We are good at distinguishing it, but that doesn’t mean the unmitigated flow of Super Intelligence-generated images, music, etc won’t degrade the spaces we share and exhaust people from filtering from the art that they do want.
I can tell an image is AI generated almost instantly, but it nonetheless stomped places like the Photographers of Threads channel. Not that it was great to begin with, but it was something. More and more I’m motivated to only discover photographers via photo books.
For example, I no longer generally enjoy videos of animals doing cute things. LLMs have taken the wonder of that from us, because though animals do really unexpected things sometimes, it's more common these days for it to be someone puppetting an AI in the hunt for internet points. I discard anything post-2022 or so, unless it comes from a known good source. (which also generally has to have a presence pre-2022 in order to feel safe)
LLMs are butchering particular (digital) channels for whimsy and wonder, and it's easy to feel like those channels are everything but they haven't been that way for long and can easily change.
My view: every large online space was basically ruined by an ever-growing advance of inauthentic content pressures starting around 2015. The pools were already pissed in, LLMs are just producing enough piss that, finally, everyone can see it. It's a nuisance in the moment but in the medium term, the human social response will be for the better.
I can tell an image is AI generated almost instantly, but it nonetheless stomped places like the Photographers of Threads channel. Not that it was great to begin with, but it was something. More and more I’m motivated to only discover photographers via photo books.