AI fraudster...

[hjoseph7]

https://petapixel.com/2023/02/21/popular-instagram-photographer-revealed-as-ai-fraud/

[za33photo]

Well , it was only a matter of time before the first one surfaced 😁😁😁.

 

[samstevens]

11 minutes ago, za33photo said:

Well , it was only a matter of time before the first one surfaced 😁😁😁.

LOL. Instagram followers get what they deserve. 

[Mark Keefer]

Well, there we have it, we don't need models or cameras for that matter. The photographer does not even need to show up to the wedding. The photos will be better than anything that could have been. The bride and groom looked flawless. We don't even need the bride and groom. Uncle Bob who has been dead for the last 10 years, he was there yesterday, we have the photos to prove it and he was looking good. Heck, Elvis and Audrey Hepburn were there too, and the Pope was there and blessed the wedding and then Charlemagne the Great arrived. It's right there in the photo. What a magnificent wedding album. As a photographer, I got to do the entire wedding in my Pajamas. I think I did...

We may not even be real anymore. Honestly, I can't be really sure anymore, I think I'm real, but AI has gotten so good. How can I be sure? Is it real, is it Memorex or is it AI. It is not just photography, it is video, it is audio voice and music. There is an AI Seinfeld show. 

So the challenge is on, can the real photographer out create AI today. what about tomorrow?

There will be entire generations growing up with this technology. Who knows where it will lead or what tomorrow will look like.

 

 

[za33photo]

Yes it is a sad reflection on the Human Race when we have to rely on a bunch of transistors in the guts of a computer to compensate for our lack of ability , originality and creativity.

The "Masses" will be sure to lap it up however 😁.

 

[Mark Keefer]

56 minutes ago, za33photo said:

The "Masses" will be sure to lap it up however 😁.

Yes it will be a great feature in an upcoming Lightroom or Photoshop. I played around with a version of Portrait Professional a few years back. I could completely alter a person to unrecognizable. I played with it but don't use it. Have not touched it in years. I would probably play with the AI the same. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Mark Keefer

[mikemorrellNL]

FWIW, I think Jos Avery has been quite creative in combining the use of AI (Midjourney) with more traditional post-processing tools like Photoshop. I do believe that he (like others) had the initial intention of fooling people into believing his images were 'real photographs'. Just to demonstrate how well 'portraits' can be artificially  created. Unfortunately he got carried away and deliberately misled his 'followers' for far too long. That was fraudulent.

If he had been upfront early on about how he created these 'portraits', there would IMHO be no fraud. Just a 'digital artist' who uses AI to create realistic-looking portraits. 

TBH, there are other AI tools that can be used to generate portraits, photos of cars, furniture and of course cats.  My guess is that the use of 'AI-generated photos' will only increase over time.

[pavel_l.]

I think we should brace our self for devaluation (non-monetary) tsunami in certain  genre of visual domain.

[samstevens]

On 2/23/2023 at 2:06 AM, mikemorrellNL said:

Just a 'digital artist' who uses AI to create realistic-looking portraits. 

What wax museums have been doing for years.

[JDMvW]

The bow generally replaced the spear sometime in the Neolithic, but there are still spears around today.

Some of us have been creating a different reality since we found out it was possible:

The EXTREMELY rare Pete Gray baseball card....

[Ricochetrider]

Falsifying petty much anything, isnt a new phenom. It's just taken a modern turn. 

Meanwhile there's gotta be a human behind this AI stuff.... yes? Well, for now, anyway? 

HAL 9000 was JUST a movie... totally fictitious... right? 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE

[AlanKlein]

Why get up before sunrise to shoot a photograph of a beautiful sunrise when you can sit in your armchair in your pajamas, stay warm, and create something nicer?  People will shoot more family and personal pictures for keepsakes and that's it.  Will people believe photojournalism? 

The whole point of shooting a camera was to capture a moment in God's time.  That's unlike a painting where you create the image from your mind.  This AI just lessens the whole point of a camera beyond personal shots of friends and family. AI moves us from photographers to painters when I got into photography because I didn't have painting ability.  Back to square one. 

[samstevens]

1 hour ago, AlanKlein said:

Why get up before sunrise to shoot a photograph of a beautiful sunrise when you can sit in your armchair in your pajamas, stay warm, and create something nicer?

I have no problem answering that for myself. Only you can answer it for yourself, regardless of what's out there and what others do. Or, maybe you can't.

1 hour ago, AlanKlein said:

The whole point of shooting a camera was to capture a moment in God's time.

An interesting and personal, not universal, take on the point of shooting a camera. 

1 hour ago, AlanKlein said:

This AI just lessens the whole point of a camera beyond personal shots of friends and family.

If some folks allow AI to move them only to shoot personal photos of friends and family, that's their choice. The rest of us will give AI whatever attention and sway we deem appropriate and make different decisions for different reasons.

[samstevens]

21 hours ago, Ricochetrider said:

Falsifying petty much anything, isnt a new phenom. It's just taken a modern turn. 

Meanwhile there's gotta be a human behind this AI stuff.... yes? Well, for now, anyway? 

HAL 9000 was JUST a movie... totally fictitious... right? 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE

Fact and fiction seem to be reaching out toward each other like hands on the Sistine Chapel. 😱

AI will find its place and each humanoid will figure out how to deal with it. Meanwhile, I still have a camera that I operate and choices of how to post process. That's good enough for me. (I sense, for you as well!) I don't have enough future left to worry about it too much. I'd rather embrace the time I have left and make of it what I can rather than spending time bemoaning what's coming and what's been lost. TV replaced radio (though I can still listen to the radio) and streaming replaced vinyl (though folks still enjoy vinyl). I assume, for the foreseeable future, the same will be true, as it always has, for ways to make and enjoy photographs.

Edited March 3, 2023 by samstevens

[mikemorrellNL]

19 hours ago, samstevens said:

Fact and fiction seem to be reaching out toward each other like hands on the Sistine Chapel. 😱

AI will find its place and each humanoid will figure out how to deal with it. Meanwhile, I still have a camera that I operate and choices of how to post process. That's good enough for me. (I sense, for you as well!) I don't have enough future left to worry about it too much. I'd rather embrace the time I have left and make of it what I can rather than spending time bemoaning what's coming and what's been lost. TV replaced radio (though I can still listen to the radio) and streaming replaced vinyl (though folks still enjoy vinyl). I assume, for the foreseeable future, the same will be true, as it always has, for ways to make and enjoy photographs.

Well said! It's always a personal choice to what extent you want to embrace evolving tech. FWIW, I now couldn't imagine life without a Smartphone and my useful apps. Though I also have good friends who refuse to buy in to the idea of 'smartphones'. Similarly I have good friends who refuse to buy into the idea of 'social media',

I believe that 'photography' is only a very small segment in how the ever developing maturity and applications of AI may impact our lives and increasingly those of our children, grandchildren and generations to come. We have for many years had a relatively primitive type of AI that targets social media (and e-mail spam) messages towards our internet-tracked 'interests'. AI is now also being applied in (general) internet queries, chat dialogues with organisations, etc.. So not only to flagging voice/message 'keyword triggers'. Many years ago, I saw a demo of a video-camera driven AI app that claimed to detect 'suspicious behavior' of pedestrians. I'm sure it's been been much improved by now. Combined with improved AI-driven face (or number plate) recognition, we're IMHO not far off from the 1998 'Enemy of the State' film scenario (starring Will Smith) where 'the state' is not just tracking 'enemies' but anyone who appears to behave 'suspiciously'.  Or anyone, just in case, they may do some something 'suspicious' in the futur.  My hope is that than even future AI is designed to respect Asimov's '3 laws of Robotics'.  

Just as in the past 'administrative and factory automation' have made many manual production workers redundant, I expect that visual AI has and will make many photographers and video photographers redundant in some genres. Notably product photography. I read that 75% of the photos in the Ikea catalog have (for years) been CGI-generated.

So 'dealing with' AI for photography (embracing it, rejecting it, selecting the bits you want to embrace/reject) remains IMHO a personal choice.  As @samstevens says, for every new 'tech development', a 'retro movement' usually develops.

[samstevens]

1 hour ago, mikemorrellNL said:

we're IMHO not far off from the 1998 'Enemy of the State' film scenario (starring Will Smith) where 'the state' is not just tracking 'enemies' but anyone who appears to behave 'suspiciously'.

Well, someone or something definitely needs to track Will Smith, especially if he’s ever invited back to the Oscars! ✋(thwack!)

1 hour ago, mikemorrellNL said:

'suspicious behavior' of pedestrians

Was out for a walk the other day and I and another pedestrian were actually tracking the suspicious behavior of AI. The woman had just parked and gotten out of her car, was now on the sidewalk, yet a Waymo car was suspiciously lurking in the street behind her as if still waiting for her to park. She said to me it was like science fiction at which point I said to her more like reality!

This coming together of fact and fiction in our lives via technology seems to track with the political rejection of fact and science and the embrace of fictional conspiracy theories, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

I think you’re right that what happens to photography is low among the dangers and misuses presented. The positive I see is that photos have often been mistaken for or expected to directly represent reality. AI may make more clear the fictional aspect of photos, that a photo is a creation, more apparent when it’s not created by human brains and hands. It may help put an exclamation point to Garry Winogrand’s observation: “Photography is about what can happen in the frame. When you put for edges around some facts, you change those facts.” Little did he know there was a photographic future where there were no facts to begin with. 😉

Edited March 4, 2023 by samstevens

[AlanKlein]

2 hours ago, samstevens said:

Well, someone or something definitely needs to track Will Smith, especially if he’s ever invited back to the Oscars! ✋(thwack!)

Was out for a walk the other day and I and another pedestrian were actually tracking the suspicious behavior of AI. The woman had just parked and gotten out of her car, was now on the sidewalk, yet a Waymo car was suspiciously lurking in the street behind her as if still waiting for her to park. She said to me it was like science fiction at which point I said to her more like reality!

This coming together of fact and fiction in our lives via technology seems to track with the political rejection of fact and science and the embrace of fictional conspiracy theories, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

I think you’re right that what happens to photography is low among the dangers and misuses presented. The positive I see is that photos have often been mistaken for or expected to directly represent reality. AI may make more clear the fictional aspect of photos, that a photo is a creation, more apparent when it’s not created by human brains and hands. It may help put an exclamation point to Garry Winogrand’s observation: “Photography is about what can happen in the frame. When you put for edges around some facts, you change those facts.” Little did he know there was a photographic future where there were no facts to begin with. 😉

AI will only add to the confusion and rejection of "truth".  People use to think they could trust a photo, but not anymore.  "Did you Photoshop it?" 

[samstevens]

28 minutes ago, AlanKlein said:

AI will only add to the confusion and rejection of "truth".  People use to think they could trust a photo, but not anymore.  "Did you Photoshop it?" 

Only those naive enough not to know the many ways photos can be untrustworthy in presenting an “objective” reality. Was The Kiss staged? What did folks assume? Was Iwo Jima retaken and not spontaneous? What did people think? Was war as glorious as it was often made out to be in pictures? Was Nixon as statesmanlike as his pictures pretend? Were that news story’s illustrative photos skewed by the perspective of the photographer? Were women all or supposed to be as soft and glamorous as 50s magazine photos tried to convince us they were or should be? 

Sure, nowadays, it’s easier to clone out some trash or clone in a tree. But I don’t think trust was as much of a strong suit of photography as some would like to believe. For many photographers, who were more concerned with the art of images than their representative or explanatory value, trust may never even have come into play. 

“Art is a lie that tells the truth.” 
—P. Picasso

[AlanKlein]

1 hour ago, samstevens said:

Only those naive enough not to know the many ways photos can be untrustworthy in presenting an “objective” reality. Was The Kiss staged? What did folks assume? Was Iwo Jima retaken and not spontaneous? What did people think? Was war as glorious as it was often made out to be in pictures? Was Nixon as statesmanlike as his pictures pretend? Were that news story’s illustrative photos skewed by the perspective of the photographer? Were women all or supposed to be as soft and glamorous as 50s magazine photos tried to convince us they were or should be? 

Sure, nowadays, it’s easier to clone out some trash or clone in a tree. But I don’t think trust was as much of a strong suit of photography as some would like to believe. For many photographers, who were more concerned with the art of images than their representative or explanatory value, trust may never even have come into play. 

“Art is a lie that tells the truth.” 
—P. Picasso

Most people are not naive as you say.  Most people like me who are older, grew up when their cameras shot what was in front of them and no edits were done.  They didn't have darkrooms and if they did, there was not the kind of cloning that goes on with PS today.  People believed a photo "told the truth".  It was worth "2000 words".  AI will continue to diminish the public's trust of photos.

 

OK I'll be the first to say it.  "Did you AI it?" 

[samstevens]

[David_Cavan]

Perhaps photography, like everything else, will continue to evolve to be what the people of the time expect it to be. Most would not accept photos from the 1800's as anything other than staged events, which they were for the most part. News photography, as @samstevenspoints out above has been questioned by many for a long time. Everything we see on our screens is already questioned as "CGI or reality", and I'm quite sure that perspective includes still photography already. I think it is also worth considering that our favorite medium is not nearly as prevalent as it was just a few years ago - you only have to be on Instagram for the past 5 years to see the shift from still photography to video that has occurred there. If photography is to survive as anything more than a curiosity it will need to evolve, and that will include the technology of the times. For today, that includes what AI tools can do. In my minds it is as much photography as those photos I have of my grandfather in the 1880's dressed in a suit stiffly staring at the camera.