Saw this article on my news feed. Might be preaching to the choir for most of us, but I thought it made good points re: the way AI slop (even seemingly innocuous ID apps!) diminishes our connection to our plants and fellow enthusiasts.
by amygdaloidal
7 Comments
I will admit I fell for an AI generated plant I found gorgeous (blue coleus) and went to multiple nurseries trying to find the thing (that does not exist).
At this point, what is AI not ruining. It’s almost like tech bros see a community forming and dream of ways to ruin it.
Article starts off well, but this part:
“Additionally, the use of AI-powered apps in gardening, where plants and the issues that might be killing them are identified through photos, is like taking a shortcut, which defeats the whole point of the hobby. “If instead of looking at your plants and making sure that they’re watered correctly or reaching out to an expert, you always just take a picture with your AI app and have it tell you what’s wrong, you are letting AI do the thinking for you and you’re not doing the full connection and the mindfulness of having plants,” Ahl adds.”
Is some absolute nonsense. There’s no “cheating” at having plants, that’s ridiculous. Struggling to figure out what is wrong with your plant is not a fun part of the hobby. Using technology to identify a problem (which you are then still responsible for responding to and fixing) is not a bad thing. I’m not a huge fan of AI but people going so far out of their way to be negative about it makes them look ignorant.
One of the biggest problems I’ve come across, not just in plant communities, but just all hobbies in general, is people asking AI for help, getting the wrong answer, then when asking on Reddit people saying it’s incorrect and then those people going “But ChatGPT says neem works” repeatedly, or using the stupid Google AI thing.
The fake plant seed Etsy shops were around long before AI could generate realistic images. AI may give incorrect answers to plant care, but so do people. This idea that using AI is bad or dangerous is silly. It won’t always be correct, but neither will any source you go to for help. At least AI gets data from many sources, so it is more likely to be correct than a random reddit commenter. It is a tool, use it responsibly.
People who can’t identify real or fake plants probably aren’t your tribe.
Someone asked for a plant ID in this group a few days ago and I explained which species it was, and another user replied to me with ChatGPT’s incorrect identification and basically told me I was wrong.
Between that and the apps like Planta which people put way too much faith in, the hobby is going to get really frustrating.
A lot of people get mad when you ask a question on Reddit that you ” can easily Google the answer to” but I prefer asking a human being in a forum type setting because you always get more than what you ask. Little extra tidbits and help.