The problem is fraud, not AI. It’s the same as trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own, fraud!
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Photography
1 readers
1 users here now
A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.
This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.
founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
Sure, but this particular manifestation of that sort of fraud has its own character, needs its own responses and is worth its own discussion.
I’ve seen some promising developments around tools to poison AI datasets if they vacuum up the work without the permission of the original artist, but it’s a bit of a shame if we fall into a pattern of a combative arms race being the only thing that will realistically prompt any sort of change in approach by the owners and developers of the software.
AI is just another tool, it can be misused. AI can also open up new avenues for creativity. People/artists need to be honest, if you use AI, state it, better yet lean into it, make it part of the concept, part of your artist statement!
“I told a computer to make something” isn’t much of an artist’s statement!
But they’re the one to type the prompt in to the generator /s
Most of the time you can tell when it's AI because it's too perfect. They never have any creases in their clothes, their hair is perfect, everyone they have taken photos of is incredibly good looking. And the lighting never really makes sense, or is always really harsh. I can't see AI taking our jobs anytime soon tbh.
Funny, I was discussing with friends the other day about how adobe has partnered up with Leica and Nikon to add authenticity details to their photos. Friend was saying there isn’t a market for that, but it looks like we’ll soon be in the age of, “guilty until proven innocent”. So far as, pics are fake unless proof of it being genuine is there.
I suspect it will be somewhat like Champagne. You can only call it Champagne if it comes from Champagne region of France. It used to matter a lot until as good or better sparkling white was available from elsewhere. Today there is a certain extravagance and authenticity having Champagne, and some people try to pass their sparkling white off as the real thing, most people can't tell the difference.
Photography will be protected eventually, but once AI models can do as good a job in most cases it will become a lot like Champagne. There will always be some need for photography, but once they don't need it for most things it will need that authenticity signing Leica and Nikon are adding so it can be proven that it isn't cheap sparkling AI.
I mostly disagree, though the future may prove me wrong. What I think differentiates photography from other art forms, in this case, is that photography necessitates real world context in a way that other art forms don't.
Wedding photography is probably the best example of this - I don't think most people can imagine a world where AI generated art would be sufficient to replace a wedding photographer who's actually present at a real wedding, because the real world context of the wedding is what makes those photos significant, not just the quality of the photography itself. This is true of photography in general - people tend to care about photography the most when it connects to their reality. Contrast this with, say, a drawing: most people expect that a wedding photo will be of a real moment that actually occurred at their wedding, but people purchasing a drawing of their wedding wouldn't necessarily have the same expectation, and care more about the end result than the process or context of its creation.
Now, obviously this only applies to certain types of photography. I think things like stock photography are likely to go completely extinct in the near future. But photography as an art form will hold its value in a very different way from other art forms, imo
Wedding photography is probably the best example of this - I don't think most people can imagine a world where AI generated art would be sufficient to replace a wedding photographer who's actually present at a real wedding, because the real world context of the wedding is what makes those photos significant, not just the quality of the photography itself.
I mostly agree. For me personally, photography is special because I'm aphantasiasic (no visual memory) and photographs can put me in the memories more solidly.
But I think that we'll see hybrid AI/real photography in weddings within 5 years. What I mean by this is the in person photography will proceed as normal but then all the photos are used to create an AI model of the event to allow the client to have photographs which may not have actually been taken. Models combined with photogrametry would allow highly accurate fakes.
The negative for us as photographers is that it will lower the bar. The level of skill and experience to produce a similar outcome to a low end professional will be minimal.
Much like my day job (IT) AI poses a risk that 'entry level' jobs will be mostly disappear. How do you get to be a mid level professional in either field? Being an 'entry level' professional and working your way up as you gain experience. The risk is that mid levels will dry up because there are too few jobs at the entry level to produce the required number of mid levels etc.
No, but I can imagine a world where almost no wedding photographers exist anymore because most people will just take 10000 cell phone pictures, and run them through a style plagiarizer, and end up with 10000 "photos" in the style of some wedding photos they liked the look of.
For me it's the process of taking the photos that I enjoy, not the publishing it somewhere for (fake) gratification. So I find it weird that some people would do that. Maybe 20 years ago when I had my photo-blog my young mind would think different. But then again I never wanted to cheat in online games, I guess the mentality here is similar.
Out of curiosity, could you share some of these examples that they try to pass as photography?
I fully agree. I don't get it either.
Sure, this guy, for example. Now it's so obvious. But the first time I looked at the photos in my phone, he totally fooled me.
Oh yeah, it's weird. The images have this "soapy" quality to them. And I don't know if it's because you're immediately sceptical and that takes you out of it, or that they really don't have as much emotional impact as they should.
You look at images by Vivian Maier or Antanas Sutkus who had this somewhat similar b&w personal style and they are super emotional. And of course much less "soapy", much less "perfect".
I'm very familiar with Maier, Sutkus and countless other great photographers.
This is different. I've always enjoyed browsing through the work of anonymous photographers, you can find extremely talented people with super interesting work. Flickr used to be great for that.
But this makes that a lot harder. You have to be constantly on watch for this kind of fakery.
That's the weirdest flickr portfolio. Overprocessed pics going in all directions, nothing for like 12 years, then a bunch of AI stuff. And honestly, they have a more consistent art direction than his earlier real photography.
I have no thoughts on it. I don't really care. If someone feels the need to present something that is not their own original work as their own original work, whatever the medium, that's completely on them. It speaks to something that's not exactly right in their own internal workings.
I’ve had to unfollow several folks on Flickr as they’re not shooting anymore just typing prompts into AI generators.
Koci Hernandez did a lot of street shots on his phone, deletes his account often, again did that and has switched to creating an AI company, seemingly to me out of nowhere. AI imagery isn't computer generated from nothing is it? It's computer generated from all the photos available out there. If you’re for AI visual imagery, you’re for theft. Obviously, the capitalistic machine is so strong that you will get people who were/are into candid street doing AI imagery to make money even though it should go against everything they stand for.
When I begin experimenting with blending my photography with AI, anything I create with that process will be clearly labeled as AI photographic based artwork….not pure photography. (That is for photos where AI has modified the photo, not where photo editing programs use AI to edit more efficiently in a way I control) I’ll do this if for no other reason than so I remember which is which when I’m old and senile. Lol
Photography as an art is dead. The decay started with digital, then photoshop and now AI as a finisher.
Yep, just like oil painting was killed by photography. /s
Honestly I don't see any value in getting angry about it. The cat is out of the bag, so being mad is just a waste of energy. Are portrait painters still mad that photography got invented? Hopefully not, for their sake.
Yeah it's bullshit when someone generates an image and tries to pass it off as a photograph, but that's their problem. Sure they can churn out images that look cool but if someone interviews them, commissions them to do something specific, or looks closely at their work, they're gonna get found out. Random people posting on Flickr don't matter, so if they somehow get enough recognition that people start paying attention, their days are numbered.
And, given that ai is best used as a tool in the process rather than the process itself, if someone gets good enough with it that they can reliably produce art with a distinct vision and with realism that can't be clocked as partially generated, then they're clearly doing something right.
In the end though, if people are gonna lie about how they made stuff, they're just digging their own hole. Don't let it get you down. There's already enough shitty stuff and negative energy in the world, don't give up more of your energy getting mad that some losers are lying about their art.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here.
Let me clarify that I'm not mad at the existence of generative AI. It's fascinating and a lot of fun and I encourage everyone to play around with it. I would never publish the result of a MidJourney prompt as "my" work, but that's my own personal choice.
But I'm not even denying there are forms of creating genuinely original and meritorious art with recourse to AI tech. That's all well and good.
Random people posting on Flickr don't matter
I agree that the individuals doing that don't matter. They're frauds, but ultimately irrelevant.
But platforms like Flickr do matter, or at least I would like for them to matter - if nothing else, as communities where artists can share their work and appreciate the work of others. It's just a nice feature of the internet to be able to have this kind of communities.
But they have absolutely no mechanism to identify these AI works. I worry because it profoundly degrades the usability and usefulness of those platforms. If I need to comb through thousands of fake photos, Flickr becomes unusable.
I would argue we need more AI, developed with the purpose of identifying the products of AI for us. So that we can look at an image online and know if it was made that way.
Of course this is important, not only for online art communities, but even more to prevent the onslaught of serious problems that fake photos and videos will certainly bring in the near future.
Digging their own hole — Yep, you got it there.
Wait for the time when cameras become equipped with AI integrated into them. That's when it'll become really interesting. Did you take the photo, or did Hal take the photo?
There should be a way to report ai "art" labelled as photography on Flickr
Gatekeeping. Doesn't matter. Everything we believe is fake and doesn't matter.
Move on and do what makes YOU happy.