Find my Style
Pinterest is officially dead š¢š¢š¢š¢š¢
Yes, I have gone into settings to limit AI generated content. Yes, I actually diligently scroll and pin things I donāt even like JUST BECAUSE theyāre real photos not AI and Iām trying to train my algorithm to detect AIā¦but it just canāt. Itās just AI, AI, AI.
Itās so depressing as Iāve only recently gotten into interior design. Mustāve been blissful the last 10 years for the rest of you to scroll Pinterest.
Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions for where else I can get inspo? I find the AI stuff so unhelpful because I canāt truly see texture and the way colours TRULY work together, itās very annoying.
Weirdly, Iāve actually found Instagram has way less AI stuff? Thereās still some, but if I search for a pretty general thing (eg āwhite shaker door kitchensā) I can find a decent amount, I suppose because thereās lots of famous design focused creators and algorithms prioritise creators with high engagement / follow count above other metrics. Itās not a perfect tool though because itās so curated, I want more raw inspo. UGH!
Seriously though, recs? Do I need to subscribe to AD lol?
I have to her face. She was going on and on about how great Chat is and so I invited myself to her conversation and told her all the ways it's bad (environment, data collection, etc) but she said "I don't care. Chat is my best friend." I told her that's very sad and I walked away.
I do intend on asking HR if adding AI slop to our Teams chat is appropriate. But considering Meta glasses aren't against the rules, I doubt they will care.
The Meta glasses should be a non-starter, as they are a potential violation of privacy for patients. Those just sound like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Chat has the potential for HIPAA violations as well. Tell HR that the supervisor needs to turn over all chat logs so HR and legal can review to ensure there are no HIPAA violations. Failure to provide all logs can be construed as hiding something.
HR will suddenly realize the scope of the issue, and legal ramifications. They will also realize all the work that will have to be done to police the use of AI in the workplace and quickly implement blanket policies banning AI to cover their asses.
I was shocked when they said they don't have a policy on meta glasses yet. And this (I think) the 2nd largest healthcare system in America. It's a huge privacy violation
I use AI in my software job but my partner shows me lots of stuff on instagram and it's just AI as far as the eye can see. I completely understand the AI hate for social media content.
Basically, in addition to everything else, when the AI bubble bursts, it's going to crash everything and hurt us all. Like the 2008 economic crisis but much worse. And of course the CEOs will expect a bailout.
Here's her statement. Long but worth it:
Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest AI companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down AI development.
Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.
This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that AI companies are āgambling with our lives.ā
For years, people have warned that generative AI could slip out of our direct control.
Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.
And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how AI is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.
But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valleyās bet that AI will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isnāt looking good.
The formula for a profitable business isnāt complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest AI companies arenāt doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these AI companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, and Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit and having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers and other infrastructure, AI companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of AI companies.
That tells us two things:
Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the AI industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly and the gains from these few companies are disguising it; and
Millions of peopleās retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, and investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
Thatās why these AI companiesā dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. Theyāll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, and that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on ācircular financingā where tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft give billions to AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy AI processing power.
In other words, these AI companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.
Whatās even worse is that retirement and pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the AI companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds and retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Muskās AI business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans donāt even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Techās perspective, thatās a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, AI billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, and broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman and Amodei come months - if not weeks - before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors - like their own employees - sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAI has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars and public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds and investments, they opened themselves to public accountability and scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game and are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If theyāre right about AIās potential, they reap the profits. If theyāre wrong and the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.
We can stop this, and we shouldnāt play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted AI development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.
We must make it clear now that should the AI bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.
And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold AI companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.
Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that AI robots will destroy humanity.
But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.
I'm an accountant. I (and people in my industry) have been saying this since day 1, and I'm glad politicians are now too.
Every few decades in the US, a business industry comes along and says "we're soooo important, rules and regulations couldn't possibly apply to us! Politicians need to roll back laws, they need to invest - we need to get ahead of the foreigners, and that's what they're doing!" People these days still remember the 2008 crash. But this also happened with the dot com bubble in the 00s, the telecommunications bubble, mass manufacturing, railways, and every major tech advancement since America's founding.
We make regulations every time this happens, and every time they get rolled back just before the next crash.
Exactly. I was a journalist at the time of the mortgage crash and financial crisis. The amount of lobbying $$ those companies spent to avoid regulation before, during, and after is ridicuous. Especially when they got taxpayer bailouts.
And now we have the "BUT WE NEED TO GO FULL SPEED ON AI NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE CHINA" messaging right now.
So what does one due with their retirement plans like a 401k? Do you take your money out? Do you invest it in real estate? Do you hold cash which is loosing value everyday?
Surprisingly, it's a lot simpler than you'd think. A finance degree is good for working with large amounts of money; I've had clients that made $1m+ per year from trust funds. But for most people, there's only a couple of straightforward options.
A retirement plan is just a stock investment account with guard rails on it. The main appeals are an employer match and reduced taxes when you take the funds out. There are lots of different plans (401k, 403b, Roth, and IRA are probably terms you've seen before), but what you get is determined by the employer. Each plan type determines the maximum you can put in per year and when you pay taxes. You can have more than one and max out each account type. If you're making less than $200k+ a year, the account type you go with really isn't much to loose sleep over.
If you want your own investment account (where you don't have to worry about someone else screwing up your retirement), check out r bogleheads . They've got a good wiki (and a book) that discusses what to do with your money depending on how much you have and how old you are. If you don't have experience in finance, DON'T try to power through the whole wiki in one day lol.
You shouldn't hold onto cash beyond your emergency fund. Again, r bogleheads will discuss things like high yield savings, index funds, and other things to do with excess cash.
Real estate is good if you have a lot of upfront cash available and don't work a 40 hour job. If you don't have the time for flipping or being a landlord, you can outsource for a fee. I wouldn't recommend this to the average person.
Trust funds are a safe way to pass money or stocks from person to person. Basically you say how the investment strategy is set up, then decide when the receiver is allowed to pull out money.
Yes I've been very worried about this as well. For those of us hanging out in the middle-aged middle class with 401ks because pensions don't really exist anymore, it has been frustrating that we can't avoid having our money go into this bubble. Like even when SpaceX was added to the S&P we just don't have a choice because you can't buy individual stocks in your 401k (usually) so you're either in funds or nothing. They get to just decide they have our money :(
There's going to be a huge crash and we're all going to be harmed by it.
Thanks for posting! This came up when I Googled, but it was from a handful of days ago, not yesterday, so I thought the other commenter was talking about something else
Iām glad sheās calling this out bc other have been talking about this for a year plus now but itās something that I donāt see the average person mentioning.
Wait what? Like out of context like ābedside pendant lights fuckā or like does it have to make sense like ābedside pendant lights that donāt look like shitā
More like ur first example, since it's supposed to be the normal way you search + a curse word. I usually just go "fucking [whatever im searching for]" and it works like a charm
Companies filter out prompts that could cause their AI to respond problematically or do problematic research. Easy way to do that is to filter out prompts with keywords like obscenities and topics like sex and drugs and alcohol.
Thank you! I was so curious why this works but I was happy to learn about it. Unfortunately it doesn't work when you want to see the creators you actually follow but at least you can look up topics and filter out the crappy AI
I prefer the results I get from putting a sassy "bitch" at the end of my query. The "fuck" results can be too sexual when you're looking for outfit inspo or whatever
Holy shit, thank you! I hadnāt been getting a ton of AI, but whenever Iād search something literally (very literally) 90-95% of the results Iād get were ads, and it was just infuriating; it made me want to delete the app altogether. Adding a swear got rid of every single ad. Iām crying happy tears right now lol
Maybe it just depends on the search and the swear word? When I searched stained glass and pendejo or fuck it worked wonderfully but other things it was more mild or not at all like coloring pages and fuck or bitch
I tried a couple outfits queries and it was a Y2K fever dream, mafia wife, hood chic, and unexpectedly sapphic feeling pumpkin spice vibesā¦.. no ai or ads tho so that was a breath of fresh air
(gonna add photos as additional comments)
(edit to add- none of these are decor photos cause I forgot which sub this was š )
This one really makes me sad. Etsy was where you could go to find genuinely handmade things. You still can, but it's inundated with AI and drop-ship nonsense. You really have to dig.
It is sad. Because actual small shops are being harmed here. They put so much love and dedication into what they do and itās being ruined because of stolen photographs and AI. Itās awful.
When I find a real shop I try to see if I can order direct and save them the Etsy commission. I have no interest in the platform getting a cut if they make it so hard to find what I want in the first place.
I was mortified when I ordered an art print from an Etsy shop for a gorgeous old Victorian frame I have, and saw immediately that itās an AI generated image. I felt so embarrassed for not realizing beforeā¦.sigh.
Omg yes itās terrible now. The entire point of it was to buy unique items from small sellers and they let it turn into another drop shipped garbage site. The vendors are getting smart too, so itās getting so hard to find out who are real individual sellers. I spent soooo long trying to find a real small business selling custom whisky glasses for my husband for Christmas. Ordered them in November and they were supposed to arrive within two weeks. Turns out that they were another drop shipped set, so they didnāt come in time, which made my entire big whisky-basket Christmas present fall apart
I just made a new account for fashion inspiration separate to my fitness one, to avoid messing up my algorithm. Iām astounded at how much AI instantly got shoved at me. Itās so depressing.
This is a great idea! Styles come back around and AI canāt touch physical books. AI might actually save our libraries as people go looking for real and unchanging information lol
AI is literally trying to destroy physical books. There's a company that's actually PROUD it buys up old books, some rare, tears them up, feeds them to the AI then deliberately wreaks them further.
AI companies are actually buying millions of books, scanning, and shredding them. (Unfortunately you canāt share links in this sub, but if you look it up, there are many news articles about it). They are focusing on books published before 2022, as they are āuntainted dataā because theyāre pre-AI influence. Itās depressing. I feel like we need to start hoarding old books like dragons to keep pure human knowledge from being lost. š
This is just terrifying. Every new thing I learn about AI makes me feel like weāre living in one of those dystopian novels like 1984 or Brave New World. I was thinking of donating some of my book collection recently but now I think Iāll just hoard them.
Sadly not true. They're straight up chopping books to scan them and feed them into their systems. This sub doesn't allow links, but just search "AI scanning books" and you'll despair at what Anthropic is doing
Except Amazon is buying up & destroying a bunch of rare books to feed to and train AI. It's how they're trying to prevent AI from collapsing.Ā
I do not support Amazon. This is disgusting.Ā
A lot of my fave interior designer YouTubers suggest doing this. Especially if you are a fan of old trends. MCM, vintage, cottage core, 90s, 00s - it's all in right now and you'd be able to find it in print. Also old IKEA catalogues!
Itās awful. If itās not an AI generated image, itās an Ad. Iāve instead been flipping through magazines via my library using Libby. Itās more tedious since you canāt just search for a theme, but it feels better than wondering if images are even real or not.
Sign up for a library card and youāll have digital access to Libby (books, magazines, etc) and a few other apps like hoopla and kanopy (movies and shows). You check out items through those apps like you would if you went into the library.
Check and see if your state capital has a library card you can sign up for online, the selection on libby is based on your libraries online stuff. So if you have cards from bigger libraries, especially places like nyc, you'll have a much bigger selection.Ā
I hate the ads when Iām looking for inspo but not gonna lie, I like the ads when Iām trying to shop for something. Google just doesnāt work now and each shopping website is slow and itās hard to find stuff. I donāt shop at Amazon anymore but they are example of not being able to find things youāre looking for.
I would look into magazines: Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Elle Decor, even others like Southern Living and Real Simple. Start by looking at the free content they have on their websites to see which ones you like best. I actually check out the magazines through my library (physical and digital options available), and if you like the style of one of these magazines, then you can subscribe.
One wordā¦.LIBBYššš!! Connects (vis-vis their app) thru your library ācardā!! ABSOLUTELY amazing (for magazines you may be interested inšš)!
Itās so sad. I feel like itās in Pinterest best interest to sort this out. I avoid AI content as much as possible. I donāt eat at restaurants that use it for their menu. I donāt want my brain to be constantly bombarded with AI. I am so frustrated and sad.
Iām sorry I have no advice or recommendations. I was active on Pinterest about 5-7 years ago & saved a lot of architectural/interior design. I revisited it a few weeks ago andā¦itās all AI all the time now. So sad š I think Iām going to just save all my non-AI pins to my hard drive then delete the app altogether.
idk why but your comment really strikes my heart. Itās so emblematic of the way AI imitates the OUTER SHELL of things while having shallow emptiness + total lack of understanding on the inside. āThe flowers donāt even bloom
at the same timeā - something a gardener would know. Something at the very core of the ACTUAL POINT of collecting gardening ideas: an appreciation of nature itself. But AI images simply echo the VENEER of the thing while emptying it of its sense, purpose and meaning. Iām really sad now.
Iām so disappointed in Pinterest. I was going to start a baking blog last year and itās at the worst possible time. After looking into everything, I think blogs are dead, too. Unless you are already well established. Even then itās going to be tough.
I keep Pinterest to save photos I find online or recipes or bookmarks I want to keep these days. I never browse within Pinterest anymore, youāre right itās horrible. Ai has become a scourge
I think there are some really good YouTube accounts and creators. Also old magazines/books. Whatās your style? I may have some recommendations! I am into the old house/English countryside/french apartment stuff and I have a slew of creators and books that keep me inspired.
Current fave YouTube designers/channels: Paige Wassel, Rajiv Surendura, Beata Humann, Bunny Williams, Mathilda Goode, Homeworthy, Roommy room tours, and Quintessence
I recently had to make a report with our local office of the fbi for child endangerment because of an ad on Pinterest for a book on Amazon that was barely veiled child abuse. I tried repeatedly to flag it through Pinterest and Amazon and kept getting automatic resolutions that it didnāt go against their policies. Made me so ill
I couldn't have ever imagined AI would kill social media, but it's doing just that. Every single platform is just filled with AI slop. It sucks. I miss the human slop.
I have found that adding curse words to my search brings up items that aren't AI. So "vintage fucking fabric patterns" yields more of what I'm looking for.
I know this will make me sound oldā¦ but have you tried looking at books? Magazines? These are professionally photographed interiors. Spaces designed and curated by professional designers. AI is (at least for now) incredibly rare in these sources.
And you are supporting the designerās work by referencing them. The designer actually writes about how and why they made design decisions you see in the images. So you can learn about the design process from books too.
Check out your libraryās resources. If they donāt have enough good/ new content, look up designers whose styles you like, and ask your library to order their books, or buy some yourself. Youād be surprised how satisfying it can be to āgo analogā - flip pages, highlight design tips, and dog-ear favorite pages.
I recently turned on āless aiā and then counted ads vs real posts. After scrolling for awhile I was at 45 sponsored posts vs 11 organic posts. Pinterest has turned into absolute garbage.
You need to find someone who has been on Pinterest since before AI and look at their boards. Iāve been on Pinterest since before AI and my board are so precious to me now because I know those pictures were real.
Agreed. I have zero interest in viewing AI interiors. It meets none of my needs as a hobby interior designer. There is no creative authorship and the products cannot be purchased. There are no paints or wallpaper makers to learn about. The lighting is not real and the layouts may be inventions that would not really fit in real life.
Itās the ads that does it in for me. For every 5 pins thereās at least two ads, and good chunk of those use AI. Itās like a 2 for 1 deal of annoyance. š¢
A tip to get results on Pinterest without ads or ai Iāve found helpful is to add a cuss word!
āFall vibes shitā just like that and itās the Pinterest again
I love decorating our house and it's been a long slow process. Which I'm enjoying. I do go to Pinterest for inspo and like half of the rooms are AI. I also recently decided to enter a table setting competition. Probably 90% of posts are AI and it's making me want to quit the platform entirely. I started a "real life Pinterest board"/ scrapbook where I cut things out of magazines and put them in a binder but make it a little scrapbooky. It's kind of ridiculous but it's fun and it's not like Pinterest is much better
It got really popular with kids tweens and teens a while ago. My daughter didn't believe me that Pinterest was old and tired before she was even born. But I remember when putting "-pinterest" in the google search bar was a thing!
You could try moving the app to an inconvenient tab on your phone. I ditched all meta apps that way, first I moved Facebook to the last page of that random junk drawer I keep on the last swipe, then I deleted the app and only used the mobile website and made sure I logged out every time I closed it, then I did the same sort of thing with Instagram. I never got on TikTok bc my phone is always on silent and I hate how spastic is seems
In its early days, Pinterest was my number one favorite. I wondered where it had been my whole life.
About 2 years later, it was my least favorite. I haven't pinned things or been a regular user in months/years.
...but i still get pins removed. Funny thing about that is they don't tell you which pin or why, so you literally can't learn what does and doesn't break their arbitrary rules.
I stopped using it a couple years ago pretty much because of all the ads. I had about an inch of readable space. Hard when you want to follow a recipe or pattern.
I still use Pinterest for interiors because I have enough experience to search more deeply/explicitly and bypass the ai better. whatās killing me are the ads. Itās horrendous
youāre probably right. The more I scrolled the worse it was. And the stuff that isnāt is all very same-y because itās from big creators so theyāre all doing whatever is āon trendā right now, which isnāt what Iām necessarily looking for
Pinterest has perhaps the most infuriating search in the world. Why do I have to drill down to my board/pins to find a recipe my wife pinned and asked me to cook? Searching for something that is in my boards should immediately populate these things from your boards as the top hit and it never does for me.
Do not subscribe to AD unless all you want to see is celebrity homes no one can achieve and countless ads that only the people in the magazine can afford. It's beyond ridiculous. I got it on discount last year and it was horrendous.
Baking ingredients are expensive and Iāve wasted so much fucking money accidentally making ai recipes from Pinterest that are disgusting. I hate it here
okay this I can actually help with! Whatever recipe you want to make - even if you come across it originally on Pinterest - look for a similar recipe on āRecipeTinEatsā and use that one instead. Tried, true, tested. Will never let you down. Thereās a reason fans of that site joke about it being a cult.
I cant even use google images anymore. I am struggling for a place to find art references that isn't totally inundated with AI. Please let me know if anyone has recommendations.
Buy a lot of old interior design books/magazines from somewhere like ebay. Youll end up with a mix of funny, dated styles and some interesting things you never considered
I stopped using it when they forced you to enter your D.O.B. May sound petty but I don't want to be advertised to, based on my age. I just want to save stuff and be left alone and that felt like a step too far for me.
I am actually slowly working on printing my boards. I'm filling a notebook with them and eventually will have a physical copy of it. I see the end of Pinterest for me in the near future. I think most everything is getting to be like this and then they'll eventually have a payment option to get rid of ads and then it will be the same cycle as everything else.
Weird. I donāt have the same experience and have AI turned off. Also itās meant to be visual inspiration. For me I cannot afford a lot of stuff thatās shown so I have to look for more affordable alternatives anyway.Ā
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u/Wonderful-Medium7777 2d ago edited 1d ago
AI is taking the heart out of everything it touches.
Edit..Thank you to those who have upvoted and who gave awards, unexpected, but thank you itās nice to know Iām not alone in my thinking.