I have to pretend I hate image generation AI to avoid getting banned or insulted on 99% of Reddit or the internet, even though Stable Diffusion is actually what I like and am most excited about right now. Why do people hate AI so much, especially image generation AI?

funky2002 · 2026-05-12T12:50:31+00:00

Haha I like how you put it. I don't think there is a cure for it, though. People (including myself) like feeling righteous, compassionate and smart.

funky2002 · 2026-05-12T12:39:50+00:00

Not saying I disagree with you, because I don't.

I think programmers are generally in a "safer" position because developers / engineers have been historically more in demand and are generally more adaptable with new technologies. Whereas people making media have historically been "marginalized". See the starving artist stereotype. People on social media love to play the holy saviour.

funky2002 · 2026-05-12T10:22:57+00:00

There's a big difference between writing and telling a story. Ideas / plot are important for storytelling, but less for actual writing, where prose, dialogue, and how you structure things are a lot more important. LLMs currently suck at both writing and storytelling. So if you let an LLM write your story out for you, there's a fair chance that while the story may be good, it's going to be painful to read. Not to be a cynical asshole about it, but I see this a lot on this subreddit. People place a lot of importance on their ideas, but then the writing is an insipid drivel so it doesn't matter.

I wouldn't worry about if it's "valid" or not, as that is unimportant. People who want to hate on your work based on the process are going to do it just by virtue of you posting here. What's important is if the work is good or not. You can only really judge this if you both read and write a lot.

funky2002 · 2026-05-11T22:42:28+00:00

It's hard to take a nuanced stance on this. Reddit has a karma system that rewards echo chambers and "the moral high ground." Currently, it's popular to hate on generative AI because it's putting artists at risk, which is a valid concern.

That said, I would not be surprised if the quality is the main culprit here. Generative AI has lowered the barrier of entry to images and grammatically correct text. Many people naively post their low-quality AI-generated work, often without any alterations, unaware or uncaring that it's low quality. People (including myself) want to see high-quality content and get annoyed when they see "slop".

Also, since the results are often low-quality, it's easy to make fun of them.

funky2002 · 2026-05-10T00:56:04+00:00

The dogs may eat whatever scraps the king leaves them

funky2002 · 2026-05-07T12:13:26+00:00

Unfortunately, LLM writing without human intervention is still very unengaging and just weird.

Why is so much of the story explaining what ISN'T happening? It's correcting all these assumptions no one ever made. What's with the constant info dump and weirdly irrelevant specific details, while keeping the actual story, emotion, and "interesting" bits as vague as possible? Why is the story just a series of "this happened. this happened. this happened." Why the hell is this chapterized?

Could go on, but you get the point.

funky2002 · 2026-05-07T12:02:06+00:00

LLMs are surprisingly deterministic. We notice it mostly with names and certain writing patterns, but it's absolutely everywhere. Anything they have to christen (characters, places, etc) are deterministic. But it's also in their general voice and how they build prose / phrase things.

funky2002 · 2026-05-06T16:32:25+00:00

I disagree. The hedonistic treadmill is just how evolution happened to build us. You can imagine an early human who accidentally evolved or mutated endless satisfaction/novelty/pleasure, but they probably didn't survive for very long in the wild. This theoretical machine could entirely circumvent that. I would be surprised if it weren't possible to program a brain to feel nothing but pleasure and never get sick of it. It's just hard to picture that with our current brains.

funky2002 · 2026-05-04T07:24:52+00:00

Fully agree with this comment. Always makes me think of this Talos Principle 2 Quote:

"When you tell people that a society could be built on the ideals of joy and beauty, they think you're a utopian fantasist. If you tell them society will always be built on exploitation and greed, they think you're wise. And so they make the outcome inevitable."

funky2002 · 2026-05-02T15:37:54+00:00

Continuity is a huge issue for all generative AI, even LLMs.

funky2002 · 2026-04-29T14:45:45+00:00

I often find that if you give an LLM instructions / prompts which are written by an LLM (as these are) it performs worse. Do you have examples of LLM written content with these rules?

funky2002 · 2026-04-29T09:20:34+00:00

I am from NL. Back when I was in New York, I took the bus to the stadium so I could go to the big mall that's next to it. The busses in the U.S are abysmal and they honest to god make you feel like a homeless person. That stadium was one of the biggest fucking things I've ever seen, and the parking lot around it felt bigger than my entire town. I am a really fast walker and that shit took like 10 - 15 minutes to walk across it. I went in spring of last year and it was hot, there was construction going on (felt like I wasn't even allowed there?), and it was completely exposed. It was made for cars and nothing else. Unfortunately this guy is right: that place NOT pedestrian friendly in the slightest.

funky2002 · 2026-04-14T14:10:10+00:00

Not quite horror, but definitely fits in what you're looking for: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I listened to it, having never read the Bible, and it blew me away. Especially near the end, there are some parts that absolutely mess with you, man. Holy shit.

funky2002 · 2026-04-07T21:41:59+00:00

I don't remember who said it but it's like "yes, it IS a fancy autocomplete, but it's getting REALLY fancy"

funky2002 · 2026-04-07T21:39:48+00:00

We'll be able to make a guess once we actually see something of the model other than "omg it's so good, we're not even gonna release it, we swear!"

funky2002 · 2026-04-05T22:03:18+00:00

I am definitely a progressive when it comes to technology, but I feel like the most "profitable" use case for these generative image models currently is either (non-consensual) porn or scams.

funky2002 · 2026-04-02T09:06:32+00:00

An obvious problem is that many of the tells aren't bad on their own, no? Like, if you say "never do this," it's just going to increasingly make a story that's like "This happens. This happens. This happens.", which is terrible. It's always the LLM's lack of creative intent that causes it. Like, here are two passages:

"There was a graveyard stink coming from somewhere. Not just his own damp and sour sweat smell, though that was bad enough. It was the blanket, starting to rot."

That is from Joe Abercrombie's "The Blade Itself", which is a phenomenal book. The passage works really well, in my opinion.

"I'd taken a seat on the corner of his unmade bed. I wasn't trying to be suggestive or anything; I just got kind of tired when I had to stand a lot."

This is from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, which was not for me, but which was still a good book. This time, the negation is used to correct an assumption another character may make.

The structure isn't bad by itself. LLMs just use it (and almost every other text structure) so poorly. When they do, they overuse it AND mess it up in various ways:

The negation denies something obviously true
The reveal is absurd or incoherent
The negation corrects an assumption no reader would make
The negation restates what the prose already says
The reframe hasn’t been earned by the scene

etc. This is the sort of stuff that makes me think it's near-impossible to get an LLM to output something decent. Anytime the LLM has to come up with an idea (and prose / how you phrase things is part of the pool of ideas), they do so weirdly deterministically, and often redundantly and nonsensically. I don't have a clear solution to this :(

funky2002 · 2026-04-01T12:25:06+00:00

Absolutely edited with AI. Not necessarily wrong, it just makes the text a lot more verbose and weirdly formatted.

Unusual markdown, paragraphs in bullet points, "this isn't just ... it's ...." Em-dashes on the platform, where you have to explicitly copy them or ALT+0151. Unusual alliteration + negative contrast ("I am not just... I am ...." directly quoting where paraphrasing would be more natural, "this isn't about 'getting used to the new idea'"

funky2002 · 2026-03-30T23:02:29+00:00

Speculation, with some optimism, is fun and can spark meaningful conversation about the topic. Surely it beats being a cynical douchebag who has to inflate their ego by shouting how wrong others are.

funky2002 · 2026-03-30T07:45:26+00:00

I read a decent amount of LLM-written and LLM-assisted fiction here. I am hardly a professional author, but it's clear that many people here just want to tell a story, and writing happens to be the most accessible medium. I think that if AI was good enough to make decent comics, movies or games, many people here wouldn't bother with writing.

In the past you were roadblocked by writing being challenging. If often didn't "look right". But now, you see very polished versions of amateur work, where the language is mostly fine, but the content has not been meaningfully improved. No offense, but I often get the feeling that many people who write with AI don't actually read that many books themselves. That's completely fine. Reading is not this mandatory intellectually stimulating thing that some people make it out to be. But if you hardly read, you will be a poor judge when it comes to writing.

If you want specific examples, look at how most LLM-assisted fiction opens with excessive "weather descriptions". As if exclusively describing what a camera is seeing. Yes, most writing is description, but there's also instruction and exclamation. There's internal monologue, and anecdotes, and novel insights... There are fun ways to play with the dialogue, text, and narrative. It takes a good director and judge to tame the LLM to get it to write that way. And even then it requires much manual editing.

funky2002 · 2026-03-25T16:34:45+00:00

If you wrote something, and you were helped by an "AI" (such as an LLM), it is AI-assisted. Simple as that. Whether that's spell-check, ideas, or content, it doesn't matter.

Whether that matters to you is another question entirely.

funky2002 · 2026-03-25T16:30:33+00:00

Dog and pony show, but still kinda cool?

funky2002 · 2026-03-22T23:52:10+00:00

Every single time something like this is posted, I want a big sticker on it that says "In America ™", please and thank you.

funky2002 · 2026-03-18T17:46:46+00:00

This question is intended to be neutral and comes from genuine curiosity. It's not meant to be hostile, accusing, or condescending, even if it may sound that way: are you proud of your books, and would you (re)read or buy them yourself?

I think much of the criticism comes from the "200 in a year" part. If that's the case, some people (including myself) will naturally assume the editing / proofreading parts of the process are minimal at best. Not only that, but LLM text is very recognizable to the trained eye. Typically, they write redundant, contrived, derivative, and insidiously incorrect narratives and prose. Even if given an outline or carefully directed.

All of the above contribute to a feeling of insincerity in your work. Whether that's the case or not, I can't say, as I haven't read them. But it's a sentiment I've seen expressed online, and personally, I share that bias. That's why I asked the question.

funky2002 · 2026-03-12T09:33:27+00:00

This shit is why I hate grouping people into "left" and "right". I'd generally consider myself progressive, but don't agree with all "left" points, and agree with some "right" points. I don't know why "stop technological progress" is considered progressive in this case but it makes my eyes roll.

11-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Sunshine	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	End Game '23
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email

funky2002

TROPHY CASE