(This is my twenty-sixth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
404 Media has an article by Emanuel Maiberg on 3d models (assets for graphic design, video game creation, etc.) and how a lot of the current ones being made for sale are AI generated, but no one is buying them.
Said nicely, consumers are preferring things made by humans. A bit more rudely, no one wants to pay for AI slop.
This is a lesson I intend to keep in mind as I talk to my students about the tools they can use. They might think AI is great for cutting corners and getting more done, but the end result tends to be media that is less desired than anything else they could have done.
Where I encounter the most AI use is in research and script writing. Students hate those portions the most (at least in my class), so they try to pawn that off on a machine. The results get troublesome when they get dinged for not including sources (or including ones that don’t cover the content researched). I might not be the best at recognizing AI writing, but I can follow a source link just fine.
I’m looking forward to the bubble burst, when anyone wanting to use AI is more likely going to have to pay for the slop they’re getting. According to current data, they won’t be paying for it.