The genie is out of the bottle, but at some point, LLM/image-gen providers are going to have to raise prices for their services. While this won’t do anything to stop self-hosters, it might cut down on the number of casual users just a tiny bit. At least I hope it will!
The genie is out of the bottle
This is a lot more like Pandora’s Box - all the evils have been let loose.
Pretty crazy there’s no PKI in place to verify photos, videos, or text. We just need apps to verify signatures and tell users about the origin. Memes can remain unsigned, but veritable information should always be traceable to a source.
E.g. I’m more inclined to believe a video sourced by AP (sent to me by whomever) than one posted by the white house twitter without signature.
That would either be terrible for right-to-repair on cameras, or be easily bypassed. And I don’t even know what PKI would mean for text.
I don’t mean cameras. I’m thinking of easy to use signature apps that allow anyone to authenticate sources and you get to decide whether you trust the source or not. The forward from klandma wouldn’t be sourced or maybe by klan news, while you could disregard any “oh my god I’m in the hospital please send monies” picture that isn’t signed.
Just turn away from your phone screen and go outside. There is an entire non-AI world to explore and steward.
Maybe 2026 is finally the year of touching grass.
