General Discussion

There are two reasons I stopped making "Pics of the Moment" for the DU front page. The first is pretty straightforward -- after the election I was completely burned out on politics. Trump was going to be president, and my pics frequently referenced Trump, and I could not stand to look at his face any more. It's why I have not manually posted a pic of Trump's face to the DU homepage since he became president again (the video thumbnails that show up in the right column are auto-posted) .

But the second is because any talent that I might have had when it came to making those things is now basically irrelevant. For example, if this Trump/TACO story had happened any time before 2025, I daresay I would have enjoyed spending a few hours conceptualizing and creating a Photoshopped image of something related to Trump and TACO, which I would have posted on DU's front page for people's amusement (or not -- I know I didn't post a winner every single day of the week, lol).

But now I kinda feel like... what's the point? Anybody with access to an AI image generator can now fart out a Trump/TACO image in a few seconds, requiring zero thought or talent. None of it has the "human touch," but that's not really the point -- the point is that even if a Photoshopped image that I create ISN'T auto-generated slop, it's still going to get lost in an online ocean of actual auto-generated slop. I feel like I'd just be wasting my time.

So I can personally attest to the fact that AI is changing the creative landscape.

By the way, I share these thoughts purely as an example of how AI is affecting creators. I would prefer it if after reading this comment people didn't start badgering me to create new rules to get rid of AI on DU. That's a separate discussion, and I've explained at length, elsewhere, the problems with trying to do it.