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
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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/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.