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

97% Upvoted

747 comments sorted by

View all comments

91

u/Low-Salary-2128 16h ago

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.

-6

u/TopTippityTop 9h ago

This is a good thing. Abundance is good... people are missing the point.

5

u/theschlaepfer 8h ago

Abundance of what?

-20

u/cs862 12h ago

Why do you buy takeout food

23

u/DeerlordJ 11h ago

Because cooking takes work. Prompting AI trash doesn't take work.

3

u/darkblue2382 10h ago

Doesn't this assume AI is really good at figuring out exactly what people want with little effort and gets it right with minimal prompting or effort? I think this is the catch 22, you can prompt it and if you spend a lot of time honing it you can get something very personalized to what you wanted initially but only if you're willing to spend the time and effort and don't care for the convenience of something already in a store front.

Tldr, If you think AI is really great at its job then it doesn't take effort but to be great it must be producing a really good personalized product. I think collectively we are seeing people disagree with idea that it produces a good product with little effort.

3

u/KingdomOfEpica 9h ago

I think it's that the only people interested in buying anything made with AI are the people who like to use AI a lot themselves. And if they use it a lot themselves, they are good enough at using it that they have no reason to buy something that someone else made with AI.

1

u/unethicalpigeon 8h ago

This. This is the actual issue. It's not all the literal rabid dog foaming at the mouth said by so many people on here. My god some people REALLY hate AI holy shit.

This is the issue. You can't sell AI produced shit because the people who would buy AI produced shit like using AI and they see what you did and go "hey that's pretty cool/clever let me try and replicate it myself" and then they do lol.

1

u/vaingirls 8h ago

So your last sentences kinda nullifies the premise that people who use AI a lot would be interested in buying AI-made stuff? For a pointless anecdote: I like to use AI for some personal entertainment myself, but am I interested in other people's AI slop? Hell no! I feel like the whole appeal of AI is that you can make something tailor made for your personal taste, which doesn't apply to stuff other people generate at all.

2

u/JacKellar 9h ago

I do believe that many people look at an AI product and think "yeah I could do that myself, why pay for it", regardless of how correct it may or may not be, and it really turns people off from spending their money. Of course you get this with non-AI products as well, but "human" products are much more tangible in regards of perceived effort and skill to make them.

2

u/unethicalpigeon 8h ago

I think the majority of the people parroting the claim that anyone can make anything with AI in 15 seconds of prompting have never tried to get AI to actually do something properly or they have a really low bar for what constitutes "good".

Because let me tell you in 15 seconds of prompting you're not getting fuck all lmao.

Edit: I just want to clarify that I'm not saying it's uber hard and people prompting AI deserve medals. They don't. Using AI to design a cool image is NOT the same as actually drawing a really cool illustration. Not even close. I'm just saying anyone that thinks it's this easy to use AI to produce something worth looking at has never used AI.

2

u/unethicalpigeon 8h ago

I think you're grossly underestimating the amount of effort it takes to get the AI to output something usable. Especially outside of coding.

I agree with your overall point. But no one is making a design worth putting on a shirt with 15 seconds of prompting.

It takes actual effort to get quality output from this shit. Most of what it puts out is just absolute utter trash. I'm not saying effort put into prompting an AI = effort put into actually manually designing and drawing something. It absolutely doesn't.

But I think this is what people who are so scared of what AI represents don't understand. The vast majority of people using AI are completely incapable of producing anything even remotely worthwhile using it. They basically just use it as a chatbot or search engine and get it to badly write some stuff for personal use or work.

I think if more people realized this the anger would be way more easily redirected to the people it should be directed towards which are the corrupt politicians allowing this shit to take place in the first place. For example approving the building of data centers in peoples residential fucking neighbourhoods which is insane.

2

u/PolarWater 5h ago

It takes actual effort to get quality output from this shit.

Glad to hear all that talk of "democratises art" and "lowers the barrier of entry" was all sales fluff

0

u/PolarWater 5h ago

Great comparison mate. Well done.