I agree. I don't know why so many blogs feel the need to plaster disfigured AI-generated garbage across the tops of their posts now.
What does this ugly picture add to the post? A little pagerank cred? 3 inches of shit I have to scroll past, increasing "engagement?" It certainly isn't adding anything to the quality of the content.
I think it's an interesting sign of the times when people are asking for stock images. To me the AI art is a marginal improvement over stock photos since they're plausibly unique and can be tailored somewhat more specifically to the article's content. Neither option is great, but we are talking about the digital equivalent of hotel art so the bar is pretty low.
At least the author themselves had some input on the splash image compared to a stock photo.
I'm (genuinely) fascinated by people having opinions about the splash image at all. When I click through to an article my first action is to PgDn past it without even registering the image, be it a photo (on a 'normal' new site), stock, or generated.
If I actually try and think about it, I also marginally prefer AI because of the content tailoring thing, and thought the different elements that were coaxed out of the generator in this case were kinda neat.
But people forming opinions about trustworthiness from the image is entirely alien to me (this is not to say they're wrong to do so, I simply ... don't).
