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Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

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Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#81

Post by candiodari »

wilimitis wrote: post #66
tsimionescu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, we're discussing stock photography, not art. Second of all, Turing's arguments for why the Turing machine is a decent model of the brain seem pretty hard to bet against, and the Turing machine underlies all computation.

No - we're discussing whether someone producing stock photography can be trained in the same sense as a.i. However, I will give you that I'm potentially falsely assuming creativity is required to a comparable degree to art. Also, gun-to-my-head I would not bet on creativity being systemetizable, so I completely disagree.

You know, I actually think you're right about the process, but totally wrong about the results. Yes, AI art is different in terms of creativity. It is only grounded in reality to a lesser extent than human creativity.

Where you're going wrong is what society will go for. Given the choice between reality and fantasy ... society will choose fantasy. AI will "win" fantasy, hands down.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#82

Post by jonplackett »

ksaj wrote: post #2

I had to put together a presentation that was somewhat graphic-heavy. I used Dall-e 2, and the ability to get things so tailored to what I needed, so quickly, was absolutely worth it. I don't know if AI will replace stock photography, but I wouldn't bet against it. The ability to charge a high price for stock photography is over though.

I totally agree that it’s going to be very hard for stock photography - but is that a fair comparison? Would you have used stock photography for that presentation to begin with? A lot of the time people tend to just use copyright stuff for presentations because it’s just internal / client presentation use.

For that kind of thing - just explaining an idea - midjourney is amazing. So much faster than making something in photoshop and so much more accurate than google searching.

I think the real issues for stock libraries is when midjourney starts replacing actual output. This is starting to happen but still very early. It’s gonna get a lot worse!

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#83

Post by The_Colonel »

zirgs wrote: post #44
The_Colonel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the photographer's skill necessary in the process? Eventually, all the "photographer" will need to do is to take a 8K video recording of the subject and AI will generate a set of great looking pictures (it already knows what people like).

Videos aren't a very good source for training data, because they usually contain compression artifacts and motion blur. I've experimented with AI training using video screencaps and, unfortunately - the resulting quality isn't as good as using high resolution still photos. Another issue with using videos is overfitting, because video frames look too similar to each other. So you can get an inflexible model that alway…

I don't mean this in the context of training, but a "photographer" already using a trained model to apply on the video.

What the AI/model then needs to do is to extract the subject - person specific features and combine that with trained data. For that, artifacts/motion blur isn't a huge problem.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

aloisdg wrote: post #63
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trajectory of ML appears to point towards massive transfer of wealth to capital owners and impoverishment of the working classes. We need to find a way to distribute the benefits of such developments.

Maybe there is something to do about workers owning their own means of production.

[always has been.jpg]

Seriously though, I used to think this was mostly a done deal that's being occasionally brought up by people fascinated with socialism or something. But the longer I live, the more I realize that the issue has not meaningfully improved at all - we've only been distracted from it. And it's much, much older than Marx and co. too. This, and not some general fear of technology, was the whole point of the Luddite movement (very relevant in context of AI). And you can probably find examples stretching back way before industrial revolution too.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#85

Post by satvikpendem »

wnkrshm wrote: post #28
harry8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The photographers who took those stock photos also trained on stock photos.

The difference is that now only the owner of a machine profits where before lots of individuals profited. More power to the owners, I guess.

I'm using Stable Diffusion and I'm profiting. The difference is open vs closed source, not AI in general.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#86

Post by satvikpendem »

aloisdg wrote: post #63
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trajectory of ML appears to point towards massive transfer of wealth to capital owners and impoverishment of the working classes. We need to find a way to distribute the benefits of such developments.

Maybe there is something to do about workers owning their own means of production.

What workers own the means of production in the case of an AI? Democratization via open source works, but it actually extends beyond workers to end users. If all the workers at OpenAI were equal shareholders and owned the means of their production, this would not change anything about them profiting from the company and all of their users. Stallman was and continues to be right, open source and freedom for end users is really the only way.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#87

Post by satvikpendem »

wilimitis wrote: post #40
pulvinar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any output from a brain can also be represented mathematically-- it's a physical object, after all. Coming up with the parameters for those expressions is the much harder part, for both brain and AI.

Once again, that is an incredibly strong assertion and if you wish to be reasonable then the burden of proof is on you to prove those parameters before making such claims (e.g. that creativity = math). The notion that creativity lies beyond what is systemetizable (or otoh, the value in creativity is to defy that which can be computed), seems more in line with my sense of it.

If the brain is a physical object that computes, and we have creativity, it stands to reason that creativity is computable. Why would you assume that creativity is not systematizable when we already have evidence on the physicality of the brain influencing behavior (ie cut out one part, personality changes, take drugs like LSD that change the chemical components of the brain, notice that creativity improves)?

Your assumption is IMO unfounded, it actually seems like you have the burden of proof given what I said above. Just because it seems more in line with your sense of it doesn't make it true, seems like you think creativity is some mystical nonphysical force (because if it were physical, it would be able to be modeled and computed, as the parent says).

Edit, I see, you're an artist so it's likely why you believe in creativity as a nonphysical force. I've noticed that many artists say this, with no evidence, while most engineers say the opposite, that it's systematized, likely that's why we're in our respective fields.

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

voxadam wrote: post #75

Isn't the uncopyrightable nature of AI generated artwork a potential issue here? If I produce ad content for a company whose public image is incredibly important (e.g. Apple) and that content includes AI art what is to stop a competitor, or anyone else, from reusing that same art in a counter ad or to produce other content to similarly harm the original company? On the other hand, if I were to use images from a stock…

> Isn't the uncopyrightable nature of AI generated artwork a potential issue here?

For some uses of stock art, probably not (nonexclusive use is common and cheaper), for others yes, if AI art is not copyrightable (an opinion of the Registrar of Copyrights that it is not if the only input from the human claimant to the finished work is a text prompt is perhaps being grossly overread the way some people seem to think it is settled law that imagery generated through the use of an “AI” tool is categorically uncopyrightable.)

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#89

Post by poulpy123 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #3
ksaj wrote: post #2

I had to put together a presentation that was somewhat graphic-heavy. I used Dall-e 2, and the ability to get things so tailored to what I needed, so quickly, was absolutely worth it. I don't know if AI will replace stock photography, but I wouldn't bet against it. The ability to charge a high price for stock photography is over though.

I wish MidJourney had some decent competition. Dall-E hasn’t improved since it was released, and the other good models like Google’s Imagen weren’t made public…

what about stable diffusion or the tools by adobe ?

Re: Is AI killing the stock photo industry? A data perspective

#90

Post by vidarh »

wilimitis wrote: post #40
pulvinar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any output from a brain can also be represented mathematically-- it's a physical object, after all. Coming up with the parameters for those expressions is the much harder part, for both brain and AI.

Once again, that is an incredibly strong assertion and if you wish to be reasonable then the burden of proof is on you to prove those parameters before making such claims (e.g. that creativity = math). The notion that creativity lies beyond what is systemetizable (or otoh, the value in creativity is to defy that which can be computed), seems more in line with my sense of it.

I'd argue that the presence of anything in the brain which violates the laws of physics (necessary for the above claim to be false) is equivalent to Russells teapot, and absent extraordinary evidence it's a reasonable assumption to make that the brain adheres to known physics.
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