this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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Only improvement I would suggest is to make the label "GenAI" instead of just "AI"
Even more, I'd like to see some technically correct term, instead of the "AI" buzzword that the companies are forcing with their marketing
(it's not intelligent, it's just a token generator/predictor, similar to your phone's autocomplete feature, just more advanced and trained with everything in the world)
Unfortunately I'm not an expert, but maybe something along the lines of "Deep Learning", "Neural Networks", "Generative Networks", "Generative technology", etc
GenAI stands for Generative AI, which I think is descriptive enough
I think their complaint is more that it’s an umbrella term applied a bit loosely (like plain old “AI”). Most people, even non-technical people, seem to instinctively understand that there’s some sort of machine learning (or a novel type of less rigid processing) behind their chatbots and image generators, but most of them also seem to think it’s one artificial entity that does the whole thing. So non-technical ChatGPT users are likely to think all of the different features (like asking it in text to generate an image) are one “consciousness” instead of a text environment and an image environment that sort of interface with each other. And then each of these is made of different parts. It’s all one product (I think we both agree it shouldn’t be one)
I think the person you’re replying to doesn’t like the term for the same reasons I do, it’s quite blatantly just a marketing term, a buzzword to swat away like an angry wasp. But it is the most descriptive and succinct term that most people know. I’m quite conflicted on this. “Taking a few pulls at the slop machines” is a fun way to shit on someone else abdicating their responsibility by using machine generated content en lieu of their brains, mostly in a context where their brains are needed, but “slop machine” is too accusatory. In the same way, I find “GenAI” just a little too permissive or possibly enthusiastic about what is claimed these algorithms even do.
If it was totally down to me I would probably add multiple tags: “Machine generated text”, “Machine generated images”, “Machine generated audio”. It keeps the distinctions I think are necessary (text ≠ thought/analysis, image ≠ artistic expression, etc) and gives us a few more toggles and a bit more statistical information that would be nice.
This comment dragged on a bit longer than I’d set out to write.
I think the issue is that it's not that much generative nor intelligent
Names the problem without relying on their marketing
That seems vague though: when is something synthetic? If I use something like Context Free to create something, would that count? If you paint or take a picture, but apply some filters / effects? It, to me, feels too general to differentiate between tools that "fill in based on training data, and statistics thereof" and those that do not.
While AI/GenAI is used for marketing, it does draw a clear boundary as to what necessitates the annotation, yet is general enough to include any future changes, while being widely recognized.
But 😅 my point is mainly about using a correct technical term, instead of the forced marketing buzzword "AI"
You're right, it's not really an accurate term - but it's the shorthand abbreviation that has caught on.
(Thanks for taking the time to answer!)
But, on the other hand, using a better term in the UI is a step towards (at least some) people starting to use or at least be aware of other terms; "catching on" is a result of people and UIs using it! 😉
And something less technical, like "Generative technology" would also be clear 😁