Don't blame AI-generated images for taking over blogs. Blame the algorithm.

A software engineer, Nelson, has some opinions about AI-generated images in blog posts:

"I have a growing hatred for AI-generated images in blogs. It makes me wonder if the text in the blog posts is AI-generated to some extent. It’s always disappointing seeing these images in blogs run by individuals. I expect this from corporate blogs but not indie blogs." 

I get the frustration with AI-generated imagery on blog posts. On LinkedIn in particular, I will block people who post particularly obnoxious cartoon-like images alongside their (probably AI-generated) professional insights. 

But I think Nelson is missing the root cause of the problem. It's incentives that have led to this state of affairs, not the AI image tools.

Part of the problem is many bloggers think an image is *required* for every post. This is reinforced by algorithms which favor such posts. This, in turn, drives bloggers to the easiest/fastest sources of free images – the AI image generators in Gemini, ChatGPT, Canva, and so on.

The "featured image" in content management platforms like Wordpress is what gets shown on the index page, in shared social posts, and other contexts. And certainly, the algorithms favor such posts over pure text posts, even if the text content in the spartan post happens to be far superior.

There are other factors at play, too. 

Many bloggers are lazy, some are severely time constrained, a few are fearful of legal repercussions associated with copying images off the Internet, and a majority are creatively or technically incapable of making their own images to include on a personal blog post.