[fragmede]

Early cars were terrible too, but here we are. The promise is that future versions of the technology will be able to draw anatomically correct people and images. A computer program that can do in mere minutes what takes a person hours. If you've never wanted a picture of something you can describe but aren't able to draw in your life, then there is no use case for you. For anyone else that's interacted with the world of art and graphic designers or used stock photos; this goes an order of magnitude faster, and is basically free, compared to hiring a skilled professional for hours. It's a game changer for an industry that it sounds like you've just never interacted with.

[fock]

> Early cars were terrible too, but here we are.

Were they? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen - as fast as a carriage, about the same stink. Carriages clearly had a usecase.

Generated images now: take enormous energy to generate. Main current usecase is to gobble up more energy (mass media/entertainment).

[fragmede]

They were. They were loud and stinky and were unsuitable for dirt roads, spooking horses, causing the UK to basically ban them. Some were powered by steam or coal but those that were powered by gas had a different problem - there were no gas stations. You had to hand crank them to start. Moving goods and people around was already a solved problem with horses and trains and boats.

Cars then: take enormous energy to move very little, and slowly. Main use case then was as a rich person's toy (entertainment). They'll never replace work horses with them.

It's easy, in hindsight, to see cars as inevitable. But you had to see past the shortcomings of the earliest cars to "get it", much like you have to see past the 3 armed monstrosities that current image generation techniques produce and see the promise of the technology. There were undoubtedly those who saw cars as hype, much like image generation is seen today; I'm sure buggy whip manufacturers saw cars as hype and refused to get on what looked like a hype train to them.

[toqy]

And images have a clear use case. Stable Diffusion is effectively moving the horse under the hood.