Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

I’m removing AI-generated slop-illustrations from the blog. In this brave new world of genAI, intentionality and process matter more than ever. When everybody can cheat, the exam answers are worthless. What you test for is the process. This feels familiar.

I’m writing to explain my thought process behind removing AI-generated photos and illustrations from this blog. In the process, I want to ponder upon the value of human creation. By the way, I’m removing AI-generated images on this website with my hand-drawn illustrations. Original post was here Soon I’ll include photos and illustrations by my friends or people I know. I’m prioritizing intentionally-created works instead of those barfed out by generative AI networks¹.

I want to answer the following questions in this post: Why is this important? Why do I want to make my life hard? What do I hope to achieve, putting in so much effort for something as simple as blog illustrations? Who would care if I put my focus on the blog posts, and spent a minute of effort generating the images? Would that not make the quality of my writing better?

I’ll start with the last question first. Might I not do better by spending less time worrying about illustrations? By focusing fully on the write-up and outsource the illustrations to the machines? My answer is, at that point, why not outsource the writing itself to the machine as well? Why not generate AI slop that everybody on Google search seems to be pushing out? Add ai illustrations on the ai-generated blog and call it a day! That would be much faster! I could focus myself on bigger ideas and more important things and be done!

Now, that’s not a completely fair take. One could say that there is an advantage in specializing. Some people are better writers. Others are great illustrators. Is it really that big of a deal if a writer decides to outsource the illustration work to ‘somebody else’?

My response is no, not if the other person is a human being, because they are still valuing the art, the craft, the experience, and understanding of the other person. But by assigning image generation to the machine, we are, of course, undermining the value and putting less importance on what the art means. My spending 30 seconds on the illustration, I’d be saying “oh yeah, here’s some shit-image that I got in like 5 seconds lol, I don’t really give a crap!” That…is not where I want to be going.

To put it differently, imagine an illustrator who draws a lot, and outsources the related story/blog to the machine. In that, it’s clearer that they’re not valuing the text very much. Now imagine if everybody started doing that. We’d be all devaluing every other skillset not in our immediate comfort. We’d replacing it with mid, boring, and cheap machine-generated art, that doesn’t provoke curiosity, introspection, or understanding.

Why do I consider AI-generated art to be lacking in curiosity, introspection, or understanding? And eventually boring…

It’s because the reader/viewer understands that there was no motivation or agency that went behind the creation of that piece. When the answer to “ooh why did you do that?” is frequently “ohh I just clicked the button, ai did that”, there’s not much of a conversation to be had. You cannot learn anything about the creator, the art doesn’t reveal anything. It only confounds.

AI Art is ‘art’ by lottery and not by intent. When you remove intent from the process of creation, you remove the meaning in it. It’s just something for you to stare at, like those cheap wall posters from the 80’s.

The created piece becomes a meaningless, nihilistic object that exists by itself.

But you say, “Oh, I did have intention in generating that image by giving it the prompt. Isn’t that intent enough?” My answer is no. Saying, “I want this, get me this,” is not intent, it’s a button push.

If somebody spent two hours thinking about what they want gradually prompted AI to create it, I would be aligned to agree on being AI-generated content being intentional. But how often does that happen? The entire point of using machine-generated art is to avoid the question of intent and agency entirely. The point is to succeed without putting effort.

The reason I’m okay putting art by other people here is because they have put intentionality in them. Those creators had agency, an intent, a vision in creating the art. The art is a reflection of their understanding of the world, and a validation of their lived experience.

Posting meaningless art, by definition, implies that you don’t value intent. You don’t value understanding, and you don’t value the process that went into creation. The effort is undermined. For me, blogging, writing, illustrating, creating the website is all about intent. It’s about the process. It’s about the journey. Why? Because why else would I do that?

“Content hackers” understand genAI to be the magic keyword like ‘open sesame’ that opens up new job opportunities. That has never been true. But now, even IF that were to be the case, the magic word is so common that nobody gives a shit that you can open magic caves. Get a hobby. Learn to draw or write, or something.

The whole point of creating one’s online presence is to showcase ability, intent, effort, and one’s understanding of the world. It is to display that you have a clear, specific vision and framing of looking at the world. It’s a promise that the understanding can be generalized and can be used to your future employer’s benefit. I don’t really care if anybody knows I’m capable of using a free tool in a lazy manner. Anybody can produce lukewarm, average, pointless work, what exactly is the value of that lukewarm, pointless creation?

Intent and the journey matter a lot in a world where people understand AI can do a lot. That’s why I prioritize hand-drawn illustrations over genAI-generated illustrations.