It looks like Cost Plus knew they were skirting the line because they made quite a few changes to the image.

So interesting that she complained about the drop in engagement. I've noticed that when I have an idea to share with someone on design dilemma and want to grab a picture to illustrate, it's been nearly impossible to get the search terms to serve what I want. Everything is so generic.

Not sure what the answer is.

Funny/not funny but at first I only saw the first pic and thought wow, that mirror is from WM?

I have no idea what the answer is, and TBH I only have a very thin grasp of all this influencer-engagement stuff (not to mention AI, which makes my brain hurt), but this just stinks. Argh.

It is interesting to note that when she complains about engagement she is really complaining about the reduction of income from her Instagram posts. Can a designer make a good living if they hop off the social media merry-go-round? I have no idea.

AI is scary to me. It’s already being used in nefarious ways (fake images of politicians, celebrities, revenge p*orn, etc).

I don’t see the AI direction going anywhere good.

I see MANY AI images on SM, and some are pretty convincing.

A question on a designers page was asked, "Do you think they should be posted (in the group)?" I said no, because they are not labeled as such, and people start asking questions about availability of ingredients, so they have been duped by it.

As far as the image above.....maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. Maybe someone saw the first image and liked it, then sought out the pieces and Ai'd it.

She talks about engagement dropping. That is the insta and fb algorithm of showing so much ”you follow this, so how about THIS?” and ads and supplanting what you REALLY want to see, because you follow them. I haven’t seen a Heidi post in a while, and I don’t search.

“Can a designer make a good living if they hop off the social media merry-go-round? I have no idea.”

That seems to be the main question. One designer boldly posted this:

An NPR producer is interested in the topic:

.

Not all of the commenters agree with her. I’m finding the debate fascinating.

I'm probably a dinosaur but if I wanted to hire someone, I would ask a friend or would do a search for my area and then go to their website. I don't need to look at their Insta posts if they also post the same thing on their website.

The problem is if a designer isn't suggested via word of mouth then how do they distinguish themselves on a list of google hits. And can they pay the bills without product sponsorships, affiliate links, etc?

I agree, dee.

Instagram (from what I’ve read by designers and other influencers) seems to thwart their engagement opportunities at every turn. They implement odd rules out of nowhere and tweak algorithms often, among other things.

I really enjoy IG — it’s like having countless magazines in one place — but I do wonder how much business it pulls in for designers specifically.

On a sort of related sidenote, I used to post my jewelry creations on Insta. Only for fun, for my friends to see, never to sell. One day, I used the word “love” with something jewelry related in a hashtag … a very well-known jewelry company with celebrity customers saw it and sent me a nasty barrage of private messages, threatening to sue me because I used ”love [something jewelry]“.

It was so funny that they saw this little amateur hobbyist as some sort of threat. I barraged right back and then blocked them — after seeing the very next day that they posted a jewelry picture staged almost exactly like one of mine.

I set my account to private. :D

I have to admit, I scroll thru IG and even when I love something, I don’t bother to click the heart icon and never comment.

Capitalism is not the problem. Plagiarism and AI may be more of an issue

Back in the day, I would say the movie The Good-by Girl showed everyone how to do this. Then FF to Design on a Dime--how is it not the same thing? We see something in a movie, magazine we like but have no access to their resources or the money so we do our best to replicate what we like. Frankly I prefer the look alike.

I’m not going to comment on the IG post itself (the villagers are out with their pitchforks), but one thing Heidi and other big name designers could do for engagement is to …. engage.

I have never seen her reply to a comment on any of her posts.

I understand that she may simply not have the time herself to answer every question, thank people for compliments, etc … so you do what you can, and hire someone to help with the rest.

I think some of her concerns about everything being discussed are valid, but I also think she and others should stop expecting the perfect amount of engagement when they don’t engage.

It’s called social media for a reason — to be social, not just post pictures and get free advertising. AFAIK, Instagram was not originally created so people could use it to make a living.

It’s a big part of putting in the effort and I don’t understand why they don’t seem to care about it at all.

If I had turned my account into trying to sell my jewelry, I’d sure enough be showing genuine appreciation for every person who took the time to comment on my posts.

I do understand her frustration. However, this is an ad for WM items. It is not another decorator using this bathroom in their own portfolio.

Everyone here takes pictures of design and shares them for feedback, how to duplicate etc.

Can all these images be protected and possibility water marked?

IIRC about the user agreement, Houzz put in it that they "own" pictures that are posted here. I remember people declaring they were leaving or that they wouldn't post pictures because of it.

Not sure how Houzz monetizes photos or how a person would dispute it if it wasn't legal but it just illustrates what a cesspool it all is.

From the IMF: The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.

I find her blast against capitalism disingenuous.

She’s not in business to make a profit? She doesn’t aim her product toward people with an income substantial enough to to pay her fees, which I’m assuming aren’t peanuts?

Jilly the Insta algorithm is impacting content producers and followers on all types of accounts. There are some work-arounds to be sure you see what y ou want but it's limited. I saw Heidi's post this morning but got an instant headache with the comments and have not been back. AI is moving fast into our lives and I understand an artist/designer/writer etc feeling panicked because although we really don't know where this is going the initial results are scary. I want to see AI regulated but we don't have knowledgeable people in place to do that and I have -0- confidence in what our legislators could come up with - it's an after thought at this point given how fast this train is moving.

Someone I follow has a book coming out in Sept. and another follower just searched their name on Big A and 2 fake books came up. It appears they are AI, written for/by/about this person but it's really not clear what they are yet. It's possible they aren't even really books or even available.

Well I am going to say something that might be unpopular about Interior design and Instagram and Influencers.

Very little interior design is completely innovative. Nothing is really completely new. Once we got fully reductive with severe minimalism (or all white paintings in art, for that matter) anything that came after is just a revival of some sort. There's nothing the matter with that, but I think unless a designer designs and trademarks a specific thing, I think they can hardly lay claim to it.

I like a lot of her stuff, but she's not really doing anything actually groundbreaking. Nobody is.

A few weeks ago someone posted a controversial room of hers where most things were covered in identical fabric. People liked it or hated it.

Is it the same idea as this? (Babe and William Paleys' apartment, 1950s Billy Baldwin). And Hortense Bonaparte was painted in her fabric covered room in 1811.

The thing about Instagram is that it doesn't really indicate that you are good interior designer. It means that you are good at creating Vignettes. The rest of the room could be a complete wreck because you are only showing one little corner. I have enough crap that I could repaint one corner of one room in my house and create a new vignette every week for the next I don't know how many years. (I have at least 100 candlesticks, for example. About 75 teak, and at least a dozen sterling and a dozen brass. And hundreds of art books--you can get a lot of mileage about stuff like that in a yard wide shot. ) And that's exactly what some Instagrammers do, really. I saw this on an apartment tour of some Influencer. The apartment was nice enough but hardly masterful and she pointed to a corner and said "Oh that's where I do my stuff for Instagram." She wasn't doing these things in a dozen different houses or rooms for different people. She wasn't even redecorating her own apartment. She was serially redecorating a corner of it. That's fine, that's creative. It's art. But people also have to understand what they are looking at, and they no longer do. There was someone upset because their tile didn't look like it did on the website. The room in the website didn't even exist. Completely virtual.

I haven’t read this article yet (I’ve been baking cookies for the grands. I have my priorities!), but the headline seems pertinent to this discussion. This is the ”gift” link so it should not be behind a pay wall.

OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/technology/openai-culture-whistleblowers.html?u2g=c&unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.PbgE.ilarolQXRgYG&smid=url-share

Bb, wow, that’s an eye-opening article. Thanks for sharing it.

A couple of quotes that stood out to me:

“Dr. Leike said he believed that “safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products.”

.

“When I signed up for OpenAI, I did not sign up for this attitude of ‘Let’s put things out into the world and see what happens and fix them afterward,’” Mr. Saunders said.”

The rest of the article is even more grim. Scary stuff.

Also — cookies? Can you deliver to D/FW?

Sharing is caring!

Check your printer, Jilly. They ought to be coming through momentarily!

From the article posted by bbstx. This is what frightens me about Ai. I'm not smart enough and I suspect the vast majority of the general public are in the same position, to parse out fact/reality from AI generated make-believe/deliberate lies.

The company also faces legal battles with content creators who have accused it of stealing copyrighted works to train its models. (The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement last year.) And its recent unveiling of a hyper-realistic voice assistant was marred by a public spat with the Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson, who claimed that OpenAI had imitated her voice without permission.

AI companies are there to make money and to be first in creating human like fake people. This worries me specifically if and when companies, political parties pay to have real people generated as AI's (did I say that right) to mislead the public with fake messaging.

I do not use instagram, twitter, or now pinterest. I am about to delete facebook.

Thank you, bb! :D

Bl, I totally agree.

Skipped down to say I agree that OP pics remind me of that old HGTV show Design On A Dime(?), where they took a high end designer inspiration room and recreated it with lower priced items. Of course it wasn't identical, but it gave the same effect. They copied the colors and types of elements, but nothing's identical.

Also reminds me of a recipe - which you can't copyright.

The discussion of where AI is going in our society is a serious one. But to interject a little levity...we're doing a bathroom remodel. For fun, DH asked AI to generate a bathroom with some parameters similar to ours (large shower, marble and probably some other things I'm not sure of). This is one that it generated. Notice the location of the toilet. And is that the shower control in the niche? I don't think designers have anything to fear from AI taking their jobs. Yet.

It doesn't really have to be AI or photoshop or anything sophisticated though

I have seen real estate listings of the same place a couple years apart where the newer photos have been digitally lightened so much the don't look like the same place.

Someone posted a picture of a brand new bathroom a while back saying how disappointed they were, and they had basically copied the inspiration bathroom, which they also showed a picture of.

Why was theirs so dark? Why did the light cast so many shadows. and why did it seem to glare?

I took the photo of their bathroom and digitally changed the exposure on it on whatever software came with my computer for that, until it looked like the inspiration bathroom. Then I took the photo of the inspiration bathroom and changed the exposure until it looked like her bathroom. It didn't take any effort at all really.

People that rely on someone else’s app to generate business for themselves, and don’t pay for the service, and then complain that the app isn’t generating enough business for them…IG has been ruined by businesses selling crap. Build your own website if that’s where you want to market yourself, ask IG to let people pay to post their buy my crap posts instead of pretending we’re friends just sharing photos (I’ll bet Heidi would balk at that as well). Generations of designers existed and thrived before social media. Whining about the system when you don’t pay for it is pointless. Maybe you’re a one trick pony and people don’t engage because you just show the same 5 photos we’ve already seen

There are some fantastic uses of AI that are amazing, but the frightening part is when it is used specifically for profit generation. It is also creepy the way data from internet usage is collected and studied to determine how companies can entice you specifically to purchase their goods at the highest price you will be likely to pay.

Why should someone who lives in a specific zip code and purchases clothing from Nordstrom's pay a higher price for Victoria Secret underwear than someone who lives in Boston and purchases clothing from Kohls?

Same product, two prices.

One time i found pictures of my newly remodeled bathroom on a designer's website. She had picked them up from the Bathrooms Forum here! It was such a shock! If she had asked I would certainly have given her permission.

Wow, ded! That’s wild. I hope she wasn’t pretending she designed your bathroom!

It's funny, but I think I like the 'copycat' design better than the 'original'...

I’ve seen more of the original, I really like it. To me, the imposter bathroom looks fake.

I guess because it is. 😁

But seriously, the fixtures and such look very cheap to me.

Jilly, no she didn’t. She was using it as an example of something, i don’t remember what. My bathroom is nothing spectacular .

As long as she's not using it as a what not to do :-/

She certainly has a right to be angry at WM because they're making a profit off her design. Oh goodie, I get to use one of my favorite sayings. I take umbrage on this snobby remark which probably insulted the majority of her followers, "....and modified it to sell their cheap products which I'd never use or endorse." I think she has her head in the clouds if she believes most followers are there looking to hire a designer instead of getting decor ideas & then buying from places like World Market.

"We are being eaten alive by capitalism." Read the 4th paragraph, last sentence in her rant. I like her designs but not her as a person. Sorry.

I never really got into social media - used FB briefly and then shut it down - years ago. Even then it was a lot of useless blather, some of which was not accurate. I do have a fake FB account to participate in some useful groups but I pretty much just go there and ignore all the BS that comes through on the feed which I can see is becoming more and more fake. I have at times clicked on a recipe only to be taken to a page with so many ads I could never actually read the recipe so I gave up on that. I also use Nextdoor to some extent to get recommendations from my nearby neighbors - still have to ignore all other nonsense. This is the only place I spend much time online other than reading the newspaper.