Do you think that AI-generated comments make communities like Product Hunt a better place?

@irina_haupt and I talked about this before! It's like cat-fishing on thoughts instead of looks. Chat-fishing?

Yep, also had that thought. AI can help you polish your grammar and wording, but from my experience, you can almost always see the difference between AI vs. Human-generated content, especially in a small formats like comments. So, the whole concept of AI-generated comments becomes pointless. Even ChatGPT with all its power creates generic content without much personality behind it. And it’s good for some use cases when speed matters more than the quality of created content. But in a long distance and in real communities quality always beat quantity :)

The concept of autogenerating comments is a relatively new one for me, and I'm testing a few products at the moment. Although it's not perfect, sometimes it helps me draw a first draft. Every time I rephrase what's auto-generated to put more of my own idea and sound better

Rather than seeing AI as a replacement for human connection, we need to view it as a tool.

I think AI has a place on PH, but the main issue is that most people using AI are just copy pasting from ChatGPT, so overall, it actually ruins my experience. If you're going to use ChatGPT, please be more creative rather than just copy pasting!

I think using AI tools for comments goes against all the principles of building online communities.

In my opinion, AI-generated comments have the potential to enhance the volume of comments and interactions on online platforms, it is important to balance this with the need for genuine, human-driven engagement and feedback.

I once tried using an AI-generated comment for a reply but didn't feel it matched my personal tone and my expected reply. However, I think they are really helpful for expressing appreciation and feelings.

The biggest problem I have with it is that it breaks the connection between response length and effort. Before AI generated comments if you wrote a block of words I at least knew you'd invested time and effort in preparing it (unless it was obvious copypasta) - and so I'd gladly invest time and effort in reading what you wrote. Now there's no longer a connection between response length and effort - it's going to put people off reading a more thorough response - which in turn is going to put people off writing one. The only way I can see to handle this is to let the community moderate itself - i.e. downvotes on comments. In my ideal world PH would keep a record of that downvote / upvote ratio, and every user could configure a threshold below which they don't even see the post. i.e I might choose to only see comments from users with a high upvote ratio - automatically filtering out those that the community collectively has marked as too negative for whatever reason.

Since everything in life starts with discussions, comments generated with AI are just… Pointless. Don’t get me wrong, I love AI stuff and growth hacks, but let’s keep a few things « human »!