AI is making everything look and feel the same, and we should be sick of it
What started as fun, interesting use of LLMs has, it seems to me, spiraled into something completely out of control. While new apps get created at lightning speed, especially if spearheaded by developers who have an idea of what they are doing, it's made the self-hosted space from something with 2-3 options per media category into a very crowded, messy space. Take a look, for example, at the book side : we now have Bookorbit, Grimmory. Completely new apps, and yet, somehow, they look the same. Why? Because the devs used AI during development. Take a closer look, and you'll be able to make out immediately if an app was made with AI: bright pill-shaped buttons, often green, catchy "it's not X, its' Y!" descriptions, Docs with emoji, and the somehow same settings and menu layout. And it's not just a philosophical problem: how do people innovate if there's nobody to make new stuff? and how about the old, beloved projects, with their slightly clunkier but human-made UI? How about Kavita? Komga? Heck, even the broken mess that is Calibre-web . The UI isnt that good, but at least it was visually consistent. Talented devs are leaving the established projects that were done tons of passion behind them to embark on a solo journey with LLMs, that starves the old projects, burns them out in months and will leave the space with old apps struggling to keep up on one side and a plethora of sleek. soulless AI-coded apps that will cycle through one after the other, making the space worse for eveyone. So the problem, perhaps, isnt just AI, but the fact that people have to start being more humble , and accept just being a member of a thriving community instead of being the chief of a wasteland. The second option is much, much worse for the whole community.