As, I’d like to think, a fairly competent photographer, I’ve always been annoyed by hero images. I understand why they are used, and why they exist, but I still find them to be pointless mediocre (largely) stock photos that add nothing of value.
Sure sure, when used sparingly they can add - breaking up the flow of articles when more than one appear in the scroll, giving the reader some idea of what the article might be about, and perhaps even grabbing attention.
Now we have hero images that are clearly generative AI. Please stop. No, really. Just stop. Are you writing a tech blog piece and including one just… because? Just. Fucking. Stop. Please.
They are not good enough yet, or your prompting is not good enough, or you just fail at any form of visual literacy that allows you to spot the [often] glaring errors they contain. Or you don’t care, which is even worse.
Take for example this one. I understand that it might have involved some complex prompt wrangling, but the result is absolute crap and it makes me immediately distrust the article.
I’ve copied it and will show it here in case it gets removed, which I suspect might happen should this post get any sort of traction:
Here’s what my thoughts were upon seeing that image at the top of the article:
- You’re too cheap to pay a competent photographer
- You’re even cheaper than that, since you didn’t pay for a stock image
- You fail at any form of basic visual literacy
- Like, who looks at this and thinks “yeah, this is good enough”
- You probably haven’t had someone proof read your article
- Your article might even be generated by an LLM as well
- Ergo, your entire page is bollocks and not worth reading
The entire page is bollocks anyway. Oh look, Swiss health insurance premiums are going up again. As sure as the sun rising tomorrow morning. They go up every year, without fail, and will continue to do so until the system goes through a root and branch reform. This is absolute non-news and offers nothing of value. It’s pure SEO spamming, nothing more.
The future of the web, people. It’s all downhill from here.
I’m not opposed to generative AI, and there’s some interesting stuff happening around that space and there are definitely areas where it fits. I’ve even given a talk about my thoughts around this recently. Hero images is not one of those areas, because it seems the vast majority of places using them are incompetent at generating them, or just don’t care.
And if you don’t care, why should I care?