Will AI undermine your desire to do photography or change it?

[Allen Herbert]

" think using AI in an integral and meaningful way like this can add some depth to photography" Sam.

Really, you need to add depth to your photography by using the latest (fad/hype) computer software. Are you not capable of using your own imagination and skills? I'm sure you are.

For for me its about getting out there, and expressing my own Art of Photography, not some silly computer program to do it for me. Or, hold my hand, and create a made up photograph which has little to do with me.

A social media tool, and an armchair photographer's tool, to impress their friends. Little else.

[Allen Herbert]

I took this photo. Me.

Little old Lady smiling at the news. Methinks we should also smile too.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Allen Herbert

[Allen Herbert]

And this one....

[Allen Herbert]

"There are days when I find reality itself so distorted that I wish I had a camera or some software that could straighten it" Sam.

Nature has given you a special thing what we call a mind. Actually, it is really good at sorting out reality, from fairy land, it does this for your survival..

Cult religions distort reality. Especially, for folks who don't listen to their mind, but need some software or guru to operate as their mind.

Sort of sad really.

[AlanKlein]

On 3/24/2023 at 5:25 PM, Allen Herbert said:

I took this photo. Me.

Little old Lady smiling at the news. Methinks we should also smile too.

I don't know.  She doesn't look like a Mirror Newspaper type of reader.  Are you sure you didn't clone that in?  😉

[Allen Herbert]

LOL

[PapaTango]

As many of you know, I am building a new photographic community.  One of the great adventures of creating or sustaining a discussion environment is member postings.  Without the interior life of a forum, it is not anything--simply a collection of platform software.

Among the options, a site developer is offered now is the opportunity to add AI to the mix.  Solid AI plugins are available to create new posts that are seemingly real about movies, music, and cars that are readily bought and deployed.  An offer was presented to deploy an AI chatbox addon that would contribute to seeding and adding discussions about photographs and photography.

I have taken a hard pass--but other photographic forums are experimenting.  Contributions and reviews are not anything if they are not honestly delivered by real people.  Nor is the posting of images via this or any other venue appropriate--if they do not express the life and thinking of a photographer.

Sometimes it's hard to accept progress.  But photographers' progress is in developing their craft--not what a collection of algorithms, responses, and vision did not deliver via human experience.

Nuff said....

Edited April 5, 2023 by PapaTango
Evil dwarves threatened to steal my mithril...

[samstevens]

2 minutes ago, PapaTango said:

But photographers' progress is in developing their craft--not what a collection of algorithms, responses, and vision did not deliver via human experience.

AI posts, if labeled as such, could stimulate some interesting discussions. I'd be angry if they were passed off as member posts. Nevertheless, I can certainly understand your passing on them. There are probably reasonable arguments on either side.

I think, as the world and AI evolve, there will be photographers who will consider part of their craft the ability and challenge to creatively apply AI, finding different and as-yet-unknown human outlets for its use. Even though we can walk, driving a big ol' heavy machine has its own draws and pleasures. Even though there's a particular thrill and nuance to the craft of the darkroom, many photographers have translated their skills in the darkroom to digital post processing skills. AI doesn't have to be left a collection of algorithms and responses. Humans can play with those algorithms and responses, developing new relationships to this technology as a tool rather than seeing it as an end in itself. There will be those who will craft a human/AI relationship that might just move toward an inspired photographic future without the past forever beckoning toward stability and what's traditionally been done.

[AlanKlein]

9 hours ago, PapaTango said:

As many of you know, I am building a new photographic community.  One of the great adventures of creating or sustaining a discussion environment is member postings.  Without the interior life of a forum, it is not anything--simply a collection of platform software.

Among the options, a site developer is offered now is the opportunity to add AI to the mix.  Solid AI plugins are available to create new posts that are seemingly real about movies, music, and cars that are readily bought and deployed.  An offer was presented to deploy an AI chatbox addon that would contribute to seeding and adding discussions about photographs and photography.

I have taken a hard pass--but other photographic forums are experimenting.  Contributions and reviews are not anything if they are not honestly delivered by real people.  Nor is the posting of images via this or any other venue appropriate--if they do not express the life and thinking of a photographer.

Sometimes it's hard to accept progress.  But photographers' progress is in developing their craft--not what a collection of algorithms, responses, and vision did not deliver via human experience.

Nuff said....

I think experimenting is good.  You never know what might come of it.  Also, it would be interesting to see what photographers can do with AI with and without the use of a real camera.  There could be applications we're not thinking of right now.  Let's see what develops.  I'm starting a new thread on this.

AI Photo Sample Thread

[ilkka_nissila]

On 2/15/2023 at 11:08 PM, AlanKlein said:

There are other topics on how manipulation is occurring with more frequency.  But I'd like to examine how people feel it effects their own photography.  Is anyone seeing that AI for example, creating photos without leaving your armchair, is undermining the desire to do photography with a camera?  If someone can get landscape "photos" that are better from their armchair than you could ever get waking up before sunrise, what would you do?  Switch to street photography, portraiture, or quit?  Or buy an armchair?

How is technology effecting your desire to do this hobby?  What changes do you see making?

As far as I know, at least some of these image-generating AIs have been created using stolen images (lifted from the internet without original creators' consent) as teaching material and therefore are illegal and should be banned in their current form. Adobe seems to be developing their own using stock images which they have legal access to.

 

Italy banned temporarily the use of ChatGPT due to this reason (personal information has been used without consent) and Getty sued the creators of Stable Diffusion (an image-generating AI) due to images stolen from Getty having been used in the creation of the AI.

 

In my opinion, the original creators of the content that was used to teach these AIs have to be requested consent and monetary compensation should also be given, proportionate to the money made by the use of the bots. It's just theft on a grand scale and I would not want to use such services for anything any more than I would plagiarise someone else's text (or images) and claim it (them) as my own.

Edited April 5, 2023 by ilkka_nissila

[AlanKlein]

52 minutes ago, ilkka_nissila said:

As far as I know, at least some of these image-generating AIs have been created using stolen images (lifted from the internet without original creators' consent) as teaching material and therefore are illegal and should be banned in their current form. Adobe seems to be developing their own using stock images which they have legal access to.

 

Italy banned temporarily the use of ChatGPT due to this reason (personal information has been used without consent) and Getty sued the creators of Stable Diffusion (an image-generating AI) due to images stolen from Getty having been used in the creation of the AI.

 

In my opinion, the original creators of the content that was used to teach these AIs have to be requested consent and monetary compensation should also be given, proportionate to the money made by the use of the bots. It's just theft on a grand scale and I would not want to use such services for anything any more than I would plagiarise someone else's text (or images) and claim it (them) as my own.

Can AI modify photos or create original photos without using other's photos, paid for or not?

[ilkka_nissila]

1 minute ago, AlanKlein said:

Can AI modify photos or create original photos without using other's photos, paid for or not?

The so-called generative AI have been giving vast numbers of images to train from. These are being hyped that they would replace original photography. In my opinion it is clear that posters who uploaded images online did not give their consent for those images to be commercially used by an unknown third party to make money from their AI. What's worse the "generated" images sometimes show clearly where the source material was copied from.

 

Other types of AI exist which can e.g. be used for noise reduction; those algorithms (such as Topaz AI or DXO DeepPRIME) do not need images scraped off the internet in the teaching process. In that case there is no problem with the user applying these methods on their own images as they likely pay for the license of the software and the only creative intellectual property is the photographer's own.

[samstevens]

3 hours ago, ilkka_nissila said:

In my opinion it is clear that posters who uploaded images online did not give their consent for those images to be commercially used by an unknown third party to make money from their AI.

That’s like putting your diamond ring out on your front steps and complaining when someone comes along and grabs it. Sure, it’s wrong to take something that doesn’t belong to you even if it’s left out in public. But, it also pays to be realistic. Any photo you post to the Internet has a likelihood of being used improperly. As always, I weigh the risks and rewards of posting online. When I post a pic, I know it might be appropriated. Thankfully, I don’t care. Those who care more than I do might want to rethink whether they leave their diamonds outside. 

Edited April 5, 2023 by samstevens

[mikemorrellNL]

IMHO, we are where we are.

We can have opinions about whether the (webscraped) sources for (AI) image generation are legitimate or legal in different countries. But similar arguments also apply to 'webscraped' content that Chat GBT (or Bard) uses as input for providing 'natural language' answers to questions.

'Webscraping' started IMHO long ago with internet search engines. Google is probably the most well known. Though other search engines (such as Bing, Firefox, etc.) employed basically the same strategy. They continually scannned websites and 'ranked' these in lists of search results for any query. Their ranking of 'search results' was partly based on 'keywords' on any website but also on 'reliablty', determined largely by how many other 'reliable' websites referred (linked) to it. As far as I know, AI apps take a similar but also different approach. Just as their 'search engine' predecessors, they evaluate the reliablity of the vast quantity of information that's available to them. Includung - but also using much more sophisticated criteria than - 'keyords' and 'references'.  As far as I know, AI apps are especially good and fast at identifying 'patterns'. Those derived from natural language too.So, I imagine AI apps are much better at identifying which online 'content' (for any query) has the most 'consistency'. AI apps won't IMHO always be 'right' but will reflect the 'concensus of opinion', from it's available sources.

As far as 'image generation' AI apps go, I think that pretty much the same applies in terms of 'webscraping'. In the 'old days', we could use Google to show us lists of images according to search criteria.  With AI, we can much more easily ask a query such as 'show me an  image of ...)'.  Dedicated AI imaging imaging apps are even more sophisticated. In terms of a 'dialogue' where users can ask questions like :"OK, show me the same image with less shadow (or more highlights) on the left/right side'. Or 'superimpose this image on this one ....'

At the moment, text-based AI apps very creative but are still largely based on information that has already been published somewhere. The same applies to image-oriented AI apps. IHMO An AI app cannot - for the foreseeable future- replicate your personal photo. Unless it's a photo that has been taken and published by other people too.

I do expect AI to make more of an impact on  in-camera and post-processing.

Mike

Edited April 5, 2023 by mikemorrellNL

[Incongruent Phonon]

AI taking over many jobs now is just like how combustion engines took over jobs of horses, and humans. Either be the one who drives or the one who gets drove over. 
 

AI is great. Frees up huge amount of time and presents concepts in a brink. Saves me hundreds of hours as a painter. Creativity revolution. 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Incongruent Phonon

[Supriyo]

Honestly, as someone who is getting somewhat familiar with AI, especially generative AI, I would agree with all the concerns that have been presented here or elsewhere. It’s a powerful technology, certainly not a hype any longer, and used maliciously can cause a lot of damage. However, if we look beyond all the petty, fraudulent applications of AI in art, I cannot imagine, a powerful tool like AI would not pave a legitimate path for creative artists.

Many of our concerns relate to the hijacking by AI of the craft of human artists, like brushstrokes or post-processing. What if someone can come up with a new genre of AI driven art, where the act of manipulating the machine becomes the craft. How the machine perceives the daily cacophony of human content and responds to an artist’s manipulation can become the content of such art and provide new food for thought. It is like viewing the human civilization through a convoluted mirror. These are of course my early imaginations, but I feel eventually, we will get there.

One potentially interesting route towards AI driven art could be to push the machine towards the edge of what it was trained to do, give it inputs that are perhaps conflicting and see what it comes up with. Can one compose poetry in collaboration with AI, or create a dialog (chat transcript) that could be insightful. Who knows, only future can tell, but it’s surely interesting to see how a sophisticated AI machine with its ‘steely eyes’ would perceive human world and make (non)sense of it.

[inoneeye]

“[…]I cannot imagine, a powerful tool like AI would [has] not pave a legitimate path for creative artists.” +1 

Edited April 6, 2023 by inoneeye

[inoneeye]

imo it has in films, architecture, music, design, science, flat media, imagination …etc. and photography..

Edited April 6, 2023 by inoneeye

[Allen Herbert]

"“[…]I cannot imagine, a powerful tool like AI would [has] not pave a legitimate path for creative artists.” +1 " Inoneeye"

It is just a computer program little else. It trawls the internet for photographs to add to its database. It is not some form of intelligent entity, just a database, which steals from the web....plagiarism..

The three amigos who inhabit this forum would like you to believe it is a second coming of sorts .Imagination , creativity, is about us. Not from someone's computer programmer. 

[AlanKlein]

1 hour ago, Allen Herbert said:

"“[…]I cannot imagine, a powerful tool like AI would [has] not pave a legitimate path for creative artists.” +1 " Inoneeye"

It is just a computer program little else. It trawls the internet for photographs to add to its database. It is not some form of intelligent entity, just a database, which steals from the web....plagiarism..

The three amigos who inhabit this forum would like you to believe it is a second coming of sorts .Imagination , creativity, is about us. Not from someone's computer programmer. 

I agree. This will be tested in court when someone sues because he can identify a part of an AI generated image that really came from his image.  Then, the case will prove that the entire program is scanning existing and copyrighted images opening up the company to lawsuits from everyone.  Unless Congress steps in and modifies copyright laws, AI has to be developed to create on its own, a difficult process to get right and original.  

[AlanKlein]

That's why I asked is that feasible to create images on its own?

Edited April 6, 2023 by AlanKlein

[samstevens]

There are two issues being introduced in this thread that it would be prudent not to conflate.

1. Whether the production of AI technology is illegally using copyrighted materials and what that means and how to deal with it, if it needs to be dealt with.
2. Whether AI technology can be used creatively as a photographic tool.

As far as the first, it seems like it will be litigated and decided in a court or courts of law. 

As far as the second, no compelling or history-aware case has been made in this thread for why AI can't or won't be used creatively by photographers.

[PapaTango]

Once upon a time, some bright individual would come up on an idea or three.  It was not for them to make something of it, the 'thing' of their idea was a framework of mathemagical tools to understand certain phenomena.

Others later took up materials, made tools, and refined them.  From history, we know that this stuff took many hundreds of years--and even in its most elegant and mechanical robustness--was still brute application to achieve a preconceived result.

Part of my training included architectural, mechanical, and electrical drafting.  Pencil, pen, on paper.  Now I have AutoDesk, and it does things never before imaginable.  My workstation is filled with stuff that makes me shake my head when I look at the 1957 Olympia S3 typewriter I used before the PC.  That hangs on the wall with a note in the keywell that reads "For Use In Case Of Emergency".  There is an S&K decitrig-log-log slice rule right above it...  We went to the moon with these kinds of tools.

Hoomans do not really design electronic circuits anymore.  Our technology creates processors on a startling level.  Elements of AI have informed the design process--and are increasingly influencing our daily interactions and perceptions.  This is not someday--it is right now.  For the time being though, I am not worried about Photoshop & Nik suddenly making me a world famed (or reviled) artist.

Whatever will happen will happen.  Most of us (and this is not a hasty generalization) are conditioned to accept what tech offers us.  The budgets of small countries are being spent to teach this stuff to give us what our scraped information leads it to offer in a helpful and pleasuring way.  The smartphone in our hands is such an example.

I am thinking that the real issue here concerns our expectations and taste.  AI solutions to deliver whatever images one imagines are available now.  With or without direct living intervention, AI can create images that exceed the skills of human artists.  As we are influenced our generational tastes will change.  Steichen?  Who is that?  Mandelbrot NFT image, lets go!

Good and great media makers will always exist.  The day AI regularly regurgitates Bosch, I think that we all have cause to worry.

Edited April 6, 2023 by PapaTango

[za33photo]

Ordinary Humans are becoming manipulated vegetables , perhaps not a new phenomenon , but this suits the NWO just fine thank you.

 

[inoneeye]

Jos Avery … confession regarding popular ‘photo’ portraits deception. He used ai generated imagery and extensively post processed to make them appear real. ? 
Some could see behind the curtain but most did not.

This use of ai is what concerns many. But that is only one limited use that ai has to offer.

On 4/6/2023 at 12:57 PM, AlanKlein said:

 

That's why I asked is that feasible to create images on its own?

 

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by inoneeye