Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
AI

Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy (nbcnews.com) 78

Posted by EditorDavid from the machine-earning dept.
Graphic designer Lisa Carstens "spends a good portion of her day working with startups and individual clients looking to fix their botched attempts at AI-generated logos," reports NBC News: Such gigs are part of a new category of work spawned by the generative AI boom that threatened to displace creative jobs across the board: Anyone can now write blog posts, produce a graphic or code an app with a few text prompts, but AI-generated content rarely makes for a satisfactory final product on its own... Fixing AI's mistakes is not their ideal line of work, many freelancers say, as it tends to pay less than traditional gigs in their area of expertise. But some say it's what helps pay the bills....

As companies struggle to figure out their approach to AI, recent data provided to NBC News from freelance job platforms Upwork, Freelancer and Fiverr also suggest that demand for various types of creative work surged this year, and that clients are increasingly looking for humans who can work alongside AI technologies without relying on or rejecting them entirely. Data from Upwork found that although AI is already automating lower-skilled and repetitive tasks, the platform is seeing growing demand for more complex work such as content strategy or creative art direction. And over the past six months, Fiverr said it has seen a 250% boost in demand for niche tasks across web design and book illustration, from "watercolor children story book illustration" to "Shopify website design." Similarly, Freelancer saw a surge in demand this year for humans in writing, branding, design and video production, including requests for emotionally engaging content like "heartfelt speeches...."

The low pay from clients who have already cheaped out on AI tools has affected gig workers across industries, including more technical ones like coding. For India-based web and app developer Harsh Kumar, many of his clients say they had already invested much of their budget in "vibe coding" tools that couldn't deliver the results they wanted. But others, he said, are realizing that shelling out for a human developer is worth the headaches saved from trying to get an AI assistant to fix its own "crappy code." Kumar said his clients often bring him vibe-coded websites or apps that resulted in unstable or wholly unusable systems.
"Even outside of any obvious mistakes made by AI tools, some artists say their clients simply want a human touch to distinguish themselves from the growing pool of AI-generated content online..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy More

Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy

Comments Filter:

  • And people wonder why (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @05:25PM (#65628910)
    Liberal arts and graphics arts programs at universities are being abandoned en masse. Fixing AI slop to pay the bills must be sooooooo rewarding for someone who had dreams of producing fine literature.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )

      There's only so large of a market for fine literature or art. Commercial work is what you produce to pay the bills. At least there are options outside of a job at Starbucks.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        interesting comment, almost like you have never been to a concert, or play, or movie.

        • Quite the contrary. Commercial art comprises the vast majority of artwork produced in any given year, especially today with all the corporate logos and advertising in production. Concerts and plays comprise a minority of the man hours (and now AI tokens) spent producing what can be lumped into the category of "art". And it is interesting that you mention concerts when so many concerts are just corpo-friendly schlock.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jhoegl ( 638955 )
            That is very wrong.

            • Re:And people wonder why (Score:5, Interesting)

              by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @06:11PM (#65628996)
              It is actually spot on correct. My wife and my sister are both artists, both spend most of their time doing other things as fine art or musician is just not viable to live off for the vast majority of people. Most artists are doing things just to survive not to produce art.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jhoegl ( 638955 )
                So your source of knowledge is two people you know. Consider expanding your scope.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Anonymous Coward
                  I worked at a company about a decade ago, when there were still an abundance of theaters in my city, where ~50% of the people working there were actors. I think they got each other jobs there, it was a finance company. They were *PAID*, working, union joined theater actors, four of them even had an improv group and they were quite good. They were all 'paid' to act or setup lights or sing in chorals but could never get enough work to live off their art. Likewise I've known dozens of graphic artists, painters

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by jhoegl ( 638955 )
                    Just because I listed classic forms of art doesnt mean that is all forms of art, nor the successful ones.

                    Demographic of creators out there is beyond what it was 10 years ago. Platforms have given people an abundance of ability.

                    I have a friend who started on YT, maybe 5 years of tough work and Patreon, but now are about to break free from the bonds.

                    That is one example of many, YT, Twitch, etc are entertainment platforms that many people use and a percentage are successful.
                    Not everyone is successful,

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by Anonymous Coward
                      LOL YT and Twitch content creators are Artists now ROFL.
                • No my knowledge is based on knowing hundreds of people in similar situations as well as a select few that are highly successful. Consider expanding your education.

    • It's interesting because creating fine literature doesn't pay up front.

      You'll spend years fine tuning your work, writing it, rewriting it while making no money from it. Why not work on fixing other peoples mess in the meantime and rake in the dough.

    • It is cross field here and not just due to AI

      - Decades long employment drop, declining pay and lack of opportunities in news reporting, journalism and magazine writers
      - Decline in advertising work, employment numbers and declining pay due to the internet changing commercial advertising

      - Boomers declining as a percentage of the population as they were the last generation to grow up/keep up with a delivered daily newspaper, regular broadcast TV viewership, TV news viewership, supporting the symphony/opera/fin

    • I'm always amazed that people feel entitled to earn a living by doing something they enjoy, as opposed to something that someone else is willing to pay for.

      I mean, I'd love to make a living by having sex with beautiful women. Unfortunately, I've yet to find anyone willing to pay me for doing so, not to mention finding a distinct lack of interest from beautiful women.

      Why anyone feels they would be entitled to make a living at the "creative arts" simply because they'd like to do so is beyond me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      There is only so much demand for fine literature.

      And while fixing AI slop may not sound like the most glamorous job, there is no reason you shouldn't take pride in it. They asked you to do it because they can't and their AI can't either. This should at least give you some confidence in your abilities. Finding the little touches that turn AI slop into something you are not ashamed to put in your portfolio is definitely something you should be proud of.

      Personally, as a software developer with more than 20 yea

  • not cheap, smart use (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 )
    The companies didn't "cheap out" on AI, they made a smart business decision to get the basics of the design done by using AI rather than paying pointlessly excessive amounts for a designer to do it, then get the arrtist or designer to polish what you want. This is intelligent use of the technology.

    • It might be more-intelligent to get the artist/designer involved in the early stages of AI production to streamline the process. That would, of course, require the designer to be more-realistic about the market value of their work. The days of companies paying design firms millions of dollars on new logos are (or at least should be) over.

      • true, what would be really intelligent would be if the designers and artists bit down on their pride and realised they could be the ones utilising the tools to produce very rapid prototypes to the customers at less cost.

      • It might be more-intelligent to get the artist/designer involved in the early stages of AI production to streamline the process.

        Depends if you want creative direction or if you want to pay a fortune for someone to waste time coming up with ideas. I've worked with designers plenty of times. 99% of the time the first thing they ask is "what do you want it to look like".

        If on the other hand you're paying a marketing firm to come up with a new logo you're off base. The "value" to the company is in the ideas that the marketing firm comes up with. The actual logo generation costs nothing, you part with millions of dollars that get paid to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        That's a market thing. As soon as this practice becomes standard, there will be a new category of artists (and traditional ones trying out if they can work in that category) of people saying "I can do the initial ai art AND the fixing" eliminating the split between ai first and fixing second.
        Also someone good at ai will create works that need less fixing than someone who thinks ChatGPT is the best they can get.

      • Asking AI to make a logo would get the same (or similar) logo that it normally generates. The point of a company logo is normally to look unique. Why would you want the same as everyone else?

    • Re:not cheap, smart use (Score:5, Interesting)

      by evanh ( 627108 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @06:02PM (#65628988)

      The fact that they're coming back to artists indicates they were winging it. Which is totally another way of saying they tried to cheap out. When the real costs of AI hit home those same customers will likely skip the AI step altogether.

      Who might start to use future expensive "AI" art tools is the artists themselves.

      • Completely false. 100% of artists you go out to (unless you pay millions to a consulting firm) will ask you for a basis of what you want. Using AI to generate this is no different from using a pen and paper or scribbling your idea on a whiteboard.

        Stop trying to make this something it isn't.

    • So, you're saying it is the same successful approach as hiring a code monkey to vibe-code your first website and then when you hit a 100 users and it goes down, paying to a real developer to "fix" it?

      I've seen this approach, it is very common, but that's the only thing it has going for it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dasunt ( 249686 )

        So, you're saying it is the same successful approach as hiring a code monkey to vibe-code your first website and then when you hit a 100 users and it goes down, paying to a real developer to "fix" it?

        I've seen this approach, it is very common, but that's the only thing it has going for it.

        In some organizations, quickly half-assing a project pushed by management with no real world benefit is not a bad idea.

        Perhaps that's why management loves AI - it gives their bad ideas good metrics. And it even BSes

    • The companies didn't "cheap out" on AI, they made a smart business decision to get the basics of the design done by using AI rather than paying pointlessly excessive amounts for a designer to do it, then get the arrtist or designer to polish what you want. This is intelligent use of the technology.

      No honey, I didn't cheap out, my plan the whole time was to buy some cool tools and remodel the basics of our bathroom myself then hire contractors to "polish" it.

      Randy Marsh is that you? Look, I'd reserve overall judgement until I see results, but nobody is buying that, and it's not a great plan. Leave the tools to professionals, it's not that they're hard to use, it's that the project is harder than you think.

  • The beauty of AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @05:25PM (#65628916)
    As.more people try to us AI for business, the more the demand for people to fix the junk it creates. People will always look for cheap way to do something and then pay to have the botched job fixed.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 )
      It isn't botched jobs, what is being produced is prototypes, they don't need to be perfect. They get faster results that they can iterate on many times over without the very high costs. The artists then produce the final product. This is extremely intelligent use of AI and the artist. Sure the artist may not be happy, but the business gets better turn around at a lower cost.

      • It isn't botched jobs, it is botched prototypes, we get it.

        • Placeholder art has been a thing for a very long time. Sometimes directors fall in love with their placeholder art, and insist on something that's almost exactly it - and that is why so much of the original Star Wars music sounds a bit like Holst's Planets.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        Yeah and there are (at least) two paths from the prototype. Get someone who really knows how to use the AI an create a high quality work, or get someone who really knows traditional art and fixes the prototype output. Both are valid and both may lead to very similar results. Just don't stick with the prototype.

      • That's how the First Internet Bubble blew up. Too many startups thinking that a prototype coded in Excel and HTML can be scaled up by "code monkeys" for cheap.

        The symptom is the same this time around. Non-technical PHBs who feel empowered by a tool that all their non-technical friends rave about, thinking it will make the business idea scale up for cheap.

    • The AI can do a bunch of prototyping work and then you call in the human to polish it.

      But that is still a lot of work that a human being was previously doing. Now you can basically have a computer show you 20 or 30 different logos mocked up half-assedly and then pick the one you like. Before the AI you would have had to pay to have those logos mocked up.

      The problem isn't that AI is going to replace all the jobs. Hell if it would replace all the jobs that would be just fine because we would have a po

    • What makes you think this is the result of a botched job, rather than using AI for its intended purpose: workshopping ideas before you go out and get it drafted correctly. TFS is written by someone who has never commissioned business artwork. I too have used AI for this. It's a fuckton better than what I used to do, which is scribble on a notepad and send the artist a picture of it.

      • What makes you think this is the result of a botched job, rather than using AI for its intended purpose: workshopping ideas before you go out and get it drafted correctly. TFS is written by someone who has never commissioned business artwork. I too have used AI for this. It's a fuckton better than what I used to do, which is scribble on a notepad and send the artist a picture of it.

        Looking at the text fix example in TFA, I'd say AI botched it and they'd wound up having to pay to get it right. Can AI do drafts and mockups? Sure, but I'm willing to bet for every "lets get AI to do a rough draft" there are significantly more that thing "AI can do it, why hire someone" and then find out AI can't do it and need it fixed; and of course want it done at a discount because they already have done "most of the work." The reality, in my experience, is trying to fix someone else's mess, I avoid d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      As.more people try to us AI for business, the more the demand for people to fix the junk it creates. People will always look for cheap way to do something and then pay to have the botched job fixed.

      My mechanic has a sign up in his garage, a picture of a car in pieces with the slogan "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur". Last time I had my car booked in there he asked if I could leave it for a few days and he'd comp the courtesy car and labour. Another customer had a rush job because another mechanic had completely ballsed up his SL500 and was willing to pay well over the odds to get it fixed (and my mechanic had no idea how long it would take), so well o

      • My mechanic has a sign up in his garage, a picture of a car in pieces with the slogan "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur". .

        As the son of a mechanic, I can vouch for the sign's validity.

    • Don't worry, the graphic artist's output will be fed back into AI. Eventually, we will stamp them out.

    • ... but the point was to reduce headcount, now you're telling me we need MORE people?

    • Nah that seems more the case of the company trying to rebrand itself in a desperate attempt to bolster revenue. Cracker Barrel has been in a painful decline for awhile, so they thought it might be a good idea to abandon their roots and take a stab at Starbucks (or whatever it was they thought they were doing). That blew up in their collective faces.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        I'm not sure if the plan was to ever change the logo.
        Given how people in general HATE the rebranding trend, they might have scripted the whole thing from the start, including the ending where the logo stays the same.

  • The message I got from the article is that, according to those who write checks for services, a lot of people are not worth as much money as they seem to think they are.

    From what I understand, this is quite common.

  • How will she fix the Will Smith video? More AI? Here are some.prompt:

    "Re-inflate those dimpled-in faces"
    "Reduce length of those hands"
    "Very few humans have six fingers. No one has seven"
    "Set fawn level of placard messages to medium"

  • Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy

    AI implemented to help/replace humans ... humans hired to help that AI ...

    Reminds me of the Better Off Ted [wikipedia.org] episode Racial Sensitivity [fandom.com] (s1e4) where the company gets new motion sensors to control, basically, everything (lights, doors, elevators, water fountains, ...) but they work by detecting the light reflecting off people's skin -- and they don't detect black people. Solution? Rather than simply reverting to the previous sensors (and admit they made a mistake), management tries a few other things. Fir

  • I'm not an AI and you should see my post history. Absolute mess!

  • This is obvious use (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday August 31, 2025 @07:16PM (#65629092)

    AI is a tool, it belongs in a tool box along with other tools. Using it as a base is literally what people do, e.g.

    I've used generative AI to workshop ideas for a logo and then manually fixed it up afterwards.
    My wife used generative AI to generate math exams and then manually changed the numbers to that it makes sense.
    At work I've used generative AI to prepare my mid-year review and then manually fixed it up afterwards.

    This is literally what AI is for - a tool in our toolbox.

    • I had to make a cut on a piece of wood today. For reasons that are unimportant, I used 3 different saws.

      Saw 1: circular saw. This was probably 85% of the cut.

      Saw 2: jig saw. This was probably 13% of the cut.

      Saw 3: jab saw. This was probably 2% of the cut, and the only non-powdered saw.

      I had to change saws because even though the cut was a straight line, the design of the powered saws creates obstructions that prevented the saw from being able to make the entire cut.

      The circular saw was fastest and easiest t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Not even close to the sales pitch to the investors though. It was supposed to already be AGI by now, and superintelligent is up next.

  • I've been fixing botched junior's code based on Stack Overflow for years...

    The only difference with AI is that now I have much more code to fix and the code looks cleaner...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Eventually, AI companies will hire artists of all genres to produce original content for learning.

  • And how much are they paying for outsourced consultants, on *top* of what they pay for the "AI", to fix the crap, rather than hiring humans to do the work in the first place?

  • And the reverse centaur apocalypse proceeds apace. ref: Cory Doctorow

Slashdot Top Deals

Between infinite and short there is a big difference. -- G.H. Gonnet

Close