Was browsing ebay, looking for some piece of older used consumer electronics. Found a listing where the description text was written like crappy ad copy. Cheap over-the-top praising the thing. But zero words about the condition of the used item, i.e. the actually important part was completely missing. And then at the end of the description it said… this description text was generated by AI.

AI slop is like mold, it really gets everywhere and ruins everything.

I like the idea. Or maybe marking such changes in the commit message… I might try to bring that up when the time comes.

Ugh, from me as well: sorry to hear that.

I can relate to how you feel about the AI stuff. I also work for GenAI-pilled upper management, and the forced introduction of github copilot is coming soon. It will make us all super extra productive! …they say. Dreading it already. I won’t use it at all, I’ve already made that clear to my superior. But my colleagues might use it, and then I will have to review the AI slop… uggghh…

Maybe a small silver lining to raise the mood here, recent article from Monday: Gartner sounds alarm on AI cost, data challenges

If even freaking Gartner is now saying “well, maybe AI is too expensive and not actually so useful”… then maybe the world of management will wisen up as well, soon, hopefully, maybe?

FastCompany: “In Apple’s new ads for AI tools, we’re all total idiots”

It’s interesting that not even Apple, with all their marketing knowledge, can come up with anything convincing why users might need “Apple Intelligence”[1]. These new ads are not quite as terrible as that previous “Crush” AI ad, but especially the one with the birthday… I find it just alienating.

Whatever one may think about Apple and their business practices, they are typically very good at marketing. So if even Apple can’t find a good consumer pitch for GenAI crap, I don’t think anyone can.

[1] I’d like to express support for this post from Jeff Johnson to call it “iSlop”

teased by an OpenAI executive as potentially up to 100 times more powerful

“potentially up to 100 times” is such a peculiar phrasing too… could just as well say “potentially up to one billion trillion times!”