I think it would be clear that the picture was drawn for the person - I imagine most people would explicitly say something like "I drew this for you" in the accompanying message. And I don't know what kind of kids you've been hanging around, but my daughter would definitely appreciate a story that I spent some time thinking up rather than "here's something ChatGPT came up with". I guess that assumes you're not going to lie to kids about the AI-generated being yours, but that's another issue entirely.

With my original bedtime story example, I was actually thinking about the kind of story you make up on the spot. Like the topic request comes at bedtime, and maybe the child even has feedback on how the story should go as you're making it up. The alternative of the parent quickly asking ChatGPT on their phone for a story on the selected topic just seems not as fun and meaningful.

I guess in Apple's example it looks like they're writing it as a document on MacOS, so I suppose they are writing it ahead of time.

This is because there actually is a calculation that people do between "effort" and "love" (it's not some 1:1 ratio and you can't calculate it, it's real). At least for the vast, vast majority of people with functional interpersonal skills...

It's the difference between calling your mom and just saying "Hi mom, this is me thinking to call you. bye." vs calling her with a prepared thing to say/ask about that you had to take extra time to think about before calling. Effort went into that. You don't need to tell her "HOW" you came up with what you wanted to talk about, but there is a difference in how your call will be received as a result.

If you really believe that sending a text versus a hand written card will have no difference on how the message is interpreted, you should just know that you are in the minority.

> those things are making YOU feel better not the person receiving it

I don't think this is true at all. Love is proportional to cost; if it costs me nothing, then the love it represents is nothing.

When we receive something from someone, we estimate what it cost them based on what we know of them. Until recently, if someone wrote a poem just for us, our estimation of that would often be pretty high because we know approximately what it costs to write a poem.

In modern times, that cost calculation is thrown off, because we don't know whether they wrote it themselves (high cost) or generated it (low/no cost).

I think I see what tripped you up in my comment. I said

> if it costs me nothing, then the love it represents is nothing.

You could read this as meaning that every action has to be super costly or else the love isn't there. I admit that it's poorly phrased and it's not what I meant.

What I should have said is that if it costs you nothing, then it doesn't in itself indicate love. It costs me nothing to say "I love you" on its own, and you wouldn't believe me if I just walked up to you in the street and said that. But your mom has spent thousands of hours and liters of blood, sweat and tears caring for you, so when she says "I love you," you have all that to back those words up. It's the cost she paid before that imbues the words with value: high cost, deep love.

Hopefully that makes more sense.

He uses cost in a context of time and effort not directly financial

I can't help but be baited into responding to this comment too lol

You are obviously willfully misinterpreting what the OP meant by "cost".

You say "the thought is what matters" - this is 100% true, and "the thought" has a "cost". It "costs" an hour of sitting down and thinking of what to write to express your feelings to someone. That's what he is saying is "proportional" to love.

It "costs" you mental space to love your mom, and that can definitely happen with $0 entering the equation.

And with respect to "extra worth on people struggling to do something meaning more love" - if you spend the time to sit down and write a poem, when that's something that you don't excel at, someone will think: "oh wow you clearly really love me if you spent the time to write a poem, I know this because I know it's not easy for you and so you must care a lot to have done so anyway". If you can't see that... thats... ya

> You say "the thought is what matters" - this is 100% true, and "the thought" has a "cost". It "costs" an hour of sitting down and thinking of what to write to express your feelings to someone. That's what he is saying is "proportional" to love.

So if you sit down and thinking of what to write to express your love to your mom for two hours, then you love your mom twice than the person who only sit down for one hour loves his mom?

It's what "proportional" means. Words have meanings.

I never said that spending two hours means you love someone twice as much as spending one hour, I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

You also may be shocked to learn this, but "proportional" doesn't mean 1:1. It can mean 1:2, 5:1, or x:x^e(2*pi). All of those are proportions. Words do have meanings, and you'll note that - while I didn't even misuse the word proportional - the quotations also indicate I'm using it more loosely than it's textbook definition. You know, like how a normal person might.

I'm getting the vibe from you and the other commentator that, to you, this is about comparing how much two people love their respective mothers. That's not at all what this is even about? You can't compare "how much" two people love a respective person/thing because love isn't quantifiable.

I'm really not sure what you're even taking issue with? The idea that more time and effort from the giver corresponds to the receiver feeling more appreciation? That is not exactly a hot take lmfao

Consider this scenario: Your friend sends you an image of some art they produced. It looks very impressive. You ask them how long it took them to create. They say oh, only a minute or so, I made it with a MidJourney prompt.

Do you feel disappointed in that answer? If yes, then surely you see that appreciation of something can be relative to effort.

Actually you prove my point; the psycho loves himself so much that he will risk prison to get what he wants (or keep others from having it), but he doesn't love his SO enough to pay the cost of letting her go.

I don't truly agree with your take here, but let's assume you are correct and creating real things in your life only benefits you and no-one else. If you create a painting or story or piece of furniture, others prefer the more professional AI or mass-produced version.

In that scenario certainly there'll be times when using the AI option will make more sense, since you usually don't have hours to spare, and you also want to make the stories that your kid likes the most, which in this scenario are the AI ones.

But even then there's still that benefit to yourself from spending time on creating things, and I'd encourage anyone to have a hobby where they get to make something just because they feel like it. Even if it's just for you. It's nice to have an outlet to express yourself.

What a cynical take!