The first thing people saw when they searched Google for the artist Hieronymus Bosch was an AI-generated version of his Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most famous paintings in art history.
Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of links they usually see in results. As first spotted by a user on Twitter, when people searched for “Hieronymus Bosch” on Google, it included a couple of images from the real painting, but the first and largest image they saw was an AI-generated version of it.
Regardless of how the image was generated, why is Google treating a random blogspam site as the authoritative version of a work of art over (say) Wikipedia?
According to the article:
As 404 Media has reported in January, Google is regularly surfacing AI-generated websites that game search engine optimization before the human-made websites they are trained on. “Our focus when ranking content is on the quality of the content, rather than how it was produced,” Google told 404 Media in a statement at the time.
Does that mean I can search for any famous image, take the largest existing version, upscale it by 1% and post it on my own site, and instantly be featured at the top of google searches?
Because Wikipedia doesn’t serve ads or pay Google, so Google doesn’t like to make them the top result for a lot of searches they should be.
So, yes you can get to the top of image searches that way, but you also have to add google ads to your page so that google can get a second hit of revenue it drives users to your page, serves the ad, and changes the advertiser.
It’s because this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhakar_Raghavan thinks that keeping people engaged on google search longer is what it is all about. Not finding what you search for, no, engagement with your search tool.
"He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012 — a tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, and effectively saw the company bow out of the search market altogether. His responsibilities? Research and development for Yahoo’s search and ads products.
When Raghavan joined the company, Yahoo held a 30.4 percent market share — not far from Google’s 36.9%, and miles ahead of the 15.7% of MSN Search. By May 2012, Yahoo was down to just 13.4 percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, and was being beaten even by the newly-released Bing. That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its corporate history, shedding nearly 2,000 employees — or 14% of its overall workforce. " - https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Love the name and shame. Everyone needs to know about this guy
As a Yahoo! employee at that time, this is simply not true. The links don’t provide any info on how he wrecked Yahoo! Search. It sounds like someone is trying to pin Google’s search downfall on him, and made a wild assumption about Yahoo!.
On one hand that’s catastrophic and an insult to the art world and art history. On the other hand it’s unsurprising. Does anyone expect google to show relevant top results in this day and age?
Google Serves AI Slop
as Top Result for One of the Most Famous Paintings in HistoryEvery day reality moves away from the truth.
I was completely onboard with AI when it was mostly just a bunch of nerds making pictures of weird dogs but the more I see corporations abusing us with it the more I hate it.
what did you think was going to happen
Infinite furry porn machine.
AI “art” removes the hurdle for the wealthy of actually having talent to produce “art”, while simultaneously removing the artist’s ability to produce wealth from their talents.
Everytime someone shares an AI generated video, song, picture, etc., I cringe a little. Its just not good, or at best, anything that couldn’t be produced by a reasonably capable artist, but hey at least its free, right?
This is “technology news and articles?”
Seems like this place is increasingly just people yelling at AI-generated clouds.
the world’s most-used search engine prioritising an AI-generated slop version of a very famous painting is very much “technology news and articles” imo
Sort of. I feel like I report half the posts around here because they’re neither news nor articles.
Im betting these now daily mindless “hey look AI did sumptin silly” articles only serve to drive more traffic to Gemini.
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Also, this whole documentary is fantastic, but the Bosch stuff starts around 14:45.
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Which perfectly exposes the problems of showing AI slob to people who try to learn and extend their horizons.
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Expanding ones horizons absolutely does and should include art history, which is a part of human history.
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While your points about the patronage system and its weaknesses are valid, you’re writing off several centuries worth of legitimate human endeavor because the systems that enabled it were dodgy. Guess what though? That’s literally all of history, dodgy AF, featuring an intrepid cast of characters more awful the deeper you look. That doesn’t make the art or music worth writing off though.
But honestly:
What is interesting though is the fact that AI art, and the LAION-5B dataset used to train the models is a true and earnest reflection of sorts of what images today really are
“Earnest” is definitely not the word you’re looking for. Derivative, maybe, because you said it yourself, they’re reflections; and as such, they’re going to reflect what images of today are; like you said. That makes them derivative, and I feel a vast artificiality that makes my heart sink when I look at the vast majority of them.
Choosing machine-created art over historical art is choosing a passing fad over centuries of culture. It’s your right; but to write off history with a wave of the hand means you’re missing out on truly expanding your horizons.
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it’s pretty rich in history as a lot of famous (and not-so-famous) art can be; it tells you a lot about the people living during a period, what they thought about the world, how power worked etc.
this is a very dismissive take on this form of art as a whole, and is the kind which really does help the techbros who think that this kind of work and effort could simple be replaced by machines
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Truly, you are an idiot.
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By “expanding ones horizons”, do you literally mean increasing your wallet size? This is a very musk brained comment.
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The AI one looks neat, but it lacks expression.
It expresses to me.
What does it express?
