by: Ethan McCue
There's a vivid mental image I have in my head of a T-Rex giving a thumbs up.
So I had ChatGPT generate that for me.
If your initial reaction to reading that and seeing that is some variation of "ughhh" or rolling your eyes or "fuck this guy" congrats. You are normal.
If it wasn't I cannot stress to you enough that you are an outlier. Whenever you pick key art for a presentation or blog, your business, or whatever - if you use AI art you give a clear signal that you have low social literacy. You immediately associate yourself with a huge bundle of negative emotions because people, largely, hate this shit.
The game theory on this is astoundingly clear. The best case scenario is that your audience doesn't mind. The worst, and common-case, scenario is that they think less of you. Nobody sane looks at that and goes "wow, they must have spent such a long time prompting."
Here are some easy alternatives.
Alternative 1: Lazy photoshop
Here I've taken a photo of a T-Rex from the Jurassic Park Wiki and used https://jspaint.app to very poorly edit on a thumbs up emoji.
I'm sure I could have found a public domain rendering of a dinosaur, but if we cared about intellectual property AI wouldn't be on the table regardless.
And again to stress the point - people will look upon this much more favorably.
Alternative 2: Doodle
This one speaks for itself. Pull out your colored pencils, your markers, your watercolors. Draw something, and take a photo with your phone.
Now I drew this one, but do you comprehend how much it improves people's perception of you if you can say "my 6-year-old niece drew this?" If you have access to a child make use of that.
Alternative 3: Commission Art
I write about software, I post in software spaces. I must assume that some significant fraction of those reading this are software professionals.
Do you have any idea how negatively it reflects on you as a person if you have a six-figure job but won't shell out some cash to a starving artist?
I commissioned https://bsky.app/profile/dsoart.com for this one, and I am more than pleased. You can too. Or any number of relatively affordable professionals.
Alternative 4: Be a grifter
People with minor cases of major brain damage. Those who have drunk too long from the leaden hose of LinkedIn. The kind of person who was really into NFTs in 2022. These people make perfect marks.
Using AI images is an effective way to filter out people with critical thinking skills. If you are running a grift it can be a valuable piece of your toolkit. Much like your classic "Nigerian prince" scams, the kind of people who see that junk and still engage are your most cash of cows.
If that's what you want to do, if that's who you want to be - godspeed, loser.
