"Making clicks more likely" is a terrible measure of genuine value.
There are lots of images which will make people click, even if once they see your page they click 'Back' a second later. Our metrics are broken if we continue to attribute that click as 'success'.
> "Making clicks more likely" is a terrible measure of genuine value.
Genuine value, to who? For the author, getting more clicks is probably of "genuine value", depending on their goals for their writing. But seems most people are not writing and publishing stuff today because they think it provides value to others, but because they think it'll provide value to themselves somehow.
The question is: do you actually want to attract people who only click because of an image? And if you AI-generate it, are you fine with parts of the target audience not clicking on obvious AI thumbnails because they assume the entire content is low-effort?
