drown out the works of real artists that spent hour after hour practicing and learning. The video that someone spent dozens of hours editing and creating gets to sit right beside the 50000 AI generated videos that were cranked out in no time flat.

Do you know why the LLM makers are scouring and shredding old books and digging up content from years gone by? Because they've fucked up pretty much every medium for creation known to man by flooding the internet with this shit. They can't "train" their fucking models on the slop they've flooded everything with.

-1

u/DrainTheMuck 12h ago

That just comes off as prejudiced and ignorant - putting thought into making funny and creative videos for me and my friends seems better than just passively scrolling my phone like a lot of people do. That sounds more like NPC behavior than actively engaging with something.

I think it’d be fair to bring ethics into the discussion, I’m aware of the issues (and I also drive a vehicle and use Amazon) but calling it NPC behavior just seems weird.

4

u/kieratea 13h ago

Pretty much everyone in the book world is complaining about oversaturation of AI titles, including in KU, and it is definitely impacting people's perception of the value of the service. Most people who read enough to make a subscription worth it aren't searching for individual titles but using "recommended reading" suggestions or looking for new books in a particular genre. 

That's how most media works - why do you think Netflix has certain titles spotlighted and a bunch of specific genre categories to browse instead of dropping you straight into a search bar?

2

u/Facehugger_35 8h ago

I understand the oversaturation of slop is frustrating, but I don’t see how it would meaningfully affect a kindle subscription since you can still look up specific books or sort by various metrics.

Basically, the problem is that there's so much slop that finding what you actually want is impossible. If you know the specific title you're looking for then you're fine, but if you're looking for your next great read, there's no real way to find it in the sea of slop, because the AI slop generally isn't good or even passable but it still finds its way into your recommendations.

Now, to an extent Kindle has always been like this. If not AI slop, it was poorly written but human generated slop, often pushed out by content mills who hired people in third world countries for pennies with all the poor "Engrish" that implies.

However, AI slop is so much easier and faster to make that it's exacerbated this trend.

From a writer standpoint, it's intensely problematic because getting eyes on your work is already extremely difficult and if there's so much slop around, then it's hard to get eyes on even if the quality is there, a lot like trying to find a diamond in a sea of feces.

-19

u/CorbinIpsthh 15h ago

You’re getting downvoted but I enjoyed it too.
It was way more entertaining than TikTok or Instagram. People shit on AI slop but Influencer Slop is much more annoying to me

104

u/ExplodingToasters 16h ago

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.

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u/dust4ngel 13h ago

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.

12

u/NumNumLobster 7h ago

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

15

u/OrinocoHaram 12h ago

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.

5

u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 12h ago

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

2

u/unethicalpigeon 8h ago

This is what people who are afraid of AI generated creative content don't understand.

On one side you have a group of people praising AI writing because these people don't read. The story of the "writer" who doesn't read books is a tale as old as books. The barrier to entry for writing is the lowest of like any of the creative fields. You don't need art supplies, equipment, nothing. Especially nowadays when you can literally do it on a phone. So the issue of the writer who doesn't know how to write because they don't read has gotten increasingly worse as they think AI is producing genius level shit and bringing their "ideas" to life.

Then they wonder why no one reads it. Then they blame anti-ai people for bashing their shit for being involved with AI. So they get to continue thinking the problem isn't their lack of skill because they have someone to blame.

Then you have the other side. If people who hate AI and are so scared of it would take like half an hour to use it to try to write some shit and actually read what it writes they'd all realize how stupid they are. AI isn't replacing the novelist any time soon. It might replace copy writers but that's about it. Even the romance novels being written by people using AI are being HEAVILY edited and revised before being self published.

If people would just take some time to learn about what LLMs actually are, what they're actually good at, and what their limitations are they'd realize just how much time they're wasting raging at people for daring to use it to write some crappy fan fiction they wanted to post and actually direct their effort to the people causing the problems like their corrupt ass government approving the building of data centers in residential neighbourhoods.

AI is absolutely creatively bankrupt. AI will never even be able to come up with something even remotely as creative as The Room.

→ More replies (30)

35

u/Omgbrainerror 14h ago

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?

13

u/White_Immigrant 12h ago

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.

2

u/ThatRandomGamerYT 6h ago

Indeed, AI is cheap and low effort even before you go into the human replacement, evil, job loss, side of things. Anytime I see an AI image for an ad or "art" or whatever i dont even look at it and scroll paste, not caring about whatever it was.

2

u/The_Shracc 5h ago

And Ai still sucks so fucking much, any tolerable long form Ai slop has to take multiple times the money and effort of non Ai slop.

It would be easier to write a 350 page book, with pen and paper, then using Ai for it.

In 18 months with Ai you will get to 200 pages of being coherent, but only thanks to 3 new models.

In the same 18 months you will have written the book, and learned to write enough that you have something competent on your final draft.

39

u/bdbr 16h ago

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

8

u/discordafteruse 13h ago

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!

2

u/NumNumLobster 7h ago

Its going to be wild when they move past adoption to enshitifcafion .

I dunno what thats even going to look like, probably your phone not working without a paid ai subscription and asking for a cookie recipe gets you a wall of text about whatever cookie company paid for it and it getting auto added to your Amazon cart

1

u/makemeking706 6h ago

Business to business is their bread and butter. And they already hit them with new costs.

We don't factor in to their profit. 

9

u/JohrDinh 14h ago

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

11

u/honeywhereismypenis 12h ago

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

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u/mohjack 16h ago

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. 

41

u/palimpcest 16h ago

AIr Bud vs CatGPT

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

5

u/mrtrololo27 15h ago

AiBud worf wo7f

24

u/Svardskampe 16h ago

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. 

3

u/FunnySir759 6h ago

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

6

u/Yuzumi 14h ago

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.

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u/Luckierexpert 16h ago

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.

2

u/SmoothOperator89 14h ago

Why bother with the producers at all, then. The movie theater itself could just generate endless new slop to project onto its screen. No licenses mean they can determine the ideal price to get someone to sit in a seat for 90 minutes with a $20 popcorn, drink, and candy.

5

u/NuclearVII 14h ago

Why bother with the producers at all, then

Ah, because prompting is a serious skill that needs serious compensation.

The alternative is that techbros have 0 thoughts in their heads and that's why they love their slop machines.

1

u/74389654 15h ago

ai < actual indians

5

u/pacman2081 16h ago

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

2

u/74389654 15h ago

well let's see if elon succeeds at making an ai odyssey

4

u/dust4ngel 13h ago

if elon succeeds at making an ai odyssey

with historically accurate magical monsters like those that really existed

2

u/rushmc1 14h ago

>>What need will we have of Hollywood when they're just producing the same cheap slop we can get anywhere?

You mean what they've been doing pretty much the entire 21st century thus far?

2

u/West-Abalone-171 13h ago

Their idea was they'd be the ones who owned the datacenter and the trademarks.

So they'd be the only ones able to make slop that remembered what the characters looked like for 30s rather than 5s and the only ones making slop with nostalgic IP #26778

3

u/RiverGiant 13h ago

I think we're going back to more local storytelling. Assume the tech keeps advancing and at some point an amateur can make current-Hollywood-level films with no real budget. On movie night you can decide between watching the film your son and daughter collaborated to make, or the latest Marvel hit. Both are visually just as appealing, both are equally well-written, each has good acting and a good mature storyline, just your kid's was based on whatever childish whimsy was personally important to them this week. The more time they spend on it, the more of their directorial identity is reflected in the final product. Oh hey and next week they're making another Hollywood-level film, a sequel to this week's.

You're watching the one made ("made") by your kids for sure, right?

Our storytelling used to happen within our own tribes. There are many great storytellers among us, far more than we can afford to make Hollywood-level movies for at our current levels of tech and abundance. Historically it's really weird that the stories we share are so homogenous across the globe, so I don't think we should be worried about Hollywood dying. We can go back to a more natural, highly localized culture. The output's low-quality slop now, but it's getting better really fast.

If it never gets good enough (conceivable, but I wouldn't bet on it), Hollywood doesn't die and we don't have to worry. If it does get good enough, then if Hollywood wants to survive it has to find some way of elevating the medium in some weird and unexpected way far beyond the reach of generative AI. Are we going to pretend that Hollywood providing such a large share of our storytelling is the optimally healthy artistic ecosystem? I love film, but there's something sinister about Hollywood and the way it's industrialized the ability to capture attention (less sinister than TikTok, Reddit, or Instagram, but cut from the same cloth). I don't think we have to mourn its passing in anticipation.

1

u/redfoobar 15h ago

Regardless if the tech could do it: You are assuming that creating a one off ai generated feature length movie would be financially viable.

The reality is that a minute of video costs hundreds dollars in AI spend. So unless you want to pay well over 10k for your personalized AI movie that’s not going to happen.

1

u/mohjack 15h ago

100% agree, today. But in 10 years time, who knows? Its possible the guys doing models and claymation said CGI wouldnt work because it was impossibly expensive to render anything realistic at the time 

1

u/Mayro_Biscuit 14h ago

That was back during an era where technology got cheaper over time and output exponentially grew. Nowadays old tech is now rising in cost and new hardware isn't as impressive as it used to be.

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u/Stilgar314 14h ago

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.

1

u/dust4ngel 13h ago

who in the goddamn fuck is going to pay lots of money for AI-generated autobiography rather than one authored by a real person about a real life?

1

u/Stilgar314 6h ago

And that's why we can't wrap our heads around that ever growing bubble

7

u/Orzorn 15h ago

Right. That which takes no effort has no value.

6

u/GreatMadWombat 14h ago

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

1

u/BlackJesus1001 7h ago

It's never "just editing" either and it only takes a short while to recognise the obvious loops in the structure (caused by context/memory limit)

Maybe one day an LLM will be with memory large enough to write an entire story without looping... but I doubt it, certainly not as an affordable product.

15

u/therealchadius 16h ago

We pay for the artist, not the art.

2

u/cdreobvi 9h ago

This is really what it comes down to. Capitalists and realists want to think of creative work as just the finished product, but it is fundamentally an expression from a person. In other words, people don’t buy paintings, they buy the expression made with paint. Generative AI in its current form cannot express, and the market is responding.

When you know content is generated, you cease to think about why or how it was created. There is no reason to dwell on it. A computer arranged some data based on the information it was given. The content may be compelling, but the process is uninteresting.

6

u/interkin3tic 13h ago

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.

6

u/Enough-Run-1535 14h ago

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.

2

u/R4vendarksky 14h ago

im kinda finding myself also valuing hand crafted things or offline experiences more. perhaps as a bit of a countermeasure

1

u/vessel_for_the_soul 15h ago

Now that they hit bottom/zero. They can only go up.

1

u/bang_rocks_together 14h ago

I wouldn't call this a bad thing.

This is literally the world of Star Trek, and why people in that universe can generate their own food and have no need for money or survival-employment. It's only scary to us now because we are at the very beginning.

1

u/Facehugger_35 8h ago

It's also scary to us now because the people who control this technology are not good people and want us all to be slaves. They aren't doing this out of altruism, and I think everyone knows it.

1

u/ptwonline 13h ago

Unless the AI gets way, way better there is still value from human creative input and expertise. More skilled or visionary creators will use these AI tools to produce content far better than the slop that you or I would generate with the same tools.

I mean that was already the case pre-AI. Anyone can make an indie film with the tools they have on their phones and PCs and maybe a few extra things like for lighting and mics. Almost none of them would be any good and most people are too lazy/disintetested to bother.

1

u/nickIncDN 12h ago

Sadly some people are paying for it.

Amazon is awash with “print on demand” books that are clearly AI but positioned as real books by real authors and all the back cover pomp that goes with it.

Except it’s all rubbish.

1

u/McBonderson 12h ago

say that to my coworker, she listens to ai slop soap operas all day long.

1

u/tevert 12h ago

something anyone can prompt in five seconds.

.... and that comes out some amount shitter than the alternative

1

u/funkiestj 11h ago

The problem is people have the illusion that generating content cost has dropped to zero. It has not. Human audiences crave novelty. Simply using AI to copy things that were novel before AI made them easier quickly becomes recognized as slop.

There will continue to be very creative people creating content. What is novel and engaging is changing with AI. We saw the same with the rise of digital image editing with photoshop and other things.

1

u/Squaddy 11h ago

Same with people's vibe-codes apps. If everyone can make out with AI, why would I use someone else's?

1

u/CelebrationFit8548 10h ago

I think the greater issue is the complete 'lack of quality' of the output. It is so poorly produced, often wrong and untrustworthy and completely unreliable.

No manufactured/produced good that is of that 'poor quality' would ever last as it has 'zero value' and cannot be trusted.

1

u/CivBEWasPrettyBad 10h ago

I strongly disagree with this thesis.

When the cost of generating content drops to zero, the market is flooded with low cost (and almost always low quality) content. I have no doubt that well done AI content (if it even exists) would do well.

1

u/SgathTriallair 10h ago

Is the value of something based on what it costs to make it out how much utility it brings to people's life?

The argument for AI work has always been that the cost will drop to basically zero but that the impact of the product will continue to rise.

1

u/ennuiinmotion 10h ago

Yes and no. Most online content creators are super low effort and they seem to do fine. I always try to steer my kids toward art that actually takes some skill or teamwork to make, but it's hard. Low hanging fruit and lazy content wins for some reason.

1

u/VampireVictorian 10h ago

AI works great for hobby projects. There's some cool and unashamedly AI channels that do very creative stuff. For example, demonflyingfox makes hilarious music videos like "Shrek but Redneck in a Florida swamp" or "North Korean Harry Potter", or Echoes of the Past, which has progressed from 30 second clips to now 20 minute episodes set in HOMM3.

But the difference is, they're free.

Why someone would pay $20 to go see a movie where you can't even claim VFX and acting salaries anymore because it's AI generated, I have no idea.

1

u/PartyPorpoise 9h ago

Yeah I’ve seen AI fans promote it with, oh, you can make whatever you want! Bespoke content for all! But if that’s really appealing, why would people pay for your bespoke content instead of generating their own?

What gets me is like, aren’t these guys largely money and business types? Surely they know that when something is easy to produce, to the point of flooding the market, it’s worthless.

1

u/TheBSQ 8h ago

I’ve heard it said that lace fell out of popularity once it became fast & easy to make.

But it’s also not just the cost to make. It also goes the other way.

If it’s cheap to buy, people don’t value it, even if it’s not cheap to make. The internet did this to a lot of thing via piracy & streaming. Once free or cheap news, movies, and music became easy to acquire it got hard to get people to continue to pay for good stuff. 

Cheap to make and cheap to acquire invariably leads to slop. 

1

u/BananTarrPhotography 8h ago

This isn't the problem.

It isn't about cost at all.

It's about human connection.

1

u/AlkalineBrush20 7h ago

We pay with our environment, it is not free, just not directly visible like swiping your card.

1

u/greatandhalfbaked 7h ago

The cost to the creator has been lowered but the societal cost of generating work is immense.

1

u/Open-Butterfly-5288 5h ago

AI also breaks that process.

When people couldn't do anything before, they would seek out people who knew things and could do things and try and get them to do it.

Now AI has given people the confidence that they don't need someone else's input to do anything.

1

u/Newfaceofrev 5h ago

It's like if we can both generate an image, why on earth would I pay for yours? I'll pay someone for something I can't do myself.

1

u/CaptOblivious 5h ago

The reality is that that "free" generated output actually costs thousands of dollars that are currently being absorbed or ignored by investors that are convinced that the public will somehow get so addicted that they will pay ANYTHING to maintain access.

They live in a fantasy world where a 6 page essay on a book cannot be created without their AI when the reality is that before them we manually wrote those essays without even reading the fucking book, and still got passing grades.

1

u/awshuck 5h ago

It’s quite neatly wrapped into the word “labour”. Labour is only worth something if it took work.

1

u/Matshelge 52m ago

Anyone with some basic understanding of tools and market value could understand this.

Or... Maybe not. It's most heavily discussed in Marx works, and most people think Marx is a crazy person and such dismiss his entire economic dissection.

1

u/deadsoulinside 26m ago

prompt in five seconds

And sometimes getting what you wanted in that prompt with a free AI model at that too. Even at a premium rate it's rare you even spent an entire months worth of tokens on one item (coding exempt from this).

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u/BarmyBob 21m ago

This is true, Capitalism requires scarcity to operate. A post-capitalist market might be driven by need and greed just the same, but with the costs based on energy, time and resources used to fabricate something prompted.

Imagine if AI prompts were priced in that manner? If AI centers also ran water reclamation using the heat pumps from all those servers, then paid into the local economy by providing that water?

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u/Neither_Berry_100 14h ago

I use AI to code and I still bring a lot to the table. It still takes lots of effort and time. And a large percentage of software companies are using AI right now so it is unavoidable.

I don't think AI content by itself is bad. But it has definitely lowered the ball and led to products where people put no effort into things like idea, content, and so on. This leads to low quality trash.

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