I was a couple of images in before I sussed it. Bullshit images, but pleasing enough to look at. Without the images, it would have either been a big wall of text, which would have put me off reading, though I did give up about 25% of the way through after sussing the images and thus the incoherence in the argument. The images bring something to the article. They were cheap/quick to generate. The increase the potential payoff (more reader) without significantly increasing the cost. Without the images, the payoff(readers) would likely have been lower, below the cost of actually writing the article. Same goes for a history of knitting podcast or that video. Production costs would not be worth it for a very niche viewership.
Reading that made me feel like you wanted to be contrarian from the get-go and dismiss the article with the least effort possible. The whole point of the images is that they're low-effort AI slop, it's part of what she's trying to point to when someone is generating unsupervised automated podcasts about knitting.
I came in indifferent but it doesn’t take much to make me give up on an article linked on hacker news. I use it as bubblegum while waiting for a compile/prompt, intent ally for stuff that can be dropped easily. I saw her disclaimer at the end. My point was that the slop images make a more appealing article than if they were absent
So you're saying you can spot AI generated bullshit, but not spot a deliberate and hilarious contrivance that the author uses to reinforce their point?
The AI images were deliberate and part of the narrative. Ie, you can generate slop with zero effort.
from TFA: "All of the images in this post were generated by an ai in response to the simple two-word prompt “lovely knitting”
Edit: ps: Kate Davies is an actual creator who has been creating knitting patterns for years.
Yes, I saw. By giving up I meant I skimmed to the end. The images improve the article