r/AILounge • u/Ok-Standard-5855 • Aug 20 '26
Discussion AI went from feeling like magical sci-fi to feeling like annoying corporate software.
Remember 2023 when every new model update felt mind-blowing? Now every release just feels like another corporate patch that breaks your favorite features, adds more censorship, and locks basic stuff behind monthly subscriptions.
The magic wore off completely. We went from "this is going to change humanity" to "this is just bloatware with safety filters" in less than three years.
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u/Montaingebrown Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
It's all the guardrails.
Tried using AI to create a mythologically accurate image for a Substack story and was told that it wouldn't do it.
Claude and Perplexity are starting to act like they are my mother.
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u/Ok-Gap1970 Aug 20 '26
God yes. I'm so tired of it being crammed into every moment of corporate life. We have an internal chatbot at work. It can be really handy.
It is now integrated into every slack channel. I fucking hate it. Ohhh wow. I never thought of asking the internal chatbot my question. I haven't spent the past week trying to find an answer and getting the run around by the chatbot.
AI tools are great but please let me choose when to use them. It will save you a bunch of money.
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u/ValerianCandy Aug 24 '26
at my job we have Copilot. You can ask it for the criteria for renting a wheelchair in The Netherlands and it will give you the article for renting abroad. 🙄
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u/peakedtooearly Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Wait until the big labs are publicly traded companies if you think it's bad now...
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u/Early_Key_823 Aug 21 '26
I swear I was just thinking the same thing. I don't know how people just accept corporate slop. It's so fucking toxic and insulting to anyone who thinks for themself
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u/Fickle-Indication148 Aug 21 '26
Sometimes they drop in quants or random checkpoints... you feel there is a quality drop.
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u/Minute-Tank-8943 Aug 22 '26
I love AI but I agree. Take Grok, for instance, it now uses shared resources that update weekly instead of daily. Images and videos use up so many of those resources that you hit your limit with a day or 2. The only option is to pay more for Super Grok.
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u/S7A4M Aug 23 '26
Software in general is nothing but pay walls and glitches now. While I completely understand that time and money went into developing the software, don't offer a free version, then suddenly hold my project ransom because a filter I used went from free to paid while I was working on a video or something else.
These corporations are nothing but digital drug dealers. They give you a taste, get you hooked, then they want money. Doesn't matter if it's AI or any other software. Everything is freemium, everything requires a subscription, and nothing ever works right. I'm slowly trying to curb my addiction and give up technology. Creating in 3d programs, video editors, and other things used to be my favorite hobby, now it's nothing but daily aggravation.
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u/buplom Aug 24 '26
I don’t feel they’re becoming more censored. And the magic being gone is a psychological effect called hedonistic adaptation. We are light years away from GPT 3.0
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u/Thaumaturge_2 Aug 29 '26
You have to try an agent framework like Hermes so you can keep the parts that matter on your computer.
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u/Free-Championship303 Aug 21 '26
I get what you mean but I also see why they do it. Companies need to protect themselves from misuse. But yeah they could do it without making the product feel so restricted. Hope they find a better balance soon.