The AI thread

[jnantz]

Was she ever taken to court over her appropriations? I know Walker Evans' estate bought all the copies from an exhibition to prevent their sale to anyone else and Sherrie ended up donating the rest of her Walker prints to the estate.

im not sure, but she made people think about what it is to be a photographer. people blatantly appropriate things all the time, and it's only someone who's connected/famous or soon to be famous, who get noticed for doing it.

I expect the defining issue that settles the definition of photography will be the making of an image with light. AI imagery does not involve light - period.

As for AI images being made from photographs - in essence, they are; other people's photographs, taken without permission in direct violation of copyright and Intellectual Property Rights. The companies generating the datasets for AI work are completely ignoring the fact that they are scraping the Internet for any and ALL images they can find, with ZERO attention to the fact that a percentage of images people have posted are copyrighted, protected from theft and misuse by IP Rights law. I'm having difficulty understanding why this fact doesn't generate serious concerns in this community.

it generates concern from me, believe me, I had my work stolen by a client years back and then they lied about how they came upon the work and screwed me out of a very large sum of money ( and I learned years later they did it to a lot of people ).. my main question or maybe misunderstanding is if an AI based image is created using 10 or 100 key words, and no specific element/s of the generated image is a specific photograph that is identifiable as mine or yours or someone else's, but somehow the program used the images to give it a better understanding to make a new image, what's the difference between that and somebody with a 8x10 camera searching for someone's tripod holes and making a photograph in the style of someone they admire, or whose work they want to rip off or clone, other than the fact that the person was there, and the light reflected off the subject matter onto a light sensitive material to make a negative or positive or whatever ... I get one difference is the person was physically there and it's an index, but the images that were scraped for visual food that were used to vomit up the AI image were also indexed images and they were reformulated into something new through the "memory" of the program. do people who steal other people's tripod holes, see someone's images online or in a book or whatever and decide to make /emulate images using someone else's IP ( their technique, their style, image content &c ) get in trouble for basically stealing ? I mean there are a lot of threads on a lot of websites that say " how does so and so do this image, I'd love to make images like this", .. in my eyes there really is no difference other than one thing is a thing that someone feeds key words into and they use it's "memory" and the other is a person who is fed images through their eyes and copies someone else's work.. ..

[Alan Klein]

You can copyright writing. You can copyright artwork, photographs, any image at all. No one except a bunch of photo nerds cares whether AI generated images are photos or not. The sticking point is whether something generated by a computer program without human intervention beyond word prompts is copyrightable. I guess that would apply to text, too, "written" by something like Chat GTP.

This is an interesting question. Copyrights are only given to human produced work. The courts recently ruled that an AI generated photo cannot received the copyright when it was submitted to the copyright office. So, the question becomes, if a computer alone created the image, then no copyright could be granted. It seems that it would have to come from other photographs but that would raise another question, can you copyright a new photo if it is an amalgam of numerous other copyrighted photos. Probably on the basis it is a new design or interpretation. All these things will have to be hashed out in the legal system to get clarifications. Further Congressional legislation may be required to clarify these things to avoid confusion.

[Alan Klein]

im not sure, but she made people think about what it is to be a photographer. people blatantly appropriate things all the time, and it's only someone who's connected/famous or soon to be famous, who get noticed for doing it.




it generates concern from me, believe me, I had my work stolen by a client years back and then they lied about how they came upon the work and screwed me out of a very large sum of money ( and I learned years later they did it to a lot of people ).. my main question or maybe misunderstanding is if an AI based image is created using 10 or 100 key words, and no specific element/s of the generated image is a specific photograph that is identifiable as mine or yours or someone else's, but somehow the program used the images to give it a better understanding to make a new image, what's the difference between that and somebody with a 8x10 camera searching for someone's tripod holes and making a photograph in the style of someone they admire, or whose work they want to rip off or clone, other than the fact that the person was there, and the light reflected off the subject matter onto a light sensitive material to make a negative or positive or whatever ... I get one difference is the person was physically there and it's an index, but the images that were scraped for visual food that were used to vomit up the AI image were also indexed images and they were reformulated into something new through the "memory" of the program. do people who steal other people's tripod holes, see someone's images online or in a book or whatever and decide to make /emulate images using someone else's IP ( their technique, their style, image content &c ) get in trouble for basically stealing ? I mean there are a lot of threads on a lot of websites that say " how does so and so do this image, I'd love to make images like this", .. in my eyes there really is no difference other than one thing is a thing that someone feeds key words into and they use it's "memory" and the other is a person who is fed images through their eyes and copies someone else's work.. ..

"Fair use" doctrine allows reinterpretation of existing copyrighted work. So it seems to be legal to stick your tripod in someone else holes. Remember too, that only gets you to the place. Lighting conditions are never the same from one shot to another. So we're all reinterpreting work done by others whether we stick our tripods in holes or not. Of course, if your picture really duplicates an existing photo, you could be sued. And you never know whether the court will rule against you. Better to make your own tripod holes.

[Alan Klein]

I expect the defining issue that settles the definition of photography will be the making of an image with light. AI imagery does not involve light - period.

As for AI images being made from photographs - in essence, they are; other people's photographs, taken without permission in direct violation of copyright and Intellectual Property Rights. The companies generating the datasets for AI work are completely ignoring the fact that they are scraping the Internet for any and ALL images they can find, with ZERO attention to the fact that a percentage of images people have posted are copyrighted, protected from theft and misuse by IP Rights law. I'm having difficulty understanding why this fact doesn't generate serious concerns in this community.

Getty is suing AI manufacturers just for this reason. It's in the courts right now I believe both in Europe and the US. Getty claims the AI companies are scraping the web for copyrighted pictures they don't own. Getty (as does Adobe) are offering Ai services where you can assemble your AI photo from other photos owned by Getty and Adobe. That seems to be legal and available sources.

[BrianShaw]

Alan, for clarification… isn’t the fight over other people/entities/AI usage of Getty photos without paying usage licensing fees to Getty? My understanding is that it’s the revenue loss that is the concern. Slightly different consideration than copyright ownership, but obviously related.

After all, the stock image firms exist to turn a profit by licensed usage of their catalog content. And I assume the same is true of the humans who created the content of their catalog.

When Getty, for instance, offers AI services based on their inventory of images they can internally address usage licensing and royalty obligation issues.

[angusparker]

Alan, for clarification… isn’t the fight over other people/entities/AI usage of Getty photos without paying usage licensing fees to Getty? My understanding is that it’s the revenue loss that is the concern. Slightly different consideration than copyright ownership, but obviously related.

After all, the stock image firms exist to turn a profit by licensed usage of their catalog content. And I assume the same is true of the humans who created the content of their catalog.

When Getty, for instance, offers AI services based on their inventory of images they can internally address usage licensing and royalty obligation issues.

Yes, but other artists (for example screenwriters, authors, actors etc.) are saying that the AI algorithms are scraping content made by them and then reinterpreting it to create new content. This is beyond fair use and it does not either acknowledge the original human content creator or renumerate them. The recent SAG/writers strike was to a large part about AI, because the last time around during negotiations the studios absolutely screwed over artists in regards to residuals from streaming.

The logical conclusion is pretty much what happened during the transition from film to digital - many professionals with high levels of technical skill were replaced by amateurs and the margins compressed. This time around the remaining professionals in the digital space will be replaced by computers. For example, I suspect that weddings will shortly be "filmed" by small 360-degree film cameras (with social media images used as supplements) and any image that a person desires will be able to be created from the footage. If the 360-degree cameras are ubiquitous in the venue there will be no need for photographers at all. Venue design with better lighting and "camera traps" or funnels to herd people through will be the new job created!

[Pieter]

This is an interesting question. Copyrights are only given to human produced work. The courts recently ruled that an AI generated photo cannot received the copyright when it was submitted to the copyright office. So, the question becomes, if a computer alone created the image, then no copyright could be granted. It seems that it would have to come from other photographs but that would raise another question, can you copyright a new photo if it is an amalgam of numerous other copyrighted photos. Probably on the basis it is a new design or interpretation. All these things will have to be hashed out in the legal system to get clarifications. Further Congressional legislation may be required to clarify these things to avoid confusion.

Is this image copyrightable?



I believe it is already and I may be in violation by posting it here.

[Pieter]

"Fair use" doctrine allows reinterpretation of existing copyrighted work. So it seems to be legal to stick your tripod in someone else holes. Remember too, that only gets you to the place. Lighting conditions are never the same from one shot to another. So we're all reinterpreting work done by others whether we stick our tripods in holes or not. Of course, if your picture really duplicates an existing photo, you could be sued. And you never know whether the court will rule against you. Better to make your own tripod holes.

Sidebar:
I may have posted this before, but when I was working I purchased the rights to a photograph directly from a photographer. When the ad was published, there was a nasty cease and desist or pay up note from Getty (with whom we did an enormous amount of business). It turned out that the photographer licensed one frame through Getty, but still had other frames from the same shoot that he kept for himself. Needless to say he vas very apologetic upon getting caught (he stated that he had forgotten he had given that shot to Getty), refunded the fee and let Getty collect their rate. I believe he and Getty parted ways soon after. Of course today he could have sold the same digital file to multiple clients--totally legit depending on the rights purchased.

[BrianShaw]

The fair use defense being used by Stability AI is nothing short of a despicable desperation defense. It’s chickenshit. I can’t believe that they think it’s legitimate.

[Alan Klein]

Alan, for clarification… isn’t the fight over other people/entities/AI usage of Getty photos without paying usage licensing fees to Getty? My understanding is that it’s the revenue loss that is the concern. Slightly different consideration than copyright ownership, but obviously related.

After all, the stock image firms exist to turn a profit by licensed usage of their catalog content. And I assume the same is true of the humans who created the content of their catalog.

When Getty, for instance, offers AI services based on their inventory of images they can internally address usage licensing and royalty obligation issues.

To clarify, Getty's lawsuits were about AI companies scrapping the internet for pictures to train their computer on the AI process. Not necessarily using them to produce and sell photos. So, the trial is whether just the use of these photos to train AI company's computers is a violation of copyright law.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/othe...ia/ar-AA1hvKWY

Quote: ... The company currently has several open lawsuits involving generative AI programs, asking for them to be banned – the issue that Getty has with these developers being how their AI was trained.

Many AI-generating programs were trained to absorb data from all images on the internet, regardless of copyright and usage policies. Although the software would not generate any replica of copyrighted material, it still used copyrighted material as its foundation. ..."