I’ve never liked stock photos and videos. I suppose they’re understandable and acceptable for ads and purely promotional content, but for anything else — blog posts, YouTube videos, presentations, etc. — they have never really brought value, and they blurred the lines of truth. You might see a blog post about a car and think the featured image is the car in question, but it turns out it’s just some generic stock photo of a car that existed at some point somewhere on planet earth and that has nothing to do with what is being discussed. Who knew this phoniness could get even more phony? But that’s what AI has made possible.
Now, when I scroll through Facebook, I’m inundated with fake, AI-generated images. AI Jesus. AI Pope Francis. AI Homer Simpson. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen AI-generated posters for movies that don’t even exist.
When I watch someone talking on YouTube, they’ll show a 5-second stock video clearly generated by AI that brings zero production value. Just keep showing you’re face on camera unless you have an actual artefact to show us that is something you actually took a photo of or recorded. I might even abide stock videos or videos you found online if they are real, have at least something to do with what you are saying, and help to illustrate something we, the audience, actually need to visualize. Otherwise, what’s the point?
I hear all the time how the internet has helped to democratize publishing, partially because audiences find independent voices to be more authentic. And it’s true. I often prefer small, personal blogs and YouTube channels over heavily produced shows by gigantic media conglomerates. But that authenticity is damaged when you add AI-generated media for no reason other than because you think somehow it makes you appear to be more polished. It doesn’t. It’s just a distraction.
Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate uses for AI photos and videos. They’re not things I’ve personally taken up doing, but they are at least legitimate hobbies.
The Studio Ghibli-style image generation tool that went viral, which allowed users to turn their real photos into convincing anime cartoons, was pretty cool. My understanding is that it has given rise to a huge debate over whether it should count as copyright infringement, but my point for now is that it at least brought something of value to the people using and consuming it, was not passing itself off as real, and was not just fluff decoration to accompany written content.
Likewise, I’ve seen several friends share cool little artistic experiments they made with AI in one way or another, from Catholic iconography to images of themselves as Superman. As long as it’s people playing around and not trying to pass it off as real, explicitly or implicitly, I’m fine with it. All that feels above board to me.
Using it in contexts where, previously, you would have posted your own photo of something real starts feeling cheap and even dishonest after a while. Again, it’s the same kind of cheapness or dishonesty that comes with any stock imagery, only more pronounced.
It feels like we’re on an irreversable path. I see more and more of it every day, and as the technology keeps getting better, I suppose adoption will increase. But here’s to hoping that I’m not the only one getting tired of it and that there will be a backlash of some sort, that using AI photos and video, outside of specific scenarios where they serve an actual purpose, will eventually become passé and uncool, a quirky mid-2020s trend that faded away.
Or maybe I just spend too much time on Facebook and YouTube, but that’s another issue altogether.