This is an Immediate Article Turnoff For Me — And I’m Not Alone
Sometimes, you have to call things out. I don’t rant often on Medium, but give me the temporary indulgence here.
I’ll scroll on Medium and come across a thumbnail…then another thumbnail…and suddenly another…that all look, well, generated. And it may just be me, but I’m noticing it more lately. It makes me squirm.
I’m not going to include any examples in this piece of these thumbnails, because I’m not here to play the call-out game. I also don’t want to drive traffic to these articles that, despite being potentially interesting, are garnering attention in a way that I think shouldn’t be rewarded. You can find them when you open Medium — those thumbnails will come to you.
I understand this space. Medium is a great platform that anyone can use to just open up and write things. With that said, I know that some writers will be tempted to take shortcuts using AI. With writing, Medium has AI policies in place to luckily discourage that. Thank God. But AI as a tool to create art in any medium is something that just tanks my opinion towards a creator.
Stop using AI to generate your thumbnails. Please. For the love of all that is holy. It’s so tacky, and it feels like such a slap in the face to actual visual artists and photographers out there.
I understand that AI will be used as tools to help edit images and writing. Photoshop has Generative AI to add, expand, and fill in images. Grammarly is an AI system that gives you editing suggestions for your writing. Tweaking and removing things in a fully original creation is something that I’m looking past, because this AI world we live in is a runaway train. In the grand scheme, using AI to make edits is not the worst thing in the world here. We have to hold these conversations and look where the gray areas are.
Entirely AI-generated art, though, leads to a whole ethical conversation created since its inception. In general, the question of “what can we as a society accept as art?” is far and away not new. For example, are collages stealing art from other artists in the name of making something original? Is Andy Warhol and pop artists like him stealing from other artists if they use things like the Coca-Cola or Paramount logos in their work?
You could even throw in the topic of fair use here and discuss when it is and isn’t okay to use words, images, video, and the like in your own work.
To that end, the answer to all of these questions lies in the transformative element that a work provides. Is the artist in question — writer, visual artist, poet, filmmaker, etc. — using another artist’s work in a way that both calls back to and distinguishes itself from the original source? Is it a clear critique or commentary on the other artist’s work?
AI art isn’t using other art to be transformative — it uses art to mimic it. It isn’t traceable to any original work. It isn’t a commentary, a critique, or a reflection about any artist. Plainly put, AI art is the result of a task performed by a machine.
I’m not alone in this thinking. There is so much being said about the ethics of AI on Medium alone, and I won’t bother to repeat too much of what has already been said twice over.
AI is rightfully contentious, particularly regarding art. Furthermore, AI-generated thumbnails on Medium don’t say “revolutionary” or “tech-savvy” to me. They tell me that the writer is lazy, trying to stand out with little effort, or utilizing a shortcut they found to create an image different from just another Unsplash entry.
I can understand that people are going to be tempted to take shortcuts on an article for a site that they’re not actually employed to work for. Still, it leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth — and in the mouths of your potential readers.
Whatever your ethical opinions are about AI images, we can tell when you go that route. Please stop.
