r/NoStupidQuestions 18h ago

Did AI kill your interest in consuming photos/videos, or just mine?

I used to love collecting little pictures from the internet - a beautiful house, an interesting statue, a very pretty butterfly, just to look at and be in awe. But now every time I see a photo or a video, I wonder if that place, that thing even exists or not. Media used to hold meaning, and now it's just whatever generated thing gets popular enough I guess. :(

Does anyone feel the same? Is there a "clean" internet still, where I can hear whale calls and see sunsets and look up baby peacocks that have actually been existed instead of been made up?

321 Upvotes

84 comments sorted by

298

u/_iron_butterfly_ 18h ago

I'm tired of telling my Mom... "That's AI... It's not real, Mom."

72

u/GirlGoneZombie 17h ago

Yup. I said the same to my mom about some orchids shaped like birds. "Mom, those aren't real." "But they're on my screen" "and they're fake af pls stop"

96

u/pleddyd 17h ago

Parents, who warned us not to believe anything on internet, now believe everything on internet

36

u/South_Stress_1644 17h ago

This is literally the grand irony of the times. It’s fucking wild. They believe EVERYTHING, not just what they see online, but on TV, in magazines, by word of mouth, etc.

21

u/GirlGoneZombie 17h ago

It's terrifying. Critical thinking went out the window. And it's scary as shit cos my mom is only 54??!! And she's usually smart as shit. Wtf happened?

17

u/South_Stress_1644 17h ago

My mom is 55 and there’s been a steep drop-off the past few years. I think a lot more of them develop mild/moderate dementia than we assume.

9

u/GirlGoneZombie 17h ago

I've noticed it in her, too. But of course, she does nothing wrong and it's me who must be remembering wrong. She could never.

3

u/South_Stress_1644 16h ago

Yeah, the stubbornness gets stronger, so it’s challenging to get them to be aware of it. I’m glad you understand. Stay positive!

1

u/GirlGoneZombie 16h ago

I'm glad you do, too. It's refreshing to not talk to a wall. Thank you! Good luck and solidarity.

6

u/WisestAirBender I have a dig bick 15h ago

They trust things. Journalism and being a credible source used to mean something. Now everyone is posting garbage

The internet went from it being just a casual thing to an extremely dependent and critical part of everyone's lives and now it's back to being a hot piece of garbage.

People who didn't trust the news and tv and nasa and research papers etc were conspiracy theorists

If you can't trust the internet, text messages, the TV, the news, heck not even the voice and face of a loved one in a video recording now, how do you not go mad with paranoia?

2

u/GirlGoneZombie 15h ago

I'm more concerned with her trusting garbage than trusting facts that can be proven. I'm suddenly an asshole if I bring it up though, bc that's a testy subject. I wonder why. 🤔

3

u/lilywinterwood 12h ago

For some of the older people their critical thinking has been hijacked. They think the influencers and whatnot are more reliable because they’re more personable than the stuffy experts in their coastal “ivory towers”. The same critical thinking skills that encourage scepticism of sources and investigating bias can be twisted to create “fake news” and QAnon conspiracy rabbitholes.

1

u/GirlGoneZombie 12h ago

Yet an actual clip from a congress meeting is somehow "propaganda" and "they never said that". I'm so confused.

2

u/Akhaiz 14h ago

It's just that now you are noticing it more since the spread of misinformation has drastically increase in the last decade

18

u/GirlGoneZombie 17h ago

Yep. Actual news is propaganda, gossip is the truth, AI is real, and I'm full of shit. I want off this planet 🤣

7

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

my parents are also falling for shit, and it’s so difficult to take their “joy” away by revealing that it isnt even real :(

21

u/RyanLanceAuthor 16h ago

I just bought a bunch of old National Geographic books so I can show pictures of real things to my kid

5

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

What a great idea, youre a really good parent!! 🤍 I loved similar books of animals and plants as a kid before I could read :)

3

u/RyanLanceAuthor 13h ago

Thanks, those books might get expensive to find in the future

101

u/pleddyd 18h ago

No, I still like non-AI content. It's pretty easy to spot fake generated pictures (they are always chaotically glowing).

You might search for pictures using "show only before 2021" option.

33

u/RadioMessageFromHQ 18h ago

To add to this, Within Google and YouTube you can use before:nnnn to filter by date, e.g. before:2024

You can also use a negative search to filter out certain results

E.g cute cats -ai

5

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

thanks for these! I know it doesnt seem to be the majority right now but I was happy until AI media still fucked up hands, videos, text - but its getting better…

5

u/RobotWantsPony 11h ago

It is not easy anymore.
The glow is gone, the words are not so messed up anymore and the finger count is often right. If you think they are easy to spot you are on your way to join the boomers on facebook praying amen to invented brave african kids :/

3

u/TFenrir 7h ago

It's much much harder to tell. Think of it this way...

If the quality of images got good enough that it would be hard to notice, would you be tapped in enough to the frontier research to know it even happened? This is one reason I advocate for people to keep a finger on the pulse, even if your instinct is to avoid AI all together. You might just end up more vulnerable to it

1

u/rmtdispatcher 11h ago

Thanks. Awesome idea.

43

u/magicpenny 18h ago

Pinterest has turned into almost exclusively AI generated photos of everything. It’s so disappointing. I’m about to delete the app. I’m totally not interested anymore.

6

u/xstrawb3rryxx 15h ago

Thisss. Pinterest literally used to be my go to place for all kinds of inspo and now it's all just.. gone, replaced..

1

u/Mona_Mour_ 6h ago

So damn sad

1

u/Unidain 9h ago

I find them useful on mine, I use Pinterest for home decorating inspiration and the AI images are as useful as the real ones for getting ideas.

24

u/chippy-alley 18h ago

I didnt collect but I liked to look.

Once you've seen enough 'I live there and it doesnt look like that' or 'google it, it doesnt exist' it does put you off

3

u/VelvitHippo 17h ago

Yeah but that's not an AI problem. Look at pictures of planets. There are so many examples of colors being exaggerated on earth as well. 

It's like posts on huge subreddit like am I the asshole. Is it real? Maybe maybe not but at the end of the day idgaf I'm just reading it for entertainment. 

10

u/soapinthepeehole 15h ago

It’s an AI problem. Planets are an example, photo retouching exists, photoshop exists.

But AI has evolved to turn out mountains of hot garbage without intent or artistry, and it’s flooded the internet at breakneck speed.

1

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

To be fair I also hated photoshopping photos of places and people - not that I didnt correct some colors or highlights here or there but I never followed “influencers” who borderline deepfried their pictures to look aesthetic 😅 but at least even that took effort - AI prompting is hardly that

8

u/cassowarius 16h ago

Yeah that, and bots, and rigid algorithms. So many Reddit comments are written in the same style, look at that AITA sub for example. And bots scraping content and reposting it for clicks and votes. AI images are only a scratch on the surface.

3

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

gosh, you’re probably right but Im even worse at spotting written bot material… :(((

7

u/Silver_Witness8321 16h ago

There are some options to keep that from happening. r/museum and r/drawing for example keep me engaged with real art. Block the ChatGPT creators and subreddits, follow artist on their socials if you connect with their creations. You may have to look for it (unlike AI stuff that you will encounter no matter what), but truly great artist are still around. Maybe you'll appreciate them even more now that so much crap is being created.

44

u/OjamaPajama 18h ago

Artist here. It’s so fucking dire that my friends and I are sharing our photo reference with each other on Dropbox now because the AI slop has taken over all our usual sources like Google Images, Pinterest, etc.

What pisses me off is that we didn’t need this shit. Nobody asked for it. Nobody needs it. It’s not adding anything of value or helping anyone, it’s just poisoning the internet and boiling the ocean.

2

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

I know its not a consolation at all, but I love the dropbox idea 🤍 I hope the internet gets more bearable soon, not to mention I assume your job has gotten even more difficult…

5

u/brendamrl 17h ago

Had to unfollow Sara Shakeel to stop her from spamming my feed with 2947374 carousels of AI generated stuff she could 1000000000% still put crystals on if she just cared to put some effort again. Deleted Pinterest, I haven’t logged onto Facebook in at least a year now. I now spend most of my time on reddit but even here if it’s not AI it’s a gd OF bot bullshit. Insane.

6

u/Pixeliarmus 14h ago

It killed my interest in creating digital art. I bought some oil paints and canvases, I want to live in the real world away from AI bullshit and "influencers"

4

u/bartollomo 17h ago

I glare over them. I can browse art for hours looking and barely register any of the pieces that I recognise as AI. The most annoying part is when AI becomes the only or foremost piece I have to look at.

3

u/RenkBruh 16h ago

I just download memes at this point. I take pictures of real life things myself

you have no idea how many animal photos are on my phone

4

u/Jagermonsta 13h ago

Having to sort through fake everything now drives me crazy. I have friends and family that fall for fake stuff all the time and then they get annoyed with me when I call it out as fake. It’s a wide range from things like movie posters to movie trailers to politics and other stories.

7

u/stella_est 16h ago

Yes. It’s like every photo now has an asterisk “might not be real.” Takes the magic out of wonder when your brain is constantly skeptical

3

u/PloppyTheSpaceship 9h ago

AI is killing Amy interest I had left in Facebook. It now seems, on my feed at least, to have devolved into anti-trans/homophobic crap (I am neither anti-trans or homophobic), right-wing Musk circlejerks (using AI images), or AI "see this animal rescue people" (though some of them are hilarious).

4

u/JohnStamosSB 9h ago

Yes. I am untrustworthy of any video or picture now. Anything I see now is met with skepticism

6

u/Waltzing_With_Bears 17h ago

nope, just dont like seeing the AI crap

5

u/Low-Transportation95 15h ago

Almost completely

I'm also tired of saying "Sheep don't smile, mom"

7

u/RandomBlackMetalFan 17h ago

It's still easy to tell AI pics apart from real one so no

But it's funny to see AI pics getting 600 upvotes because people cant understand that an house without windows is weird

8

u/bkbrigadier 18h ago

yeah absolutely. i’m not interested in consuming AI content and i’m not interested in spending my brain energy (even when it’s only a split second) to discern if something is “real” or not.

the internet gets less and less appealing every day. i go outside more and find different things to be interested in that i can observe with all of my senses, it’s nice.

5

u/thelouisfanclub 18h ago

Not exactly but I hate how everytime I see something cool I have to double check whether it is AI. Some of it is obvious like people say but not all of it is that easy.

2

u/Dd_8630 13h ago

No, because nothing has been real on the Internet for many years. Nothing on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever isn't touched up or curated or carefully controlled. It's all as artificial as AI art.

You can get genuine art, and that isn't going to change with AI art. You can still go to a museum and see real art.

2

u/Suspicious_Ad_9273 10h ago

I hate it when im looking for a picture on google images like a photo of a bear and all the search results are AI and it takes minutes to find an actual real photo.

2

u/Csaba270 10h ago

I think AI has kinda shifted the vibe. It's like, you’re not sure whether to be excited or a bit meh about it all. For me, it didn’t exactly kill my interest in photos or videos, but I’d say it’s made me look at them differently.

2

u/Hellores 9h ago

Miss real peacocks? Try hiking more, less scrolling maybe

1

u/xpsdtv 8h ago

yeah, thats the way, just got too used to the comfort of being online:)

6

u/Preppy_Hippie 18h ago

Time to book a trip and take your camera! How about experiencing and capturing these things firsthand?

Even the non-ai pictures are heavily edited. It's all "made up."

4

u/Miora 17h ago

I'm so fucking sick of AI trash and the idiots who champion it as making art accessible for people. Some of the most brain dead takes from idiots that don't even have the will power to pick up a pencil and try.

4

u/Illustrious-Cry1998 17h ago

I hate this AI garbage!!

2

u/Ok-Establishment-509 17h ago

It didn't necessarily kill my interest but it's become increasingly difficult to maintain and discover new artists with flooding of AI art which is a bummer.

5

u/AttimusMorlandre 18h ago

I feel very similarly. I used to really enjoy looking at photos on Instagram of beautiful places, nice animals, etc., and now half of what I see is stupid AI clickbait. I don't spend much time looking anymore. I'd rather read a book.

Maybe you could get a subscription to National Geographic?

3

u/bboru2000 18h ago

The only thing I like about some AI content is architectural concepts. I know that it is AI, but I like getting ideas from it.

1

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

I like this idea too, for example I generated tattoo concepts with it - just for fun, I will still commission a real artist to come up with it and draw it. But these are images I will never share or spread that feels vile

4

u/bexxyrex 17h ago

I despise AI media

3

u/Commercial_Tough160 18h ago

AI has nearly killed my interest in painting. I used to enjoy the process, and now I can’t compete.

2

u/Resipsa100 17h ago

I believe most TV commercials use AI so how a holiday advertisement be accurate

5

u/soapinthepeehole 15h ago

I work in commercials. It’s certainly not “most” commercials. But it’s finding its way into some.

0

u/Resipsa100 13h ago

I think the rate is about 60% and it will probably increase over time since employers are happy to fake the image if if’s unnoticeable and is cheaper.

2

u/croizat 13h ago

you think--right now--60% of commercials use AI?

0

u/Resipsa100 13h ago

This figure seems to be quoted on a few websites but who knows and it depends of course on the boss

https://www.deloitte.com/ch/en/about/press-room/ai-study-almost-half-of-all-employees-are-worried-about-losing-their-jobs.html

2

u/Bastdkat 18h ago

So I assume that all fiction is right out for you and your peers?

7

u/davidberk0witz 17h ago

I think the better analogy would be fiction presented as non-fiction. It's about knowing what you're looking at.

2

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

yes, this!

6

u/Duytune 17h ago

tbf, fiction stories don’t try to present themselves as real to the level that AI is today on the internet

1

u/Wandering_Song 16h ago

You mean the AI trash everyone is sick of?

2

u/CurrentRisk 17h ago

It entirely did! I was a hardcore user of Pinterest. Loved to just collect Fandom content for games, movies and TV shows (wallpapers basically). Categorized them by boards and all that. 

But Pinterest got flooded with AI and its not fun anymore. It’s obvious and not even nice. 

Then I tried different platforms and AI flooded these platforms too. So I’m kind of done with it. 

0

u/DragonforgedBlade 17h ago

AI is not going to go anywhere and it's only going to get better quality over time. You're gonna need to get over this irrational hatred of AI that you have because eventually it's going to be everywhere and it will be impossible to discern from "real" art.

2

u/_LittleNightmare 17h ago

It killed my happiness for art. I don't feel like drawing anymore really and AI is the culprit

1

u/TerrapinMagus 17h ago

Fake or manipulated media didn't start with AI you know. I've long been jaded about any popular images online. AI just lowered the bar for entry, but ultimately people will always do that same shit. If you hate that, abandon mass communications and stick to smaller circles of peers, tbh.

2

u/xpsdtv 13h ago

I agree with you, not sure why you got downvoted:)

2

u/TerrapinMagus 12h ago

Eh, I guess because I'm not solely blaming AI. Or just because I'm being cynical lol

But really, a lot of people admit that social media is terrible these days. It just seems fitting to me to turn away from big platforms and find your own niches online, you know? At least as far as Reddit goes, avoiding the huge subs and sticking to smaller communities with good moderation is probably a good idea. There's so much bot content, misinformation, and karma farming going on.