There is a sentiment that some “light” usages of AI are okay because it simply reduces the friction a bit on content creation. For example, Kelly writes:

But if AI can be helpful for things like blog production. I know, for example, that blog posts with an image are several times more likely to attract someone’s attention than one without an image. I lack time and artistic skill to create my own images, but I can craft a prompt and get a suitable illustration in seconds. This is hard to ignore, and I will continue to avail myself of the AI services that provide image generation from time to time.

On the one hand, I get it. If you perceive a gap and there is a tool available to bridge it, why not?

On the other, much larger, much heavier hand, what do you imagine is going to happen next? Not in a “cog in the agentic death-march” kind of way, but on a much more practical level. You generate an image for a blog post to attract more attention. Supposing that that advice still works here in 2026 – I have my doubts – you get the traffic at the expense of blogs that don’t. So, those other blogs start generating images too. Now… what? The competitive advantage is gone. Who gets the clicks?

“Blogging isn’t a competition though!” Then why do you care about having a generated image at all?

Not trying to single Kelly out, or really any of the specific AI enthusiasts still in my Feeds. You do you. It’s a transformative technology for coding and a few other industries, yada yada yada. I just happen to agree with the general sentiment of Anarchae:

If I asked a question on this site and got a response and went back and forth a bit, I had a pleasant interaction with a human being and feel good about the distro and its community.

If I later find out that person just copy pastes questions into an LLM and then copy pastes back in a response, or is a full on bot-run account, there is a feeling of betrayal. I thought I had a genuine human connection, but it wasn’t, it was just a computer program. Now that sours my opinion of the distro and I probably won’t bother coming back. I was given the equivilant of the Customer Service Chatbot, who would be happy about that?

No one with an internet connection is hurting for content. No doubt you could vibe code a blog tonight that automatically prompts ChatGPT to spit out a randomized topic-of-the-day post every 24 hours. Or six hours. Or 15-minutes. We aren’t here for that. We aren’t here for the AI image that is only vaguely related to the topic at hand and is more meant to be clickbait. We aren’t here for the grammatically perfect, literal textbook outlined prose with the phone emojis for some reason. Every single AI refinement makes you less distinguishable from every other (presumed) person also on the gear.

Be human. Have messy human thoughts with the wet meat between your ears. Who are we trying to impress? None of us are making any money on this and it ain’t because we got some syntax wrong.

Or don’t, I guess.