r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 13d ago
Artificial Intelligence Boomers love AI images of their grandkids; millennial parents hate it
https://www.businessinsider.com/grandparents-ai-images-grandkids-privacy-parents-2026-95.5k
u/AshleyAshes1984 13d ago
I think the weirdest part is, if photos are our way if immortalizing a moment in time for the sake of our memories, then what is an AI generated image, if it's a moment of time that never existed?
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u/kbooky90 13d ago
For a lot of people the concept and proof of a relationship is more important than the execution of it.
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u/nurseferatou 13d ago
My father is the proudest grandparent in the world. He tells everyone how much he loves the grandkids he never sees, so that tracks
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u/Daxx22 13d ago
I personally think WAAAAAY more people like the IDEA of kids, but not the reality. And that leads to a lot of broken family's/relationships.
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u/SuitPrestigious1694 13d ago
Not just the IDEA of having kids, but also of satisfying the societal expectations. Once they can say "yeah I have kids/grandkids", that's it for them. So it's mostly either horniness/hormones, the idea of cute kids filling the void inside or societal expectations that bring kids into this world. It's hardly a formula for long-term care, and which explains so much unnecessary emotional hurt and damage, or worse (abandonment/murder).
Shout out to parents who really got it beyond those purely selfish reasons and had a healthy relationship with their kids.
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u/serendipitousevent 13d ago
Another angle is self-identity. A lot of people lack the ability to self-actualise or, worse, can't handle who they see in the mirror. Defining themseves solely in terms of familial relationships fills that void. The important thing to them isn't the job, it's the job title.
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u/disisathrowaway 13d ago
One night while very drunk, my businessman dad admitted to me and my sister that in order for him to advance in his career (which started in the mid-80s), he HAD to get married and have some kids. So that's where my mom, and eventually the two of us came in to play.
Also explains why he was so hard to track down after the divorce (which coincided around the time of his first major promotion).
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u/SuitPrestigious1694 13d ago
Mate...if it helps, you are not alone at this at all The difference is that your father admitted to it very directly, for most it's behind a varnish of selflessness which is simply not true, and most of us are born as a function to something else.
We are not welcomed into this world for our own good. All we can do is to claim this goodness ourselves by our own means, and helping each other deal with all this without creating more unnecessary suffering. You have been dealt a tough card, and you are aware of why it's tough. Best you can do is make the most out of it so that you are a complete human being yourself, without the need of approval of your parents, or society, or all the bullshit that make people take decisions like your father did.
Good luck friend, we are in this together somehow
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u/Lftwff 13d ago
This also helps explain why people who claim to love their children/grandchildren keep making choices that will result in a worse life for them, sure the cruise might bring some lovely memories but maybe thanks would have preferred clean drinking water and a liveable climate
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u/SuitPrestigious1694 13d ago
Absolutely, most only do nice things when it feels good to do it, or when they can get specific credit for it (so that you have to be "grateful" back). But when it comes to the things that would matter the most rationally speaking, most won't.
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u/Vikkunen 13d ago edited 13d ago
LOL! Are you and I the same person?
My parents never miss an opportunity to say how much they miss the grandkids and wish they could see them more often, and it takes every ounce of my strength not to point out they're both retired and in good health, have $80k/yr worth of pensions and social security, investment accounts worth close to $1mm, and live in a paid-off house in bumfuck nowhere where the cost of living is among the lowest in the country.
They could hop on a plane anytime and come to visit; we'd host them in our guest room for as long as they like. Yet I can count on one hand the number of times they've come to see us in the past ten years, staying for less than a week each time.
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u/OdepiusNecks 13d ago
I’ll say this for my boomer parents. They make the time and effort to travel at least three times a year…to go visit my sister in London. Me, who lives in the same city only 15 minutes away? I get a text message asking me to babysit the cat while they’re away. Visiting my sister.
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u/HanaNoAme_ 13d ago
actually fucked up. im sorry
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u/OdepiusNecks 13d ago edited 13d ago
I appreciate it, kind stranger. At 40, I mostly take it in stride that my sister is the clear favorite. And her son, my nephew, is adorable and has the cutest British accent so I kinda get it.
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u/jonnycrush87 13d ago
This is me, except my brother lives in Tijuana, Mexico and has no kids. The rest of the family is on the east coast I live 5-6 hours away from them, so it’s annoying, but doable. I do have a kid, so there is an actual grandkid to see. Over the summer, they came and visited us for the 1st time in 3 years and wouldn’t shut up about their recent trip to Mexico and their plans to go back.
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u/TheGrandNagus 13d ago
It sounds like they’re putting about as much effort into being grandparents as they did into being parents.
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u/PlutosGrasp 13d ago
My parents sometimes compare their baby raising (of me) to me with mine, saying they were able to do x when I was a baby so why can’t I do it now with my baby.
I have tried normal response but it doesn’t work. They don’t care.
So my response now is “I guess you’re just better than I am.”
Feeds their ego and is hard for them to reply to so usually ends the topic.
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u/maskedbanditoftruth 13d ago edited 13d ago
This happens to me all the time and it makes me so angry.
My mom yelled at my exhaustion that you never get a break from being a mother so suck it up.
I don’t know, Mom, kind of seems like you had a lot of breaks.
Like grandparents taking us all the time, sometimes for weeks.
Like turfing us out into the woods and the neighborhood “til the lights came on” during the summers and weekends.
Like being able to dump us at the mall or the movie theater for hours upon hours and pick us up or not whenever. Hell, huge numbers of parents don’t even do sleepovers anymore and we were sleeping at friends’ houses all the time growing up.
Like full school bus service so pick up and drop off (which for some takes an hour plus on either end of the day to wrangle between traffic and waiting in the queues and god help you if you have kids in different schools because many will not allow kids to get home without a parent picking them up) was never a thing parents had to think about—and we all got ourselves to and from the bus stops without help or supervision. I was getting to school alone by 1st grade. If anyone sees your 6 year old walking alone they will call the fucking police now. Mothers have been charged with neglect for what Boomers think of as standard parenting.
Like zero expectation of being an actively engaged educator, social manager, and daily playmate for your children, because fed, clean, and polite were the only societal expectations and we made our own “playdates” where we were, again, gone for hours.
Like “extracurriculars” meaning maybe band and one sport or artsy thing through the school, not endless camps, classes, travel leagues, all with astronomical fees, none providing anything like time off because you need to be fully present for all of them. My child’s school has every single Wednesday as a half day. In the winter they offer a ski club for the other half of the day—and a parent must drive the child to the slopes and back and stay the whole time and pay hundreds for the privilege of still missing work.
Like ME, you know, the oldest daughter who babysat constantly and helped with every single kid (and since the mom in question here is actually my stepmom, she never had to raise a baby without a tiny submissive helper. I was six when the first was born, twelve at the last) and couldn’t see friends on the weekend because she had too many chores all over the house and hid in her room reading whenever she possibly could get away from any of that.
Like a husband working full time and making great money so you didn’t have to and STILL had all that help. (I’m a single parent whose ex doesn’t even pay child support.)
Seems like Mom got a ton of breaks that just aren’t available to us and never will be. It’s fundamentally not the same job anymore and they can’t comprehend it.
In part because a huge portion of that generation never actually wanted kids for their own sake, or at least not so many. It was just so culturally ingrained and birth control still had such a stigma when they were young that children were inevitable, not appreciated, and their whole approach to parenting was “ugh, I guess all these people happened because we wanted to fuck, what’s the lowest bar of labor for us to deal with this thing we didn’t really want until it turns 18 so we can live the lives we actually wanted?”
Boomers and early X are the last generations for which children were more or less mandatory. It’s a totally different world now and they don’t even know anything changed.
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u/techforallseasons 13d ago
Excellent observations; I'll add: parents / In-laws that move farther out to enjoy peaceful scenery after spending decades avoiding that due to worries about being close to high-quality healthcare; and then asking why you don't come and visit as often.
Your move doubled the travel time to visit, you're retired, why don't you come to us? When they drive out they complain about how tired they are and that they need to head back before it is dark; yet expect us to stay all day ( on one of the few unplanned weekends we have ).
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u/dedlobster 13d ago
Can I get an “amen” over here? Preach preach preach, sister! I feel every bit of this.
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u/gowahoo 13d ago
It’s fundamentally not the same job anymore and they can’t comprehend it.
This is really well said, thanks. And sorry you're going through it.
It makes me sad that my kids will never have the same grandparent experiences I had. Life sure is different.
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u/Hoplite-Litehop 13d ago
Same with my grandparents. Literally throughout my life my mother was practically grasping at straws to justify this behavior and in the end I've decided I do not honestly care for my grandparents. They weren't integral to my life, they've done nothing but harm to my mother, and in the end decided to be selfish with everyone in the family.
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u/MultiGeometry 13d ago
Sadly, this is also reflective of how they felt when they reared you. Grandparents who keep their space are generally the ones who say ‘I did my time raising you, I don’t have the energy to raise my grandchildren’
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u/MrTigerEyes 13d ago
I have something similar but not quite as dramatic with my mom. She's on Facebook so she gives me updates about a few of my cousins' families where they post on Facebook. She seems to know less about what my siblings and I are up to, as well as our kids. She does visit us sometimes though, which I admit is more difficult than if we lived in the same area.
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u/empire161 13d ago
Boomers only care about things through the lens of “how does this relate to me, the center of the universe”.
We recently had dinner with my parents and my mom asked my 8yo how the summer was going. He started to tell her about a camp he was doing for basic coding and the little projects he was doing.
My mom cut him off to tell him about how one of her friends (someone my son has never met) does coding and all of her friend’s projects and how great her friend is and it’s so cool Grammy is friends with him.
I could literally see the disappointment on my kid’s face when he realized my mom didn’t actually about what he was saying. She was only waiting for an opportunity to change the conversation back to herself.
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u/FlashbackJon 13d ago
Baby boomers were famously called the "me" generation by their parents and that has basically persisted the entire time.
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u/LollyGaggleofGeese 13d ago
they like to claim Millennials are the Me generation but that part makes me laugh (as a Millennial with Boomer parents) because the two gens are pretty damn different in my experience. I know my gen can be "too sincere" or whatever but we like, go to therapy and try to heal and stuff. I can't get my remaining Boomer parent to even face reality a lot of the time.
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u/HumanShadow 13d ago
And they sit on their phone during visits instead of being present with the child.
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u/nickatnite7 13d ago
THAT PART. I'm a high school teacher, and I'm not sure if my students or my parents are more addicted to their phones.
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u/Chickpea_moon 13d ago
This destroys my soul. The argument of we never see you, but the child is literally right in front of you trying to engage and fighting a losing battle for your attention with AI generated slop. You would rather watch some uncanny Ai generated video of someone else's kid dance than watch your own grandchild put on a magic dance show?! Got it. Great.
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u/Merusk 13d ago
Boomers in particular see offspring as trophies. It tracks with the narrative of 'this is what a life is' that they've all lived with. The phrase "Keeping up with the Jonses" has even developed its own micro-generation - Generation Jones.
Accumulating things matters more to folks raised in a time of unprecedented wealth and prosperity. The same way modern rich compete by what they own, the culture of greed and showing off the 'toys' is the purpose of life to these folks. (Ever see the old "He who dies with the most toys wins" bumper stickers?)
So yeah, totally tracks that your father is that way. I have in-laws who were disappointed they only got 3 grandkids overall. Who were upset that one child didn't go on to be Doctor after a bit of time at school and introspection. (I already told my friends, what will they think?!)
Grandkids are a milestone and providing them things is another one. So proud, look at all I've been able to provide! Your accomplishments are a reflection of my largesse and success! It's knowingly a terrible mindset, but one that was cemented long ago and they're not going to grow out of it.
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u/Pleasant_Studio9690 13d ago
Damn. Nailed it. Dad always told us family was more important than anything. That changed really fast when I came out as LGBTQ and my beautiful niece happened to be bi-racial. My family tends to live into ripe old age so I hope he enjoys his time alone in a nursing home with no one coming to see him.
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u/VisionaireX 13d ago
This. My wife's grandmother would request photos of our kids all the time. Never called them, visited, nor paid them any attention at holidays. She just wanted photos she could share with others at social events in her retirement community - seemingly to 'show off' how great her family is... without ever really knowing them or caring about them.
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u/FamousSuccess 13d ago
This is the most profound statement. Reddit can be a train wreck sometimes but these are the nuggets of wisdom I appreciate when I find them
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u/flip6threeh0le 13d ago
For the boomers the concept of everything doesn’t match their execution of anything
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u/informalmo0se3 13d ago
and this is why they love Trump. they don’t give a shit what he actually did to obtain his perceived status, just that he got there. they believe your image is more important than your actions
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u/Lucky_Number_Sleven 13d ago
That's been one of the things about AI that really rankles. There are commercials of a dad using AI to photoshop himself next to his daughter instead of her boyfriend. The problem with that is that it's super weird and it never happened. If anyone looked back on that photo 10 years later, it would be a false memory. There's also a commercial for a "fitness influencer" deepfaking an entire workout routine and then bragging about never even needing to leave the comfort of her house. And far be it from me to defend influencers, but isn't it a little galling that actually doing the thing is no longer a prerequisite for trying to convince others to also do the thing?
And I get it: these are just commercials. They're fictional events made to sell this product. But these are the use cases being sold. Why have a healthy relationship with your kids when you can just photoshop them next to you? Why live a healthy life when you can just deepfake yourself going to the gym, eating right, and climbing Mt. Everest? You don't really need to do those things. Just create a bunch of fake media to share on your socials and everyone will be so impressed.
I know I sound like an old man yelling at clouds (and perhaps I am to an extent), but for all the real uses of AI, why does the marketing seem aimed at rejecting reality as it is and replacing it with tailor-made delusion?
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u/odaeyss 13d ago
Wow wait lmao. Someone made a commercial. In which a dad takes a picture of his daughter and her boyfriend... and inserts himself as the boyfriend and no one said "hey there fella. That's a little odd, maybe let's not."
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u/Bogus1989 13d ago
Yep!
Also why worry about holiday shopping for your family at Christmas when AI can order it, and also text them for you!
Defeats the entire purpose of “living” life. Otherwise if you dont wanna do those things, then dont do them.
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u/PlutosGrasp 13d ago
Not for these people that would use it. They fulfill what they think is an obligation. Then they get to spend their time doing what they want.
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u/bradicality 13d ago
A technology by narcissists for narcissists and we've bet the whole economy on it weeeeee
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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 13d ago
It's why I hate ads for quick photo editing AI tools on phones that advertise the ability to completely alter every day photos. Like it'll show a family on vacation and using the AI function to remove strangers in the background of their photo of the grand canyon, change smiles, alter outfits, and it just feels gross.
That's the artifact of a real moment you had. Yeah so what there are other families in the background. They were there. So every family photo you share and hold is going to be an artificially created edit that perfects every detail?
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u/_Pliny_ 13d ago
My sister-in-law’s husband used AI to “animate” a photo of her and her dad after he’d died suddenly.
It changed both their faces in subtle ways. Articles have been written about the homogenization of beauty, and it wasn’t quite her nose, eyes, chin, or smile.
It wasn’t quite my father in law’s face anymore. That perfect smile wasn’t his goofy, authentic smile.
What’s more- I took that photo. I know that moment. And the animation wasn’t it. Is the beautiful afternoon we had hiking gone now? Replaced forever in memory with this saccharine-yet-instagrammable vignette of what a large language model assembles when promoted to show “happiness” or “love?”
He (the husband) meant well. She seemed to love it, and cried real human tears.
This artificial entity reaching in and “improving” our memory disturbed me, and I won’t look at it again. I don’t want to risk losing the real father in law.
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u/slipperyMonkey07 13d ago
My younger sister and her partner are full on the AI for "goofs" train. My mother sent her a few photos of my niece and old family photos. Her first instinct was to slap them into whatever ai she was using to make a collage. It gave all the faces this weird uncanny valley smoothness.
Like if my mother wanted that done I could of done it in 2 minutes without ruining everyone's faces. Instead they acted like it was some miracle tech and collages have never been able to be done before.
They are also heavy facebook users who have to post everything. It is just baffling how much she has fallen into this stuff.
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u/Testicular_Genocide 13d ago
Boomers have only ever cared about the perception of certain things, not the reality of those things. They want their family to appear perfect on the outside, but they won't put in the work to actually make the family good though.
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u/rmg18555 13d ago
Kind of fitting for a generation that has generally rejected reality…
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u/quantizeddreams 13d ago
Take it a step further and ask what will potentially happen to our culture and collective history if there isn’t a way to properly flag these as AI? It is really easy to implant false memories in a single person. Can we do the same on a large scale with time and AI?
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u/veggiesama 13d ago
That's silly, of course we'll remember things, like this never-ending war with Eastasia. Gas prices have always been above $4.00.
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u/DarkLanternZBT 13d ago
Makes you wonder what they really think about their grandkids.
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u/da_bomba 13d ago
Trophies? Pets? Organ banks?
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u/zffjk 13d ago
Trophies makes sense. Every photo I sent my mom of my kids ended up on Facebook. I asked her to stop, she would not and said it’s her right as a grandparent. I stopped sending photos. She can visit if she wants photos, but she won’t. She sure as fuck goes on vacation twice a month though but can’t find the time to see her grandchildren.
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u/sillyshallot 13d ago
Both my mother and mother-in-law post every single kid photo on Facebook. If not immediately, then on their birthday or something like that. It's exhausting. And if I include a little "please don't post on FB!" note with the photo, they get so offended. I don't send many photos anymore either.
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u/HarryBalsagna1776 13d ago
Whoa, do we have the same mom?! Seriously, that is my exact situation. When your mom does visit, does she come at the worst times and then whine about how nobody will cater to her?
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u/zffjk 13d ago
Yes, usually with extremely short notice.. like telling me she’s coming the morning she leaves. Well outside of the window where I can take PTO without an emergency. Maddening that she has all these vacations planned but when it comes to her only grandchildren she can only do spur of the moment.
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u/xrtpatriot 13d ago
Status symbols mostly. Look at me with me 4 kids, 16 grand children, motor home, gigantic house they can barely go up and down the steps in, boat, 4 vacations a year.
All of it so they can sit at breakfast with other high status boomers and compete over who is more boomer than the rest.
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u/They-Call-Me-Taylor 13d ago
I'm gen X, but my boomer mom made a whole AI book for both of my kids. It was bizarre.
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u/Odd-Friendship-5995 13d ago
I'm a millennial, my Gen X mother discussed a book idea with her Gen Z granddaughter (my niece). They talked about how they were gonna write it and planned it all out, something like a 6 month process. The next week after they finalized the plan, my mother emailed the book to her, my sister, and my brother (niece's dad).
Everyone was heartbroken for my niece who was so excited for this project with her grandma. My mother wouldn't accept anything from anyone other than she wrote the book, even going as far as acknowledging that she only prompted AI. But she still wrote it because it was her idea.
It's quite sad honestly.
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u/wonderfullemoncandy 13d ago
I’ve been throwing out these books, my mother in law is sweet but not smart. The books are crap, all have the same ai slop cartoon styling and the stories make no sense and have horrible meter. One was a rhyming book that had words that didn’t rhyme.
She is the same with buying crap from the internet.
Stop wasting money on crap, I have a small house we don’t have room for it. So it immediately gets thrown away to the point that it usually feels like a burden.
Put the money in a savings fund or a college fund for the kids, don’t upload my child’s photos and name into some shady AI repository. Just no god damn decency.
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u/tunalic2 13d ago
My boomer father wrote a children's book 13 or 14 years ago, obviously pre-AI. He's been trying to get it illustrated ever since then with no luck. He's even sat down with 3 different artists over the years, and was willing to pay their fees without trying to screw them over. I'm not sure what happened, but it just never worked out.
So now after trying for years to pay a human to actually make the art, he's resorted to using AI so he can finally publish the kids book and market it on Amazon. I don't have the heart to tell him that nobody with children today is going to pay for a book with AI art.
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u/CookieCacti 13d ago edited 13d ago
As an artist who follows a lot of children’s book illustrators and collab forums for those kinds of projects: your father probably wasn’t paying standard rates. Professional children’s book illustrators are far more expensive than the average person assumes (talking $1K-5K per page). You can easily find illustrators at cheaper rates, but that comes with the downside of unprofessionalism and flaky behavior, usually resulting in unfinished projects.
That’s why the bottom half of the art commission business has fallen out due to AI. It’s just replacing one form of cheapness with another. The top half is still thriving because serious businesses and individuals are still willing to pay top dollar for professional-quality illustrators.
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u/Firm-Force-9036 13d ago
Yeah I was going to say…my partner does freelance art on the side and would absolutely say yes to something like this if the rate was right and the author wasn’t difficult to a fault.
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u/thatwombat 13d ago
The daycare we send our kids did this and there was an outright revolt by the parents. Needless to say I was not pleased.
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u/IndistinctMuttering 13d ago
What happened exactly? And did the daycare take it seriously?
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u/RedBoxSquare 13d ago
"Look at how nicely we treat your kids, we bring them to the zoo, we take them out to museums"
Proceeds to provide AI generated images of said event.
(Pure sarcasm, not related to OP)
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u/Black_Moons 13d ago
"AI, take this photo, and move the kids outside of the cages, and put animals inside the cages, so it looks like a zoo"
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u/Dapper-Appearance-42 13d ago
Oh my God. I know daycare is hard to find but damn. I'm so sorry.
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u/Late_Masterpiece9874 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yep my mom is obsessed with watching AI videos of newborn babies talking/singing/playing with puppies. She knows it’s not real, but thinks it’s so cute. It’s nauseating. I can’t imagine if/when she has a grandkid.
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan 13d ago
AI videos of newborn babies talking/singing
That is by FAR the creepiest and most unsettling thing ive heard in a long time.
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u/uid_0 13d ago
Remember this guy from the early days of the internet?
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u/nbshar 13d ago
Yea' but at least my mom didn't think that was real, (before sending it to 20 friends in an email chain because it would otherwise bring bad luck)
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u/robsteezy 13d ago
Except we all just stood around a computer watching this baby dance to Eiffel 65 and weren’t scared of our kids uploaded being used for CP.
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u/Mccobsta 13d ago
There way worse "ai" generated videos out there involving kids some on channels I've reported in the hopes YouTube takes that shit down league
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u/haddock420 13d ago
Reminds me of when people make a Facebook page for their baby and then post as the baby.
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u/cleverdirge 13d ago
It sounds like an addiction. She couldn't go without the dopamine hits of the device.
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u/ShapeShiftingCats 13d ago
But her granddaughter was just standing there....that's not curated for intense dopamine hits like exaggerated behaviours seen in Instagram videos. /s
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u/Angsty_Potatos 13d ago
Same! My mom complains she doesn't see enough of me and my brother (he lives 300ft from her house) and my nephew had is always talking about wanting to make happy memories.
Then every time we plan a nice thing to do she's in the corner. Non verbal. Scrolling IG or Facebook. Usually after a while she will interrupt us and what were doing to show us something WE posted 3 months ago on IG as if it's new news or we haven't seen it.
She gets so mad when we tell her to get off the phone and interact with us/grandchild
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u/lonnie123 13d ago
I think I’ve come to realize that what they want is to see the effort you put in.
My dad categorically refused to call any of his children. He was the patriarch of the family and as such “the subjects request audience with the king, not the other way around”
Oh and Father’s Day, birthdays, thanksgiving, Christmas, etc… didn’t count because those were basically obligations. He genuinely would send emails reminding us those don’t count, heck if anything they count against you because it reminded him that It HAS to be “just because” or it doesn’t count.
Last year he sent us an email saying he is a father the other 364 days a year and this year not to call him on Father’s Day… because that’s his holiday and thus he gets the day off.
And as above, you couldn’t interact with him without him bringing up how little you interacted with him. Having said that he was present for the interactions and I genuinely think he wanted more, but his way of going about it was so abrasive he got less.
But yeah what he REALLY wanted was to know you would do it.
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u/Evilegio 13d ago
Those are so fucking weird and dystopian, idk how anyone can think they're cute.
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u/Runningwithtoast 13d ago
I think it’s because it’s similar-ish to things like Mr. Ed and other Boomer-loved talking animals, cutesy dressed up sweet kids like Shirley Temple, etc? Idk
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u/Znuffie 13d ago
Motherfuckers can barely use a smartphone/pc when it counts.
Now suddenly they have figured out how to put images of grandchildren into LLMs and generate other pictures.
Make it make sense.
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u/MysteryTempest 13d ago
I remember someone saying that old people get the same feeling from making/sharing AI slop that little kids get from showing off their wax crayon scribbles or macaroni art.
I find that idea pretty convincing.
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u/mugwhyrt 13d ago
it used to take an entire office of workers at 5 martinis each to put sunglasses on a dog, now one guy at home can do it in just under an hour
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u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm 13d ago
Same amount of martinis.
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u/KindHabit 13d ago
I have seen the public accounting work of my incredibly wealthy boomer bosses and I was not at all impressed.
They were filing underwhelming 1040s with pencils while I was forced to work with highly complex multinational holding corporations as an associate.
It's honestly criminal how their personal wealth was a check written at our expense.
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u/D3viantM1nd 13d ago
Yet, that company supported many more employees on far less productivity per employee.
One wonders where all that increased productivity and the wealth it has generated has ended up over the last 50 years.
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u/GenerateUsefulName 13d ago
One does not wonder. One knows. And it is not with the productive people. This is why I am on reddit during my work time.
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u/VralGrymfang 13d ago
5 years ago my office was using hand calculators, and I moved us to Excel.
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u/Strict_Weather9063 13d ago
He used a manual adding machine his bosses didn’t want mistakes. They didn’t cost as much as calculators and did the job just fine. You could double check your work by looking at the paper tape. Everything else was done by hand spreadsheets have replaced all of this and make it much easier. But at one point double entry book keeping was a good skill set to have.
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u/Mr_ToDo 13d ago
But at one point double entry book keeping was a good skill set to have
Was? Is there a bookkeeping system that doesn't use that? Sure the likes of t accounts, debits, and credits are buried behind a nice UI, it's still a good thing to know if you want to understand why things work the way they do and/or want to move past entering data
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u/RKKP2015 13d ago
My mom does this shit, and she can't understand or listen when I ask her to stop. The pictures don't even end up looking like me or my kids. I don't get how she doesn't see that.
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u/Aussie_Potato 13d ago
Get her onto the Sims so she can just make your family there and play with them
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u/browserz 13d ago
My brother in law couldn't understand why I wanted him to stop generating photos of our family members with AI, especially of me and my wife
He saw a post on how people are using kids photos with AI to make bad things, then all of the sudden he doesn't want anyone posting photos of him or his kids anymore
Some people wont stop until it affects them directly
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u/oatmealparty 13d ago
I tried getting through to my brother with that. Told him that Facebook and Twitter are generating child porn and they're getting the models for that from actual photos of children, but he's still out here posting his photos and feeding them into AI stuff. I don't even get it, we went on a Santa train ride and the actual photos are great but instead he's showing people AI versions of his family on the train.
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u/tesseract4 13d ago
She doesn't want grandchildren. She wants dolls.
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u/Downtown_Injury_3415 13d ago
Im a millennial. I remember seeing articles of people dressing their kids in little costumes for fun and people online were like “they don’t want children. They want pets”. But still, fuck AI
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u/Sf49ers1680 13d ago edited 13d ago
My parents used AI to insert my son into a family picture that he wasn't physically present for, and he verbally chewed my mom out for it when she shared it in a group chat.
He's 15 and he's very particular about what of his gets shared online.
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u/girlikecupcake 13d ago
Restrict her access to pictures if you want her to stop. No new pictures, no unsupervised access to the kids if it can be helped. She, and other adults like her, are going to keep doing it as long as they keep having access to the pictures. A lot of them refuse to understand the potential harms and see it as their right to do what they want with their pictures - as in the pictures they have copies of.
I'm ridiculously strict about pictures of my kid, no social media or knowingly/intentionally feeding them to AI. We warned everyone that if we found out about any, the only visits would be with one of us present and there'd be no more pictures for a long while.
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u/numberonebarista 13d ago
I found out my grandma was making AI photos of one of her grandsons and her recently born granddaughter and I immediately let her know how disturbing and weird I found this to be, only because these two kids in particular have never met in real life yet. And these AI images showed them playing in a park together and other scenes that NEVER happened!
And I said ‘what if you get older and can’t trust your memory as much and you think this photo is real? What if you believed this moment actually took place in reality even though it didn’t?’ Not to mention it was some app she was using that was generating the images so she submitted photos of her grandchildren without the parent’s permission to this random company doing God knows what with that data….like what the fuck.
She hopefully got what I was saying because she hasn’t done that since as far as I know. But that legit scared me how reckless she was being
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u/Kitchen-Cabinet-5000 13d ago
The idea of being able to create fake moments/memories of a real, non-consenting person is extremely disturbing.
How nice that we can apparently do that now…
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u/trolldoll26 13d ago
I posted this in another sub recently, but it must be said again:
I went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago and the birthday kid was opening presents. The present they opened was a framed picture of themselves standing with a famous boy band. The child was in awe and asked their mom when that picture was taken because they (child) couldn’t remember meeting the band.
Fuck AI. Everyone laughed in amusement but I know that kid is going to remember that moment forever and feel cheated.
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u/Machine_Jazzlike 13d ago
Oof and imagine how that messes up the kid’s development, wondering if they just don’t remember something from their past, or if it was entirely fake to begin with. We already make false memories - I’m sure this makes that even worse.
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u/trolldoll26 13d ago
Yes, exactly!!! I was so shocked that so many people laughed rather than feeling bad about confusing the poor kid.
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u/UC_Scuti96 13d ago
No but seriously this pisses me off so much. Why do Boomers that were so distrustful of newer technologies and couldn’t even set their ringtone volume suddenly fully embraces AI which is the one technology you shouldn’t blindly trust.
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u/chronomagnus 13d ago
It’s because there isn’t a learning curve and AI never criticizes them or gets annoyed. They tell it what they want, and it does it and compliments them along the way without a hint of annoyance or condescension.
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u/gonzo_gat0r 13d ago
It’s so this, and why business leaders love it too. It can’t say no, it won’t tell you your idea is bad, it won’t push back from personal experience, tell you what you just said was offensive, or say it hasn’t had a lunch break.
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u/ppshhhhpashhhpff 13d ago
grok, claude, and chatgpt told me i was doing a historical revisionism and had ideological motivations when i told it gwen stefani invented indian, mexican, and japanese culture, and that she had the artifacts planted in their respective continents by a team of reverse archaeologists
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u/AwsmDevil 13d ago
Why would those ai clients lie to you like that? You're entirely correct that Gwen Stefani did that and it's well documented. She's one of the most influential cultural icons ever, literally crafting those cultures and popularizing them single handedly in the 00s. Don't let the conspiracies win! Keep on speaking truth to power. 😤
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u/mephnick 13d ago
Yeah my parents, who when I was young told me to never reveal anything about myself on the internet, are now mad I don't post enough pictures of my kids on Facebook.
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u/DigNitty 13d ago
My mother, who told me not to even say “it’s raining” on MySpace because some bad actor could tell that “oh it’s raining in Bridgeville Illinois right now Dignitty must live at 1233 porter street!!!”
That same mother thought I took a particularly flattering ID photo and uploaded my full ID, number, DOB, address, to her Facebook wall.
What happened to “don’t even say it’s raining” MOM?!?!
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u/CGiMoose 13d ago
That’s actually fascinating, like the fact she had such an in depth concern - was it a case of ‘oh I saw on the news or this tv show that they can figure out your location based on your description of the weather’ while having blind spots everywhere else, or was her sense of opsec equally strong on other stuff until recently?
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u/maroonedbuccaneer 13d ago
Not OP but I can confirm that TV news back in the day was mostly "See how this women lost her whole house and life savings to hackers by doing this one common thing people do everyday. Find out only on action new at eleven!"
That's what news was to most Boomers.
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u/MisterMath 13d ago
I told my mother to not post pictures of our kids on FB….so she fed a photo to AI to recreate it as an AI slop picture then uploaded it.
Incredible lack of thinking skills
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u/fountaincurse 13d ago
Lack of good thinking skills. What she did is more like when someone cheats on their partner and then insists it was "one" mistake.
There were a whole lot of steps to get through deborah for you to land expressly on the thing you were told not to do 🙄
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u/madogvelkor 13d ago
It's funny because I remember some boomers 25 years ago when e-commerce was taking off saying they'd never trust their information online and refused to put their credit card info in a website.
A lot of early online stores still had catalog order lines, my mother in law would pick out what she wanted online then call to place the order. Because reading your credit card info to someone over the phone was safer in her mind.
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u/thundermachine 13d ago
I own an e-commerce company and the amount of boomers who call us wanting to give their credit card number to someone is insane.
If I have the time I usually try to explain everything is encrypted on our website and it’s much, much safer than ever reading anyone a credit card number over the phone.
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u/MaternalFornicator2 13d ago
I remember explaining the security of purchasing online to my mother-in-law, "NOPE!" Now she can't help but to purchase things online...
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u/Luxuriousmoth1 13d ago
Because it literally offloads the effort of thinking and creating.
Because it makes generating a specific body of text or image incredibly trivial, and if you care more about the idea of something existing than actually making it yourself, it appeals to you.
Imagine you think that your grandson would look cute in a little sailor suit. Previously, this would mean actually acquiring a little sailor suit, convincing your grandson to put it on, and potentially taking a picture to remember the moment.
Now imagine that instead of all that, you can just attach an image, tell the AI to put them in a sailor suit, and then laugh and share the image of "your" grandson wearing the sailor suit. It does not matter to you that he never actually wore a suit, it does not matter that you shared an image of him wearing something specific without his consent. You do not even care about the quality of the image, that he has weird fingers or doesn't really even look like your grandson. That's all immaterial. All that mattered is that you wanted to see something, and without having to get up from your chair, you made that image exist. The idea of the image was more important than the image itself.
It is fast food for the dopamine receptors of your brain.
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u/AnAncientBog 13d ago
They didn't know what technology did back then and they still don't. Computers have been in the work place since the 70s, every single one of them had fifty years to figure shit out. The ones that haven't are just stupid.
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u/TheYellowScarf 13d ago
We have an agreement with our parents and family members to not use AI or social media posts with our child's face. So far they've respected it, as they're afraid to cross my wife.
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u/Makabajones 13d ago
I refuse to send pictures of my kids to my parents for this exact reason
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u/vokebot 13d ago
Also had to cut my dad off from photos for this reason. From the generation that was distrustful of so much new tech, and now they blindly trust anything. It’s unreal.
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u/Karkava 13d ago
They weren't trusting so much as they are easily embarrassed by the idea of not being an immediate expert. It's not enough to overcome the learning curve. They want to already get over it and skip to the praise for it.
They're trusting of Gen AI because of how lazy it is to use. It satisfied their gratification while skipping the embarrassment of the learning curve.
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u/firstname_m_lastname 13d ago edited 13d ago
I’m a GenX graphic Designer. I’m helping a friend with their 50th High School reunion.
I literally have to beg and cajole to get these people to let me design the materials for them, using the actual logo and images from the school, making everything cohesive, etc.
“But I LOVE Ai!” They cheer over and over again, like it’s a new religion come to save us all, as it churns out slop and I point out the nonsense characters in the text and the fact that it looks like every other sign, invite, and post on Facebook. It’s so disheartening.
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u/rmg18555 13d ago
I’m so sick of the AI-generated marketing material that shows up on every informational social media post now - my local municipality posts, the local school district posts, power outage notifications. And the misplaced pride that comes with it. Like, bro, you wrote a sentence and clicked <Enter>. What the hell are you proud of?
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u/itswineoclock 13d ago
I just reluctantly ordered a t shirt for my kid's volleyball team which has a completely AI generated graphic on the back and looks terrible.
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u/Glasseshalf 13d ago
All the food trucks at my local jazz festival had AI signage. They were surrounded by booths of artists they could pay but no.
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u/Chance_Stay7361 13d ago
I find that if you’re at an event with multiple food trucks these days, over-the-top AI graphics are a quick and easy way to weed out the crappy ones.
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u/phillxor 13d ago
I definitely hate the flyer/poster slop more than the AI cartoon photo slop.
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u/Alivaronas 13d ago
Why the fuck does AI want to use like 3-5 different fonts on a flyer?
And what the fuck is with the horror-esque images of food that restaurants are using instead of pictures of their own product?
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u/-3point14159-mp 13d ago
And why does it feel the need to fill every available space? It’s always way too busy.
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u/HomelessKitchenCat 13d ago
AI images helped me believe in the concept of a soul. I never realized flyers had soul until I saw what it was like if they had none.
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u/ElGranQuesoRojo 13d ago
My wife is a commercial post producer and she is constantly having to talk clients, advertising creatives, and even the production team out of using AI for everything because without fail it inevitably screws shit up badly enough that she has to spend more time fixing things than if they had just let her artists do it all in the first place.
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u/Late_Masterpiece9874 13d ago
Oh man, as a millennial graphic designer, I can’t imagine that frustration.
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u/Merusk 13d ago
The entire point is what you're describing. The death of expertise.
Letting mediocre people with no ambition or talent generate 'good enough' content and feel good about it. It's another form of control and spreading the layer of humanity into a thin paste of bland.
While I'm a huge fan of automation and Ai possibility, I recognize the reality of where it's coming from. Why it's grown so popular, and why it's not going back in the bottle.
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u/firstname_m_lastname 13d ago
It’s so bad! This girl even wants to make certificates for the superlatives with ai, and the kicker is she claims to be an artist. I’m losing my mind over here!!
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u/blehbleh1122 13d ago
A few years ago my mom started photoshopping her own pictures to try to make herself look younger, skinnier,etc. To the point that it didn't even remotely look like her anymore. Then she discovered Ai and tried using it for the same thing. She then sent unsolicited ai edited pictures of my wife to our family group chat. Needless to say, my wife was rightfully offended and blocked her. Boomers are so vain and out of touch with reality.
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u/starzychik01 13d ago
The current trend is to do the half and half face with your kid to see if you look alike. One of my cousins did it with her sons and says she doesn’t look like either of them at all. Fucking crazy, because the photo she used of her self was AI or photoshopped to oblivion to make your 60yo self look 30yo. Then the AI on her kids made them look slightly different, so yea of course. BTW, her sons all have very prominent features from her side of the family. AI and photoshop have blinded the boomers from photo reality.
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u/indoninjah 13d ago
Boomers are so vain and out of touch with reality.
On some level I guess I understand it. I feel like their generation has such a firm idea of putting on airs, never airing dirty laundry, never exposing negative emotions. So, to them, what's really different about falsely beautifying yourself or your family?
Obviously it's totally fucked, but the entire idea of having a semi-falsified public life is also fucked.
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u/Ok-Dentist9265 13d ago
my grandfather learned about this ai image generation few months ago and he is so into it that he keeps creating something everyday and keeps on showing everyone. he even created a 30 yrs young version of himself and showed us saying thats how handsome he was
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u/LadyMirkwood 13d ago
My kids are older so now my mum sends me AI pictures of my dog.
Also, I have to keep explaining that adverts she sees on FB for stuff are also AI. Its like mum, you aren't getting an elaborately embroidered bag for £10 from Temu.
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u/MooseMalloy 13d ago
Boomers are becoming more and more senile.
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u/KillYourUsernames 13d ago
My father in law put a picture of himself and my wife on our wedding day through AI “to fix the lighting”. This is a photo that was already professionally shot and edited by our photographer, mind you, not somebody’s cell phone shot.
AI completely replaced my wife’s face with some AI woman. It’s not even his daughter’s face in the picture anymore. He didn’t notice until we pointed it out to him.
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u/Atnevon 13d ago
“Get off that Nintendo! It’ll rot your brain!”
Same gen brought to by:
“Did you see on the Facebook news that I need to inject horse medicine to beat Bill Gates’ 5G China virus!??”
We’re not just cooked; we’re grilled with the cheapest metal grill brush so we get metal-shard leftovers.
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u/1fatfrog 13d ago edited 13d ago
Boomers love fake, low quality, cheap crap... See the Whitehouse. planned obsolescence, most of the products made from the 80's on, their personal relationships, nearly everything they have accomplished as a generation...
Edit: Spelling
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u/Tokyo-MontanaExpress 13d ago
They're the reason why ads are smile yelling at us. Dumb ads for dumb people.
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u/Bitterman_01 13d ago
It's so fucking stupid because of how hypocritical it all is. They're going back on ALL OF THE SHIT OUR PARENTS TOLD US NOT TO DO when we were learning about to use the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s.
I've had extended family members who are younger and should know better doing the same shit. It just makes things fucking awkward especially when my wife and I have gone out of our way to not post our child's pictures on social media networks.
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u/TheGriffin 13d ago
Right?! Like the OG rules of the internet were 1. Dont give out your name 2. Dont trust what you read 3. Dont meet strangers
Now boomers are like "FREEDOM EAGLE DOT PATRIOT TOLD ME THAT JUSTIN TRUDEAU IS THE SON OF ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND AND THATS WHY I GAVE MY MONEY TO JOE ROGAN FOR SUPPLMEMNTS!"
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u/Ok_Course_6757 13d ago
Old people adore ChatGPT
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u/Fairgoddess5 13d ago
Well sure, because it agrees with everything they say and tells them they’re awesome
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u/HeeHooligan 13d ago
It's gross for a lot of reasons but doesn't it beg the question: why do they want pictures of their kid that has none of their soul? A friend of mine said a coworker was thinking of using AI for their family photo because the kids wouldn't sit still. Fucking so what if they don't sit still? Why would you want a sanitized, disgusting amalgamation of what should be your kids instead of your actual kids as they are? I'm so tired of the soul being yanked out of everything in favor of plastic perfection.
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u/IEnjoyRadios 13d ago
Ugh I hate this timeline. And I hate that I’m forever going to be the grumpy one for being against all this constant slop.
I called out a relative for just watching AI slop on YouTube earlier this year. That did not go down well with the family. Fuck me for thinking we shouldn’t watch literal incoherent trash right?
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u/FrigginRan 13d ago
My grandparents keep making AI songs for birthday parties and other shit and I just don’t have the energy to express my opinions regarding AI to them. I’ll let them enjoy their stupid slop songs, clap their hands like a bunch of sea lions, and leave them in their blissful ignorance with the short time they have left.
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u/Meraere 13d ago
My dad did it for his speech at my wedding. I tell him just double check your results with a non gen-AI source. Can educate only so much and at a certain point just nod and move on. Never going to use gen ai for 95% of the things myself if i can help it.
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u/RonaldoNazario 13d ago
Man, I’m sorry, that is depressing. I’d just be genuinely sad about that.
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u/DigNitty 13d ago
100%
to be be given the opportunity for one of the most personably moments in someone’s life, and choosing to use the least personal method possible.
It would literally be better to say “hey for your wedding speech I just paid someone on Etsy to write one for me.”
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u/FrigginRan 13d ago
Id rather someone show up with no words and deliver a 2min speech from the heart than a 10min clanker spiel.
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u/CGiMoose 13d ago
You’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t have mentioned your affair during my speech. And honestly? That’s on me. You’re right to push back. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.
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u/Philodendron69 13d ago
Boomers probably like it because they don’t get to see their grandkids because they’re assholes
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u/mrafinch 13d ago
Jokes on my boomer dad, he doesn’t even know he has grandkids he could be making AI images of
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u/tcmisfit 13d ago
As an elder millennial, I was grown up on not believing all photos when photoshop came around and being taught to be skeptical of everything on the new World Wide Web, on top of being told lie after lie that created trauma after trauma as we grew up, is it any wonder why we crave authenticity?
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u/Throwoutbins 13d ago
10 years ago it was “I DO NOT GIVE FACEBOOK PERMISSION TO LOOK AT MY PICTURES” and now it’s “Facebook please generate me a picture of my grandkids dressed as cowboys riding a bald eagle with a Trump toupee”
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u/codependentfox 13d ago
I HATE that my MIL does this
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u/Financial-Creme 13d ago
Same. Mine just used my wedding photos to put the us all in a Star wars setting. It makes me so uncomfortable that she's feeding our personal photos to some tech bro's plagiarism machine.
This is the same woman who proudly copy and pasted that "I DO NOT GIVE FACEBOOK PERMISSION TO USE MY PHOTOS..." thing just a few years prior.
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u/theghostmachine 13d ago
I had to tell my dad to stop making silly AI videos of my kids. He took it well, at least.
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u/Training-Principle95 13d ago
They used AI to edit my cousin's funeral photos. I wanted to vomit
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u/PickledPimple 13d ago
My Mum used AI to insert a 7 year old version of herself next to my kids.
I’ve lost the will.
The amount of times I’ve said don’t do it is beyond count.
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u/Santos_L_Halper 13d ago
A friend had people over for their 1 year old's birthday. Obviously more of an excuse to have friends over than it is a memory for the kid, but anyway, the grandmother got a children's book that was all AI images of the child. My friends were horrified and were like - we're gonna need to talk about this later.
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u/jmr131ftw 13d ago
I worked for print lab the last few years, they are printing them out, a lot of them.