{"id":459267,"date":"2026-02-07T07:17:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T07:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459267\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T07:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T07:17:20","slug":"rest-assured-we-will-never-ai-slop-you-on-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459267\/","title":{"rendered":"Rest Assured, We Will Never AI Slop You (On Purpose)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your memory stretches all the way back to three days ago, you\u2019ll recall that Brian had a story<\/a> about the efficacy of banning lead in gasoline. It\u2019s an interesting story, and if you haven\u2019t read it yet, go ahead and click that hyperlink or just click on the image below.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s the image that we\u2019re here to discuss, as it was flagged in the comments as generative AI (or \u201cAI junk\u201d) \u2013 and that\u2019s a thing we don\u2019t do here<\/a>. Except for a little, but not like you think. Don\u2019t worry, I\u2019ll get to it.<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the image:<\/p>\n

Spacer\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Thumb<\/a><\/p>\n

CTSVmkeLS6 pounced:<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

More:<\/p>\n

\"Why<\/p>\n

I have to admit that the truck does have the sort of too-smooth weirdness that goes with AI-generated imagery, and the lower edge of the rearmost window curves in a way that looks wrong. Space laid down the gauntlet:<\/p>\n

\"Year<\/p>\n

The truck may indeed be AI! But if it is, it\u2019s not for lack of effort to avoid AI images:<\/p>\n

\"Kludged\"<\/p>\n

Here are the two images in question, and the \u201cExclude Generative AI\u201d selection that I always make sure is on. In fact, I double-checked to make sure the button wasn\u2019t grey to indicate it was not selected, but no, that\u2019s just how the exclude-AI button looks when switched on. \"See<\/p>\n

As you can see, the smoke in the stock photo as supplied was black and diesely, which Merc correctly called out as confusion-inducing, so I \u201cinverted\u201d the smoke to make it white-ish:<\/p>\n

\"Mixed<\/p>\n

\u2026 and I think the white smoke, if anything, makes it look even more AI \u2013 oops. And the girl is a bit uncanny, TBH. But not AI, if the filter did its job.<\/p>\n

Shall we go deeper? GENERIC-NAME did, and I am in their debt:<\/p>\n

\"Generic<\/p>\n

Since that JPEG of comments doesn\u2019t click, here are hyperlinks to the \u201c2021 scrape date<\/a>\u201d and the \u201cfew generic photos of cars<\/a>\u201d references.<\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: Pete does great work and makes so many great topshots. I think the real takeaway here is we should always find a fun\/weird car or truck to use, unless it\u00a0has\u00a0to be something generic. And that\u2019s why we can never use AI \u2013 those robots don\u2019t know from cool cars. \u2013 JT]<\/p>\n

So, it appears the truck must not be AI \u2013 at least not the type of AI where a prompt is entered \u2013 \u201ca white pickup truck with billowing exhaust smoke enveloping a girl with her hair blowing in the smoke\u201d \u2013 and et voil\u00e0, there\u2019s Suzy Smokalot.<\/p>\n

\u2026 but that\u2019s not the only kind of AI, and in the interest of total transparency, let\u2019s talk about the kind of programs we do use that could be considered AI.<\/p>\n

One tool I use in nearly every topshot is Photoshop\u2019s \u201cGenerative Expand\u201d capability, which is invaluable for extending the backgrounds of images that would not otherwise fill the 1600\u00d7900 pixel \u201ccanvas\u201d called for by the topshot template. Like this:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

In this case (and nearly every case), no prompt is entered; I just click Generate, and bingo-bongo, the background is extended:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

Now, you may have also noticed the basketball hoop behind the E-Class disappeared. After the background was extended, I used the \u201cRemove Tool\u201d to paint out the hoop \u2013 you can see it in pink:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no prompt for this tool, you just paint over what you want removed, and the software attempts to figure how to fill the space. This may or may not involve AI, depending on the background.<\/p>\n

I did say that in nearly every case, nothing is prompted. In instances where I\u2019ve needed to use a prompt, it\u2019s to stop the AI from generating things. For example, if it\u2019s a pic taken on the floor of a car show, the AI will often paint in some scary body-horror facsimile of a show attendee that looks more like a transporter accident on The Enterprise<\/a>. And so, the prompt will be something like \u201cextend background, do not add figures.\u201d The Photoshop AI also likes to put in signs with gibberish on them, so I\u2019ll tell it to leave those out too. But again, this is infrequent.<\/p>\n

I consider this use of AI to be innocuous, as it makes no change to the message of the image or its content in any meaningful way, and the changes could have been made \u201cby hand\u201d (so to speak), the way we used to do it, with the Clone Stamp and painting tools, albeit more slowly and potentially less convincingly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that Photoshop says it only trains its AI on images it owns, rather than scraping the entirety of the internet with no concern for ownership or copyright and the like. \u201cWhat about the images users load into Adobe products?\u201d Well, that\u2019s less black and white, but not anything Adobe doesn\u2019t disclose, assuming you read the EULA<\/a> \u2013 which pretty much no one does, but it\u2019s in there.<\/p>\n

So, to be completely transparent and precise, bits of grass, sky, pavement, and leaves on the outskirts of some images may indeed have been touched by something being called AI that, in previous times, might have just been called a computer program. But nothing you see (or read) at The Autopian is generated from nothing by AI, or even significantly contributed to or manipulated by AI.<\/p>\n

We are in the business of making content by humans, for humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If your memory stretches all the way back to three days ago, you\u2019ll recall that Brian had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2130,62,276,277,49,48,187932,21651,61],"class_list":["post-459267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-adobe","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-how-the-sausage-is-made","tag-photoshop","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}