I am saying this as a seller and a buyer of almost TEN years but: who in the world thought it be a good idea to use Gen(generative) ai images instead of basic photos to list their physical items?
…besides a scammer?
Those willfully doing it, What made them think a computer generation would beat out a quick pick on the phone? It’s worse than redundant. It will never be as accurate or as fast as just showing the actual thing. Gen ai is a statistical algorithm that got marketed as “artificial intelligence.”. A parrot program to some computer scientists. ( To preface this, I am not anti-tech, quite the opposite! I went to school for it. My knowledge of tech is why I have a searing hatred for generative ai SPECIFICALLY.) Gen ai is the latest marketing craze and is being shoved into everything just so investors can break even. As we have seen in the last three years, especially with eBay’s latest attempts to “integrate” it here. Absolute useless features (especially to me) when you go past the shiny paint and empty promises. But fantastic scamware to all the wrong people. Woe to those who fall for it, as many already have.
I’ll make an example of why using ai images to advertise physical items is false advertising : Etsy.
God, ai image listings are real bad on Etsy, ridiculously so. I am tired of looking for patterns and plushies and seeing ai images that look NOTHING like the actual end result product- bonus points if the pattern is ai generated too! 😞
And a bunch of them have never crochet before , let alone looked at a pattern, so more often than not they are selling people GIBBERISH. Oh yeah, ai stuff can’t be physically sold- because it’s of things that don’t exist. And if they DO write their own patterns and they HAVE tested their patterns and know what the item is supposed to look like- then they shouldn’t use ai images to advertise! they’re literally selling themselves short.
I knew I’d rue the day Etsy got the bright idea to integrate/allow ai on it’s platform.
It’s one thing to not control it, spammers are gonna spam. but Etsy ENCOURAGED it, despite it being counter-intuitive to everything they stand for. Then again , drop shippers managed to get on here so I am not entirely surprised we have another level of SCAMMING there. I have a trained eye, I can often (not always) tell if an image is ai. But not every one can , and that’s my greatest concern. Scammers rely on deceit, and thats all this tech will ever be to me. Deceiving. So I cannot stress enough how much of a bad idea it is to adversity anything with Gen ai imagery. Customers are already getting JIPPED.
So if it’s super bad there, imagine how bad it could be here on EBay ? (They probably have fake crochet patterns and stuff here as we speak.) I am already seeing a post or two about how years old eBay posts are randomly getting ai pics on their listing. I hate eBay’s push into ai, its cumbersome, useless , redundant “tools” that most if any of us never asked for. ( I wanted to do store sales without a subscription but noooo, i get stuck with “use ai to write descriptions” instead!) And what sucks most is that we can’t turn it off, we have no control on who’s forced to use these “tools” and who isn’t. I just want to sell stuff I made, I don’t want to be a guinea pig for this trash tech. (And yet it’s costing me regardless of if I use it, go figure.) I can write, I can read, I can think for myself. I don’t need an ai to write a description for MY product that I made by hand. and I certainly don’t need to deceive my customers with an ai pic that looks little like the work I am selling. As I said, false advertisement.
You ever buy something and it not look as advertised? You get This sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, your heart sinks, you fee used. Yeah, I don’t want that for my buyers and I am disgusted by sellers who PURPOSEFULLY do that to their customers. I see folks willfully using ai images for their products to be no better.
I take seller integrity VERY importantly. An undoctored photo is the most honest we can be online. just take a photo like we’ve been doing.
