The AI thread

[Pieter]

Try to honestly answer to yourself why you take\make pictures (the true purpose and objective)
And then why you should care about what others are doing in image making areas (AI, digital and such)

I care because AI can create false narratives that can be difficult to detect, leading to misinformation about current or even past events. Especially in this day and age of widespread misinformation and an increasingly polarized and gullible public willing to accept information that fits their (bubble) views.

[Alan Klein]

Richard Avedon famously said that when he was growing up his family would regularly pose in front of cars they did not own with borrowed dogs for family photos.

I care because AI can create false narratives that can be difficult to detect, leading to misinformation about current or even past events. Especially in this day and age of widespread misinformation and an increasingly polarized and gullible public willing to accept information that fits their (bubble) views.

That's a good part of the point I was trying to make. Sure, photographers created false pictures before. But it was pretty limited. People still had faith that photos didn't lie, despite what the Avedon family did. (I didn't know anyone who did those things. Pretty funny.) . Photoshop put the diminishment of authenticity on the fast track and AI might finish the job.

[jnantz]

I care because AI can create false narratives that can be difficult to detect, leading to misinformation about current or even past events. Especially in this day and age of widespread misinformation and an increasingly polarized and gullible public willing to accept information that fits their (bubble) views.

isn't the problem a gullible public who seemingly refuses to be educated because only elitists are educated ?
the weekly world news' whole schtick was false narratives and that was 40 plus years ago
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weekly+wor...ges&iax=images
isn't the photograph of the woman whose surgeon cut her head off and sewed it back on as "authentic" as any other photograph ?
post cards of a jackelopes have been sold since forever ...

[Pieter]

isn't the problem a gullible public who seemingly refuses to be educated because only elitists are educated ?
the weekly world news' whole schtick was false narratives and that was 40 plus years ago
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weekly+wor...ges&iax=images
isn't the photograph of the woman whose surgeon cut her head off and sewed it back on as "authentic" as any other photograph ?
post cards of a jackelopes have been sold since forever ...

Not quite the same. AI photos can of course be of Jackelopes or ETs or 2-headed women, but they can also be of the Pope (or your spouse) fornicating with an 8-year old. And believable as authentic. It is going to come to the point where you just cannot trust a photo anymore. I know I look at a lot of the images I see online with a skeptical eye now, more so than before.

On the slightly brighter side for commercial photographers at least, a federal judge ruled that AI images cannot be copyrighted.

[Michael R]

isn't the problem a gullible public who seemingly refuses to be educated because only elitists are educated ?
the weekly world news' whole schtick was false narratives and that was 40 plus years ago
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weekly+wor...ges&iax=images
isn't the photograph of the woman whose surgeon cut her head off and sewed it back on as "authentic" as any other photograph ?
post cards of a jackelopes have been sold since forever ...

[MikeH]

There was case today, which, now I can't find, where a Federal judge ruled that AI can't be copyrighted if it's 100% generated by the computer... obviously, there are ways around this.

[jnantz]

Not quite the same. AI photos can of course be of Jackelopes or ETs or 2-headed women, but they can also be of the Pope (or your spouse) fornicating with an 8-year old. And believable as authentic. It is going to come to the point where you just cannot trust a photo anymore. I know I look at a lot of the images I see online with a skeptical eye now, more so than before.

On the slightly brighter side for commercial photographers at least, a federal judge ruled that AI images cannot be copyrighted.

it's taken until now to look at photographs with a skeptical eye ? they've never had anything to do with the truth from the moment it was invented anymore than Le Voyage dans La Lune really happened, it's on film ( or was ) after all. The sordid images you referred to were done 46 years ago and David Pe¢ker has the 8x10 negatives in the vault. I haven't told many people this but I took Elvis' portrait in 1983 when he was working at a Burger King across from Quonset Point. It was back when they still used a mic to call in the orders. He was southern-nice, looked aged like all the Weekly World News photos from the time, and he swiveled his hips when he called my order in, "whopper, small fries, uhhh". Unfortunately the film was water damaged so you'll just have to believe me, and since I made him, they transferred him to a different location ( he was in the WPP ).

[Tin Can]

Image

Imaging

Imagination




many of us are retired or should be

I am so glad NOW that I was discarded age 58

now close to 75


the end is near

as usual

[rdenney]

There was case today, which, now I can't find, where a Federal judge ruled that AI can't be copyrighted if it's 100% generated by the computer... obviously, there are ways around this.

The reason seems simple. A copyright isn’t attached to the work. It is what attaches the work to the holder of the “right”—the creator of the expression. Without a creator, who holds the right?

There is always a distance between the work and the creator. At some point, that distance becomes too great to confer the privileges of ownership. Pollack’s paint-can and brush shaker methods were deemed close enough—he created the machine with a specific outcome in mind (we can argue about how to describe that outcome). But the creators of the AI algorithms don’t have a specific outcome in mind—if they did, it wouldn’t be AI. The distance becomes too great.

But the case was, I’ll bet, not about the algorithm creator, but rather about the user who made the request. The case perhaps suggests that instructing a computer to make something does not confer copyright, unless the instruction is detailed enough (close enough) to provide the expression. The distance between the instruction and the product can’t be too great.

So, copyright is the same thing as the question of whether a photograph represents factual truth—the chain of creation has to be verified and verifiable to confer the origin of the image.

Rick “for whom photography is about the expression more than the product” Denney

[jnantz]

The reason seems simple. A copyright isn’t attached to the work. It is what attaches the work to the holder of the “right”—the creator of the expression. Without a creator, who holds the right?

There is always a distance between the work and the creator. At some point, that distance becomes too great to confer the privileges of ownership. Pollack’s paint-can and brush shaker methods were deemed close enough—he created the machine with a specific outcome in mind (we can argue about how to describe that outcome). But the creators of the AI algorithms don’t have a specific outcome in mind—if they did, it wouldn’t be AI. The distance becomes too great.

But the case was, I’ll bet, not about the algorithm creator, but rather about the user who made the request. The case perhaps suggests that instructing a computer to make something does not confer copyright, unless the instruction is detailed enough (close enough) to provide the expression. The distance between the instruction and the product can’t be too great.

So, copyright is the same thing as the question of whether a photograph represents factual truth—the chain of creation has to be verified and verifiable to confer the origin of the image.

Rick “for whom photography is about the expression more than the product” Denney

I wonder if someone made a digital negative and then a handmade print of that AI created algorithm-made image if someone could get a copyright of that.
sounds like there's money to be made making physical prints of AI generated art.. ( and memes ).
the author is dead!