But that's exactly the market I thought AI would eat first. The blog posts need some sort of picture to represent the general idea of a high tech server. Nobody cares which exact thing it is and if it even exists. In many respects a non-existent one may be better, it won't get obviously old.
So why pay money for a stock picture where you could have a passable substitute for free?
There's common wisdom that blog posts need an image, more or less any image. Larger publications probably have stock image contracts. Smaller ones use Creative Commons--maybe honoring non-commercial/non-derivative clauses or not--or just grab anything they can. Generative AI seems tailor-made for need an image, any image. I imagine I'll use it myself.
Here, have an upvote. The cover picture is there to represent the article and to invite potential readers to dig into it. I believe it is as important as the article text. If the cover picture which is taking a significant part of your screen when the page loads look like this, I already have a bad impression on the article itself. Sorry I am not using a plain text browser.
