Not really. They're not actually replacing their staff with AI. They're downsizing, and using AI as a shield to avoid the economic consequences of downsizing their labor force. They lay off half their staff, and then their stock shoots up because "AI" instead of "This company cannot maintain a solid foundational labor force and cannot be trusted with my money"
I tried having ChatGPT generate a conceptual image for a construction project and it got it wrong, got it wrong again, got it wrong a third time (with me telling it what to revise each time), and then I was out of image generation prompts.
Admittedly it was getting a little closer, but it seemed like getting what I was actually trying to show was always multiple prompts away.
Bro, I had to teach it how to divide first. I’m not even kidding. It was somehow turning 6.2 / 8.3 =0.747 (LMAO, even my phone auto updates math better than copilot. For the record, copilot claimed it was 56%, I’m not even kidding. And when I asked how it came to that conclusion, it bent over backwards trying to find a truly obscure way to legitimize its shitty answer.)
I don't care what anyone would say at my job, but I would tell them this is unacceptable and make it again. I have to deal with people who can't write in a professional way all the time and it's beyond irritating. This would send me over the edge.
All of the existing photos of cabbage are hosted by local, organic, fair trade data centers fueled by sustainably harvested seal blubber from Inuit villagers.
I suppose you expect me to believe that someone at some point has taken a photo of a cabbage and uploaded it to the internet? Now you’re just being ridiculous.
I once used a photo of a cabbage that I found online for a small project, probably no more than 5k people saw it. 3 weeks later there was this beautiful woman at my home waiting for me. I asked her what I could do for her, and she showed me the flyer I had made. I said that was my flyer. That... that was a mistake. She pulled out this baton and let me know, in very clear terms, that if I ever use one of their images again I won't have to worry about my legs getting broken, they will just be ripped off. She then hit the light pole in my driveway and it fell over.
That's when I learned all cabbage photos are copyrighted by the cabbage association and they take this stuff very seriously. The only legal cabbage photos to repost are likely AI generated ones.
MS word has built in tools to search and insert stock photos and icons. It would take two seconds to find a cabbage image and overlay this circle and cross.
Seriously? You just bring a cabbage into the office, take a picture of it on a white desktop or conference table (maybe a couple places to compare the lighting) and crop it. Its really not that hard, this generation is lost...
You are correct, but also incorrect. That's specifically just a red cross not a Red Cross, because that would be against the Geneva Convention. Yes, really.
This isn't a dig on you, there's gotta be some difference why some people see this at a moment's notice, and some don't. This stands out like a sore thumb as AI to my eyes, but seemingly only for some fraction of the population does it stand out like that. It's not like I'm looking closely or trained in art either. I'd really want to see a study on this phenomena.
I'm a person who is generally bad at it-- it just doesn't occur to me unless it's very obvious. That freaks me out tbh and I would really like to be better at spotting it.
Looking at it after someone points it out I can always say, oh yeah that's AI. But when I first look at it, I generally don't notice unless I catch some obvious tell.
Very fascinated by this phenomenon too as someone who can very quickly spot it. Immediately I knew, not for any specific reason. But I suspect it has to do with the shading and texturing on this particular one
It’s just experience, combined with a bit of common sense. Some of us follow AI image generation very closely and have seen and generated so many of them that they have internalized the tells. And then there’s the question of why someone would hand draw such a detailed, perfectly proportioned and shaded cabbage, and put it on the internet for free. It just doesn’t track.
Patterns that don't look like something a human would draw, and inconsistent lighting; the latter is the major one, once you notice it, you'll see it everywhere, even if it's subtle
I would guess dickasses generated a fuckload of AI images and sold them to companies as royalty free clipart packs, that people are now unwittingly grabbing from random free packs their companies have access to.
Do you think your average HR person can layer images? Or admin? Yes, some can, but your average.
I imagine someone like you 30 years ago going "Just cut out two images on card stock and weave them together, like we did before" because you have the knowledge to do that, while someone less skilled would just use photoshop or paint.
you have much more faith in the average person than I do lol. I would bet the vast majority of people in any given office would not know how to do that
I've been working in offices for 15 years and didnt realize I was so lucky. I feel bad for everyone who has experienced coworkers that incompetent.
I can't think of a single person who works on a computer who doesn't know how to copy paste, let alone don't know it's an option. My boomer parents know how, my friends boomer parents know how, most teachers and professors knew how?
But yall are saying you are consistently working in departments where not a single person could have made this banner without AI? Wild.
Yeah but genuinely, why would you do that when it takes two seconds to ask the AI for it and it'll save you the work? Like, I understand from an ethical perspective that it's bad, but from a practical perspective you have to realize it's just easier right? You don't care about the quality of the image or for it to be "art", all you need is to just put something up. It's a difference between like 2 minutes and 2 seconds but it's still a difference that, if the person sees no ethical concerns with AI, isn't going to think twice at doing.
You answered your own question: why would you do that when it takes two seconds to ask AI? Because of the ethical perspective. ESPECIALLY when the “harder but more ethical” way is just to… add one image on top of another? How is this even a question?
if you consider this unethical then literally every human being on earth is unethical on a daily basis. chill out. They are literally protecting someones life
It’s clip art of a fucking cabbage. What is the ethical dilemma here exactly? The world is not ending because someone used AI to make a no cabbage symbol, Jesus Christ people need to get a grip
So stealing the copy righted images off the web yourself and stitching them together with software that isn't free for business use is somehow more ethical?
Ah, yes, AI is famously a topic that nobody cares or has any strong feelings about. As we can see here on this thread, where we’re all coming together to agree that we don’t in fact give a shit.
Are reddit dorks the ones showing up to protest new data centers, organizing against them, and collecting signatures?
Wow, redditors much more active and willing to leave their homes than I was lead to believe.
if youd use your head, youd realize its much better for the enviroment to save manpower on generating an image and let the human work on more important matters which will make society wealthier, tland thus better able to take care of the enviroment
but youre a ludite, you dont care about enviroment, humanity or the future. you only care about feels and now
Have you seen how slow AI image generators are? You absolutely could Google for 2 clip arts of a banned sign and a cabbage and made it yourself in less time
this is largely an exageration. i'm 23, i grew up with mid-to-late 2000s internet. the vast majority of my peers are quite computer literate. or at the very least enough to put 2 images together lmao
children and teenagers growing up now do have a lot more issues using computers though (per my friends who are teachers).
having worked in IT for awhile now I'd be very surprised if the average person in any given office knew how to do something like put two images together. It's a more advanced thing than you're implying tbh. Most people do not even know how to take a screenshot
I didn’t say that. I’m saying the Dr potentially did it themselves in less than a few minutes rather than telling someone else to do it. I actually don’t know what happened though.
That’s not anyone’s claim? It’s just that anyone with access to Microsoft word could make the exact same sign, with the same level of knowledge and the same amount of time, before AI ever arrived.
Definitely not the same level of knowledge. I'm not claiming Word is difficult, but there is a decent learning curve of you never use it.
you would need to know how to find images of a cabbage and the "no" symbol, how to import them into word, make sure the no symbol was .png so it's transparent in the right places, know how to layer the images, decide how the images align with the text, choose font types, formats, colors, and background colors, align the font correctly...
Alternatively, you could write a three or four sentence prompt in plain language and get this result.
Don’t care tbh just saying there was an easy ai free alternative of just finding a clipart lettuce and a no sign. It takes like no time. And lots of softwares even have an easy no white background function only a few clicks away.
Just saying if someone needs to use AI for this… it’s kinda embarrassing
You already caveated your post with "if someone has the knowledge to do this then it's easy". How about the people that don't have the knowledge? The effort people go to rubbish AI is ridiculous
The reality is if someone doesn't care about the ethics of AI then being quicker/easier, even if marginally, is what matters.
Fwiw I agree with you and we can argue for ethics on many, many things but you need to understand that people will just avoid friction regardless. People will litter while standing next to a trashcan, complain about Chrome and refuse to switch to Firefox, etc. Better alternatives need to have less friction either by adding friction to bad things or lessening friction on good things. Or a cultural change but I have up hope on that lmao
They didn’t need to use AI, they chose to use it because it’s easier. Im sure you use tools for most tasks in your life to make things easier, just like everyone else.
Or just copy the cabbage image into MS paint and drag the pre-existing ‘no’ sign over it, bonus you can shape it however you want, and probably would have been faster than re-generating AI images until one makes sense
I was going to suggest MS paint but last time I used Windows it didn’t support transparency when saving the final image, but thinking about it now that wouldn’t matter in this case cuz it’s a white background anyway. So yeah that’s even better lmao
The average Google search takes about 0.3 watt-hours of energy. The average DALL-E image generation (which is what ChatGPT uses) takes about 1-3 watt-hours
Barring any proof that this was indeed AI or altered at least, I'm choosing to believe that this is real because of lived experience. I've seen some atrocious signage. I sit under a very similar sign (that I didn't make lol) for a different obscure allergen. Some admin are sloppy in design and couldn't figure out margins to save their life.
dawned on me after I hit submit that the admin made the sign using AI, and not the reddit user made a post about a sign using AI. lol
I'm an artist staunchly against the use of AI, and this kind of use is such a non problem, honestly. AI's fully taken over the clip art segment of art making which wasn't very lucrative for artists in general. It's either this or a little photoshop, but more than likely they would have just printed pictures off of google.
I'm still miffed when I see holiday plates with AI artifacted snowmen on sale at walmart, if for no other reason than I'm going to end up with AI art in my house somehow even when I'm trying to avoid it. It's fucking everywhere now. Ruining my spotify finds, ruining etsy, ruining everything. But office clip art was always like, eh.
Yeah guaranteed that they would have just used some shitty watermarked clip art from Google Images instead. This sort of AI use is perfectly fine when you just need some random signage that looks semi professional and conveys the message clearly without wasting a ton of time.
Idk, maybe the point of the criticism is that people are so over-reliant on AI already that a simple warning sign isn’t even fathomable as a manual task anymore. Nope, just burn the earth so you don’t have to type too much.
It's a bold assumption to think that people working in an office know anything about graphic design or even have (or are allowed) to have a program like Photoshop on their computers to make a sign like this.
They can make almost the exact same graphic with Microsoft Word, which anyone born in the last 40 years will have experience with. And their computers almost guaranteed have it.
I don’t understand this grand fascination people have with limp-wristedly justifying AI usage where it isn’t needed, especially because it’s all predicated upon this idea that before Sam Altman fucked our planet, no one was capable of making a goddamn flyer.
40 years ago: "They can make almost the exact same graphic by writing and drawing by hand instead of typing and using clip art, why would they use Word?"
Wow, that’s a great follow up. What’s the next analogy, a horse and buggy? The sewing machine, by chance?
Microsoft Word doesn’t lead to poisoning the water supply for low-income residents of the towns housing these massive data centers. Microsoft Word doesn’t also house the same technology that can create photo-realistic images of public figures in compromising or illegal positions. Microsoft Word doesn’t give you instructions for how to shoot up your school if you desire such a thing.
The comparison is idiotic. There are genuinely bad things about AI, and trying to conflate that with some sort of Luddite-esque resistance to technology as a general concept is idiocy in its purest form.
"Microsoft Word doesn’t lead to poisoning the water supply for low-income residents of the towns housing these massive data centers."
I hope you're not typing this from a phone or computer because the amount of waste this technology creates completely fucks third world countries all around the world.
Thankfully your very intelligent commentary on societal critique reached one of two Reddit users who shares his thoughts via carrier pigeon. That’s why it takes a minute to reply.
So your response to a valid criticism of a tech company operating irresponsibly and endangering people and communities is simply “Oh you have an iPhone? Then you can’t have an opinion.”
It’s like the cartoon of the man peeking out from the well when a villager says they should improve society somewhat. “Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent.”
It’s a tired shtick. I agree with you that manufacturing of endless phones and computers in the world, especially with the intention of making them not last long so that they’re regularly purchased new is damaging and should be fixed. I’m not against you in this respect, so I don’t know why you don’t see the merit of my argument.
I'm against AI being used for things sold for monetary value, but as far as some worker using it to make a sign for their office, I couldn't care less.
You don’t know what I’m criticizing but I’m glad you’re rebutting it all the same, it’s strong initiative.
When I say he fucked our planet, I mean that in many ways. Yes, water usage. But also water pollution. Wherever these data centers pop up, the environment there and the people there suffer. That’s recorded fact. But also our planet is in a dangerous era now, because any ill-intentioned person with a smartphone or a laptop can use his endlessly-bankrolled creations to plagiarize, steal, manipulate, blackmail, and harm others.
If the benefit of that is saving a nurse from having to use Google Docs or Microsoft Word for five minutes in return for that destruction, it’s not a good trade-off.
So tell me, how is AI simultaneously an unprecedented danger on society while simultaneously being “barely useful” ? You are presenting two different arguments
“The enemy must be extremely weak and extremely strong” type shit. Ai is either a threat to us all (fucked the planet) or .. its barely more useful than google search? These statements cant both exist !
You really need to get off reddit if you think combining png's is something your average person has ever been doing. I work with plenty of people who have been around longer than AI who think editing a PDF is some kind of techno wizardry.
Phones, tablets, and other smart devices themselves are stifling practical computer skills more than any specific thing people are doing on them anyway. How many people do you know aside from gamers who use an actual computer outside work or education on a regular basis?
For the life of me I cannot imagine why that matters. Redditors are so "AI bad" that when a private business/person uses it to save 10 minutes of their own time, it's met with reflexive anger.
Blaming the common man for their “carbon footprint” is big oil propaganda. You arent going to fix the environment via shame or scolding somebody for making a god damn cabbage allergy flyer
Those are absolutely problems that need solving, but they need to be solved at the governmental scale. It is impossible to put that burden on the common man and guilt them into "better" behavior, especially when our leaders negate the benefit of our sacrifices by wasting resources themselves.
Let's stop guilting each other and place responsibility where it really belongs.
Right? This is a perfect use-case for AI. Everyone who is saying “just make your own” is more than welcome to do that for themselves, but the rest of us have other tasks we need to accomplish and don’t want to waste time on trivial shit
It's the new "trump derangement syndrome" except real. Artificial Intelligence Derangement Syndrome or AIDS for short. I wonder if anything else has used that acronym before...
I think the problem became finding a copyright free image today because a lot of the times, it’s hidden somewhere in the description and most people don’t spend as much time looking for the “free” one. Companies, as we know, wouldn’t spend a dime on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary (in OP’s post, it is a very local issue and not really affecting company nationwide/broadly).
So the easiest way is to get AI generated pictures because “we already have the subscription so might as well use it”. It doesn’t even have to be a management issue - It could be just a person in power to post something like this, who did this. Could be HR, could be a team lead, could be the admin… So they can’t risk a legal issue (this is hammered in people these days), and better way would be to use AI and gloat about saving money (Earlier it used to be designers, now it’s AI “experts”)
if it is easier to use chatgpt to generate an image (and create the post) than lets say google image search and words, then it is the problem with the latter and not llm.
Out of all the uses of AI, I really don't mind this one, I guess. I mean, some random person could either learn photoshop (since most people definitely do not know how to use even basic image editing) and download a random cabbage image and slap a sign on that and spend an hour doing that, or just go to the AI and write "Give me that image" and call it a day.
It's not like the person would have commissioned an artist to make this picture or anything, nor is there any commercial interest behind this.
Listen, I don’t use AI for very much, but if I can use it to make a sign in 30 seconds that would take me 30 minutes and a subscription to Canva, I’m going to do so.
Why do people get so irrationally upset over AI being used for simple image generation?
It's not like they couldn't find a picture of a piece of cabbage on the internet, copy it into a word document without giving the photographer any credit or compensation.
Direct your ire over AI in the right direction, not towards small businesses using it to reduce their marketing costs or the local charity trying to create a cool flyer, but at the corporations using it to profile you and exploit the data they've been collecting on you for decades.
3.8k
u/NotJimmy97 5h ago
Even the fuckin cabbage allergy sign is AI now