Blog

Here it is. We're getting closer to the point where we can no longer easily tell the difference between AI-generated photos and videos and real footage. Let's take a look today at what AI is capable of – the opportunities, but also the risks.

Artificial Intelligence – Curse or Blessing?

Honestly, I personally love all the functions and possibilities that artificial intelligence offers us. With the help of AI, I was able to easily improve many of my tools on my website and find errors, which used to take me an insane amount of time as a hobby programmer.

Other areas I regularly use are translation functions, brainstorming, or having conversations with AI about complicated topics that it explains simply and understandably. These are just some of the many meaningful and responsible uses of AI. Meaningful and responsible – that's exactly what everyone should keep in mind.

I don't know if it's the same for you, but the algorithm keeps showing me pages with typical AI-generated images. The texts accompanying them read something like, "I baked this cake myself because no one loves me." Or, "I carved this sculpture myself, but no one appreciates my work." There are countless pages like this. The images are sometimes better, sometimes worse, but in my opinion, they are always clearly recognizable as AI-generated nonsense.

However, if you look at the number of likes and some comments under these images, it quickly becomes clear that many people can't tell the difference. That's alarming – because if even obvious AI content isn’t questioned, things will only get worse in the future.

When AI became accessible to the masses a few years ago in the form of language models or simple image generators, it was already clear that, with advancing technology, realistic images and videos could be generated.

Sure, with video programs and tools like Photoshop, it has been possible for a long time to manipulate images and videos. The difference now, however, is that anyone can do it without any prior knowledge. You simply enter a well-crafted prompt, and the AI does the rest.

Imagine how many opportunities this opens up for criminals when they can use a realistically sounding AI voice on the phone for fraudulent schemes. And besides that, cyberbullying will take on completely new dimensions. We need to be aware of the risks and make sure we don't fall victim to such schemes.

How Can You Protect Yourself from Such Dangers?

To avoid falling victim to fraud, it's important to carefully question and verify all texts, images, videos, and anything else – something we should always be doing anyway. Most importantly: engage with the topic of AI and don't demonize it.

You can’t stop progress, but you can adapt, grow, and gain an advantage in an increasingly automated world.

Because only those who engage with AI will find it easier to avoid falling for fake images, videos, or texts. Especially if you have children, it is your responsibility to protect them from these dangers and teach them how to use these tools responsibly. Not just to prevent bullying, but also to use AI as a meaningful learning aid, not a replacement for learning. Because sooner or later, your children will be using AI in school.

Just Get Started

If you don’t know where to start, why not try a chatbot? Open ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or any other tool, and just start typing as if you were talking to a real person. This person could be a friend, a mentor, or anything else.

A key note from me: Always remember, even if you're only writing to AI, be kind and friendly. Not because I think AI will one day take over the world and get revenge, but for your own good. You can yell at the AI, curse it out, and insult it endlessly – it will still always respond kindly. But this behavior teaches the person interacting with AI to become more of a toxic, narcissistic personality, which will eventually pass on to others. So always be nice to your AI, because that will make you a better person, too.

And if you’d rather edit photos than just chat, start with simple tasks. Upload an image and tell the AI, for example, to make it less blurry. Or ask it to correct the angle of everyone’s gaze in a group photo. Or to enhance the quality of an old, scanned photo and restore it in color.

You can also upload a video of a missed basketball shot and give the prompt to finally make that pesky ball land in the hoop. 😎

Or upload your photos and let them be transformed into different anime styles just like I did.

And if you're a parent like me, you can also benefit from AI image generation. I'd love to share plenty of snapshots of my daughter, but we all know that not everyone on the internet has good intentions. With comic-style image generation, you still have a great way to share your snapshots safely.

Who Owns AI-Generated Content?

Copyright for AI-generated content is still a complicated issue. An AI is not a person and therefore cannot be an author. And you, the one who has the image or video generated, are also not the author. So, there’s basically no author, and it’s open source.

You can post the images if you want. In most cases, that’s no problem. However, some social media platforms have at least specified that AI-generated content must be labeled.

The issue becomes problematic when such images are sold, and the buyer believes they have exclusive usage rights. That’s why it's best to always disclose when an image is entirely AI-generated.

Another issue is the ethical aspect. Anyone can create images in the style of Tim Burton, the Simpsons, or Ghibli style. And that's not illegal. However, many people find it troubling, like Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, who already said in 2016 that AI-generated art was an "insult to life itself." He was deeply repulsed by it and would never integrate such technologies into his work.

As such, it’s likely that some artists won't be happy about this, which I understand completely. On the other hand, it's also something that can’t be avoided anymore. The best approach is to embrace progress. The incredible artistic foundation that artists provide us remains a valuable base on which we can build.

How Resource-Hungry Is Artificial Intelligence?

On one hand, I always preach how important environmental protection and mindful use of our resources is. On the other hand, I find artificial intelligence and everything that comes with it absolutely fascinating, and I encourage people to embrace new technologies instead of rejecting them out of fear.

But the fact is: AI is unfortunately very resource-intensive.

Even just training the models consumes enormous amounts of electricity. And after that, every single query, every answer generated by an AI system requires computing power. These processes run in massive data centers that need to be powered 24/7. To prevent overheating, water is often used for cooling.

Still, I think it would be wrong to abandon AI altogether because of that. If we ignore or demonize it, we’re just leaving the field to others. And then it will soon become hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.

What truly becomes a problem is when we use AI only for entertainment, day in and day out, without creating any real value. If we keep chasing every new trend just for fun, we’re wasting resources – for nothing. And that’s exactly what we should keep to a minimum.

But if you use AI in a meaningful way (to learn, to teach, or to help improve the world) then you’re already ahead of 90% of users out there.
That means you’ve truly understood what it’s all about.

I genuinely hope that better, more sustainable solutions for the resource consumption of AI will continue to be developed. Maybe it’s the AI itself that will help us find them.

Closing Words

The AI era is here, and it’s up to you how you handle it. You can use it as a tool and copilot in your daily life to make your tasks easier and discover new opportunities – or you can demonize it and get left behind.

PS: I'll soon be making a few updates on my website and will include some anime-style images in articles and on a few pages. They’ll also feature more prominently in future blog posts. I think this option is absolutely awesome. When I think about it now, man, I could’ve saved myself so much work a few weeks ago when I had to request permission to use product images for the blog post about the bicycles. But this time, unlike during my last website design update, I won’t be going back and reworking the older blog posts. They’ll stay just as they are. Going forward, I’ll be relying more on generated images – of course based on real photos.