Well fuck.
Just did a Google image search as part of some research into something in the medieval era. Well over half of the results are from some kind of ai image generation site. Argh. Totally useless for research purposes.
Search engines need an "exclude AI content" option.
@quixoticgeek
I'm given to understand that you can limit your query by date to before AI images were an issue, and there are other tricks to try as well, if you really must use Google Image Search.
@intransitivelie @quixoticgeek really feels like the “low-background steel” of the internet. I hate that this is an issue we now face.
(and meanwhile a larger proportion of the results end up being dead links to platforms that had sucked up everything back in the oughts before being killed by google sometime in the last decade)
@quixoticgeek I'm liking the uBlacklist plugin (Firefox and Chrome) that lets you remove bad domains from your Google searches. Haven't tried it much with image searches yet, but give it a try?
@MarioMakesStuff @quixoticgeek want this for DDG
> Search engines need an "exclude AI content" option.
Reading that, I just had a vision of the future: that option will soon exist, but as a very expensive premium feature. Most people will not be able to afford it, they get only "AI"-crap all day long.
@eliasr @quixoticgeek it wont, cause you can't know which are which
@quixoticgeek @cory that would take real work, innovation, and a determination to deliver high quality search results.
Not real Google Search’s MO anymore.
@sangster @quixoticgeek yeah, it really feels like they’re on the downward slope of enshittification and I suppose folks will spend more time looking at ads if they have to stare at the results and dredge for quality themselves.
@quixoticgeek The first time it really became obvious to me how "AI" is poisoning web search results is when I Googled "Woman Laughing At Salad" last year.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek the stuff of nightmares
@lotographia @quixoticgeek A simple thing that helps (doesn't completely remove all AI images, but greatly reduces them, at least for now) is include "-ai" in the search.
So "women laughing at salad -ai" works much better.
Now, if only it was so easy to limit bot & AI created spam articles from search results!
@kenmarable @lotographia @quixoticgeek I have also started adding -amazon when I'm looking for a specific item and have gotten better results.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek I shouldn't have seen this.
Okay that's terrifying
@lotographia @quixoticgeek for comparison, #DuckDuckGo's output. I love the last one on the second row, woman laughing _in_ salad.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek interesting! All the images come from this McSweeney's article "Inside the mind of an AI generated woman laughing at salad". Guessing that since it's in the title it ranked highly
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/inside-the-mind-of-an-ai-generated-woman-laughing-alone-with-salad
@lotographia @quixoticgeek wow that's creepy, some of those results have such giant teeth they look like vampires 😳 I hate AI images
@lotographia @quixoticgeek GOOGLE: Sorry, I hallucinated.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek I love the energy the 3rd one from the left is bringing though
@lotographia @quixoticgeek That's some nightmarish shit
@lotographia @quixoticgeek this one is 1/4 xenomorph on her mother's side
@lotographia @quixoticgeek If Google is so confident of their AI then let's see them tag images generated by machine learning.
Clown laughing at salad Google image search prompt
@lotographia @quixoticgeek These pictures are (almost) all from a McSweeney's piece, though.
I'm certainly not saying there is no problem. But this *specific* search is sort of pre-loaded with AI tendencies, it's not typical.
For example, "man laughing at salad" at Google Image Search returns almost entirely real photos.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek Gadzooks those are terrifying. The TEETH. 😳😱
@lotographia @quixoticgeek To be fair, all the AI-generated images refer to AI in the caption, and at least half of them are from a single mcsweeneys.net article called INSIDE THE MIND OF AN AI-GENERATED WOMAN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD.
@lotographia @quixoticgeek oh nooooo D-:
@quixoticgeek ugh:( That sucks.
What sort of medieval stuff are you looking for?
@JubalBarca trying to find out about hair styles of sailors in the 13th and 14th century
@quixoticgeek Ooh, interesting.
Not sure what would depict or discuss that much: if it'd help, I can have a nose through some conference directories to see if anyone jumps out whose work might include that sort of information? Or @bookandswordblog might have more idea of who might know than I do.
@JubalBarca @bookandswordblog I was hoping I might find through to a paper or something from the image search side. Alas that wasn't to be :(
@quixoticgeek @JubalBarca @bookandswordblog If you contact drachinifel on youtube, he might be able to give you a reading list of sources from the age of sail, or point you to primary source period art pieces?
https://youtube.com/@Drachinifel?si=QIP6114JCnDVDhjd
@JubalBarca @quixoticgeek my general expectation would be that all workers in that period dress and tend their hair similarly, modulo things like a butcher's apron. In general see https://manuscriptminiatures.com/search?tag=872#results (no way to filter the hashtag by date so you have to page forward)
@bookandswordblog @JubalBarca I'm wondering if the constant salt water spray and wind conditions on a boat would make maintaining hair harder than a labourer on land. And thus affect the styles chosen by sailors ?
@bookandswordblog @JubalBarca that link is absolute gold. Thank you so much! Perfection!
Try DuckDuckGo, I searched with early renaissance sailors as a picture search.
@quixoticgeek
As someone here on Mastodon recently remarked; "AI is the microplastic of the internet."
@quixoticgeek Yeah, avoid the Monty Python's. Lol
@quixoticgeek They have been crap since they changed them to spotlight items for sale. What a shame since it was such a great tool previously.
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st me with before:2022 on the table (it is crazy how you basically need to exclude the last year from results if you don't want to see straight up garbage)
@quixoticgeek I heard the advice that you can use the advanced settings for Google image search to limit the results to only images from before 2022 (or whatever) which has the effect of eliminating most AI images. I haven’t tried it myself.
@quixoticgeek I'm trying a paid subscription to the search engine Kagi, which purports to deprioritize AI content. Their map and image are pretty rudimentary, but the main text search is promising.
@quixoticgeek Exactly as predicted.
@quixoticgeek the web has been dead for years, and it's not AI that killed it. It's SEO "optimization" and googles complete unwillingness to discriminate between websites with value and copy/paste ad farm trash.
None of the trash would exist if it wasn't profitable. Google ads make them profitable.
@WagesOf aye. AI is just the last nail in the confin
There is no possible consumption of non-AI-only images under capitalism
@quixoticgeek use Ecosia, Searx, Whoogle or any other fully private and FOSS search engine. Granted, you'll probably have to dig a little deep to find what you actually want, but it's still better than trying to make sense of all the AI BS that mainstream engines are now putting out there.
Good luck.
> Granted, you'll probably have to dig a little deep to find what you actually want
i find that if something's been AI-spammed the difference ends up being theoretical if even that
@quixoticgeek they won’t because they wouldn’t get any hits.
@quixoticgeek
Good idea. I'd use that.
@quixoticgeek Dead internet theory is looking much more plausible than what it was before.
@quixoticgeek but if they offered that everyone would use it. And what would the shareholders think about that eh