Dear Coffee Community at LemmyWorld,
Thank you for the marvel you do...
I am sorry, but just to clarify, may I ask... why ever use the so fake, effortless, worthless, void-empty, horrible, and sorrowful meat-ground set of bytes... as the very main banner to represent the so ineffably magnificent art, history, and human effort... as Coffee... and more than 10,714 Members of the Community, too...
There are so many artists out there who have art attributed... and if you haven't chosen a work of your own, have you considered a competition between the current Members to choose the artwork for the banner? A moment of photography would already be a marvel...
Please... please do consider the noise, emptiness, and unintentional but possible disrespect... towards the miracle... divine elixir... the coffee...
Best and kind regards
Translation from the Arabic...
O Coffee! Thou dost dispel all cares, thou art the object of desire to the scholar.
This is the beverage of the friends of God; it gives health to those in its service who strive after wisdom.Prepared from the simple shell of the berry, it has the odor of musk and the color of ink.
The intelligent man who empties these cups of foaming coffee, he alone knows truth.May God deprive of this drink the foolish man who condemns it with incurable obstinacy.
Coffee is our gold. Wherever it is served, one enjoys the society of the noblest and most generous men.O drink! As harmless as pure milk, which differs from it only in its blackness...
Delicious beverage, its color is the seal of its purity.
Source: by Abd-al-Kâdir ibn Mohammad al Ansâri al Jazari al Hanbali [1587 AD; webarchive]
// cc @martijn@lemmy.world ; @dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org ; @Xariphon@kbin.social
As I see it, they have multiple options that don't require any effort:
There's no valid reason to use an unethical AI to create some poorly created image.
And there's no reason for you to behave with such poor manners either. It's better to either keep quiet if you don't have anything positive or constrictive to come with, or preferably, be a positive person that lead with good examples.
1: depending how they set things up, it could be the installer asked for something, in a very specific banner size.
2: they probably didn't think most people would care enough about a banner image. Which yeah, it's kinda not the most priority thing. Especially if they manage more than this community. No one in the community asked to run a contest, or offered art either, and it's not like you can just ask a stranger since not everyone can make one. It's c/coffee not c/art. This likely slipped past their mind to put further effort into it.
3: Sizing would be an issue. Although unsplash has many images, it doesn't have many banner sized images. Then narrowing it down to coffee related ones and it's going to be even less.
Actually, just checked, and their search filters do not have something for banner sized images, but what's funnier is it you're going the absolutist route on AI, you shouldn't use unsplash either, since the first thing they advertise personally themselves is AI (I have uBlock on so this is the site choosing this ad itself)
Lastly, AI ethics are subjective. If you're running an open source model on your own hardware for non-profit reasons, I don't see that as unethical. You're not using a ton of electricity in that case, you're not making any money on what's produced, and you're not supporting a corporation.
It's like the difference between using the open source AI model on Home Assistant to control your lights vs Amazon's Alexa.