this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Fuck AI
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I honestly don't know if i find it better or worse to use image generators for this.
Showcasing the effects of poverty without having to watch an actual human suffering doesn't seem the worst thing.
Long term, maybe it becomes easier to dismiss these things if theyre known not to be real photos? But maybe its always visceral, or everyone knows that is still what it really looks like.
Generating enough images to get something useful is cheaper than flying photgraphers out - lower overheads for charitable groups should actually have benefits, unlike cost savings for corporations.
It feels extra disengenuous to use ai here, but I dont know that my feelings are what's most important in this particular example.
Once you start making fake images of social evils, even with the best of intentions, you are compromised. After all, why not look at your analytics and juice the prompts to make the campaign work better? And soon the images diverge from the real problems you’re supposedly trying to solve and into the realm of lurid fantasy, presenting an exaggerated and simplified vision of the problem that pushes emotional buttons harder than realistic reportage would. From then on, the die is cast. If things improve, surely it’s better to keep making images of them being worse than ever, as after all, it’s good to have cash reserves just in case. And given how good a job you’ve done with that, surely you deserve a bonus. The computer-generated sad-eyed shantytown urchins wouldn’t want it any other way.
You gotta realize that the other side has absolutely no qualms about using these methods. Trump is literally releasing videos of himself pooping on protesters.
If we really want to fight poverty and injustice, then we shouldn't be tied to some imaginary "AI" morality. We should use every means necessary.
A phrase that I think about quite often is "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house".
We definitely should be willing to play dirty, but we need to be mindful of how the means that we use affect the ends we achieve.