Content doesn’t just refer to words. When we talk about creating strong, concise content for your website, it’s important to note that this goes beyond blogs and articles. It encompasses a variety of media, including images, videos, infographics, and any interactive elements that you have included.
Images, specifically, are becoming increasingly important for websites in 2024. Unlike other forms of content, images have the power to immediately attract attention and spark an emotional response.
They can also provide context. Here at XIST2, we provide web design services in Oxford, which means a large portion of our customers are Oxford-based. Many of these websites will naturally include images of Oxford throughout their UI, not just to attract attention and spark emotional interest – although this beautiful city is more than capable of doing that! – but to actively show users where their company is based from the off.
This is relatively easy to achieve. In 2024, many imagery platforms offer a variety of free-to-use images without the potential for copyright infringement.
Many of these platforms also offer a subscription service, allowing companies to pay a small fee every month to receive a wider array of images that are more specific to their search inputs. But over the last couple of years, other options have arisen for businesses. One of them being AI generated imagery.
What is AI Generated Imagery?
There’s no denying that competition between websites has reached a fever pitch in recent years. According to a recent report, there are nearly 2 billion sites across the internet, and with SEO being such a powerful tool, nearly all of those websites prioritise individuality above all else.
In order to stand out from competitors, you need to look different to competitors, and imagery can be a very easy way to slip up.
How many websites have you visited that use identical images to others? Especially in a blog section, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find images that haven’t been used elsewhere, and this can immediately make your website feel second-hand and part of a general online collective.
To get away from this, many businesses have opted into the AI craze. AI generated imagery allows you to simply type a prompt into a program and receive a unique, custom-made image that is generated entirely from scratch. Except, it’s not generated from scratch.
The Problem With AI Imagery
The thing about AI is that it seems incredible. Let’s say you’ve written a blog about opening a café in Edinburgh. If you were to use a free image platform like Unsplash, you’d probably type in ‘Edinburgh café’ and hope that something good comes up. We’ve just checked, and the images you’ll get include non-descript pictures of tables, coffees, and a few pictures of ‘The Milkman’. A fine café, by all accounts, but not necessarily what you’re looking for.
Compare this to an AI image generator. As a prompt, you’d probably write: ‘Generate a picture of a café with the Edinburgh skyline in full view through the window, with a barista smiling happily at the camera’. And voilà. Your wish is AI’s command.
But the problem is that AI is not that incredible. By that we mean, it’s not done by magic. Instead, AI generated imagery relies on vast datasets of existing images, each of which can be analysed and pulled from to produce an image aligning with your prompt.
Due to training data homogeneity, algorithmic patterns, default settings, and clear limitations in creativity, every image that AI produces looks similar. In other words, even with more varied prompts and diversified training datasets, you can tell when an image has been created by AI. And because AI is such a sticky issue in 2024, this is only going to harm your website.
The Future, not the Present
Many people relate AI to laziness, a lack of creativity, and a lack of effort. While you might be able to get a better, more accurate image using an AI generator, you won’t be able to fool a user into believing the image isn’t AI-generated.
And if a user recognises an image has been AI-generated, they’ll assume the whole website is AI-generated – if you’ve cut corners with image sourcing, what other corners are you cutting? This is an unnecessary setback that can be easily avoided.
As mentioned before, there are other ways to source images, and while they might take a little more time, they won’t result in a lack of user trust. These images might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but this is all about finding an interesting, unique image that fits your brand and sparks emotion in the user. It doesn’t have to perfectly match your vision, just tick those key boxes.
This is all without mentioning that AI isn’t really good enough yet, which can result in badly generated images that don’t entirely follow your prompts – sometimes in the most bizarre way possible! AI is obviously an important revelation, and in other areas, it might end up entirely shaping our SEO campaigns. But when it comes to AI images, while they might get better in the future, they are not a solution for the present.
