A new style of photography is suddenly popping up all over the web. It features very exotic (mostly female) human constructs in equally exotic and near perfect backgrounds. The images are mostly convincing as photographs but they are constructed by computer programs using artificial intelligence. I also see many portraits on Instagram of (mostly female) models that look almost perfect but in many cases there is something just enough "off" to cue one to dig deeper to see just how the images were made. Eyes and skin too perfect, the proportions just a bit off, etc. ( A program reminder that most modern entertainment technology evolves first in the pornography spaces...).
Programs such as DALL-E, Mid-Journey and Stable Diffusion work by translating textural descriptions (shit people write....) into illustrations which directly mimic photographs. People are essentially describing what they would like to see, entering it into one of the popular programs and then looking at the many iterations the programs quickly generate, choosing one of the images and then tweaking it in post production.
How did the programs become "smart enough" about photography to get to the point where they can do this? Easy, they stole your photographs off the internet, along with the photographs created by hundreds of millions of other photographs, then analyzed them endlessly and used the analysis to and create content fabricated from bits and pieces; constructs based on similarities and bits of direct appropriation. Classic machine learning, I think. But the companies that are making this sort of AI software were totally dependent on gaps in current property and copyright laws to be able to steal our work and use it to program these "weapons" which will, almost surely, devastate the commercial markets for photography going forward. You can try to explain it all away or protest that I am being an alarmist but I think, as photographers, we're facing an existential inflection point that will make the market disruption caused by "penny stock" photography back in the 1990s look like a very minor blip.
Should you care? Not if you don't care about original human art, the theft of private property, the appropriation of human work, and the ability of advertisers and corporations to create alternate realities with which to more intrusively manipulate your reactions to their products and their process of "appropriating" copyrighted materials to strip you of wealth, security and stability while showcasing damagingly unreal body and facial construct images to your children and grandchildren with devastating psychological results. If you don't care you can just go along for the ride.
Being able to create images that look like real photographs just from written descriptions creates new weapons for bad operators to create convincing deep fakes, near endless political misinformation, destructive propaganda and even worse things. And make no mistake, the same technology is coming for video. Soon bad actors/terrorists/governments will be able to "create" news events that never happened, speeches from trusted leaders which were never spoken, never actually delivered, and all will be used in the service of stripping away your money and your rights.
But the first victims will be creative artists. Creative visual artists.
Popular photo websites backed by international corporations will jump in soon to "make it all okay." They'll extoll how much fun you too could be having by using the programs to "create new art." But the sad coda to that campaign of getting people to love their own creative destruction will be the demise of the jobs of those people writing about how great generative AI is right now. Once they convince enough of the population that we shouldn't care about the bad effects of unrestricted generative AI they'll be as disposable as the rest and a new generation of highly refined ChatGBT and other AI applications will take their places. Their jobs. Their pulpits. And why not? If you were a leader in a mega-corporation wouldn't you love to replace a gaggle of writers and editors with robot writers that never get tired? Never push back when you ask them to work in the absence of morals and ethics? When their primary mission is to extend the power and reach of their owners by manipulating content.
At the point where we lose control of the creative process and abdicate our rights to own and control our personal creative content it sure won't matter if Sony cameras AF the quickest or Fuji has the nicest color science because our robot overlords will no longer need us to use actual cameras and lenses to make more material; more data points for study. And that hobby/profession/fun pastime will disappear. And then we can skulk back to our homes and watch more TV. Or continue to cruise the web. The programming for which will also be generated by artificial intelligence with the sole purpose of controlling human thought, individual action and ultimately channeling cultural momentum. A dream scenario for authoritarians.
Fun times ahead. Of course this is just my take, pre-coffee. Let the apologists for misguided technology push back in the comments. I'd be interested to see how deeply the robots and their masters have implanted their rationalizations into the general population...
Gotta stop watching Transformer movies...
17 comments:
I have been a technologist in higher education for over 30 years. I am also a photographer and poet. I You are 100% dead on in your take and I couldn’t more strongly agree. It amazes me how we can overlook this existential turn in the name of advancing cool tech.
“The first victims will be creative artists.” Indeed, and fast.
The next victim (after those victimized by the deep faked, misinformed, bad acting propogandists, I guess): Art itself.
When the now stolen corpus of original art and language that is used to produce AI-generated content is replaced by…..AI-generated content, what original thought is left? It will (quickly) be like a snake eating its tail. When all the snake has to eat is its tail, then no more snake.
I agree, but what can we do about it? Who is going to put the bell on the cat?
Protest loud and long. Write to the pols. Sound the alarms.
I have been a fine art photographer for many years, and I am going broke.
First there was the optimization of monitors to be bold, bright, and colorful. This created a new aesthetic; read the argument here: http://mpcaaca.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/PCSJ_v4_12.pdf
The word "towards" in the title could now be omitted.
Pretty soon the demarcation between photographs and digital art began to blur (or, more accurately, over-sharpen) with overbright and oversaturated images becoming the on-line norm. You don't get as much of that effect with reflected light (eg, prints) compared with transmissive light (e.g., screens).
Now even the borderline, never utterly clear, between photography and digital art is pretty well wiped out.
As a photographer, I am a romantic realist: I photograph what I see, what I feel, and what it may mean to a viewer. https://glaciersinretreat.com
Enter the robots. So long as they lack souls, a deep education, and emotions, they will only be mimics. We don't need them.They are, I hope, a fad and not our replacements.
The mysterious ingredient I'm calling "soul" is something AI has not yet achieved. But popular taste has gone all-in for the screen based aesthetic, and that puts the rest of us in a bind.
My peers report falling income across the board. It's disheartening but seems inevitable that change will change.
1984
Kirk, you're worried about the wrong thing. https://friedmanarchives.blogspot.com/2023/01/ai-alarmists-are-worried-about-wrong.html
I fear Kirk that your ominous premonitions will (mostly) come true.
We live in a world where tech (internet!) is running amok over our traditional values and sensibilities )-;
Whatever happened to enlightened common sense and the pursuit of truth/wisdom?
I work for the corporate parent of a large news organization as one of "a gaggle of writers and editors," and noticed that the implications of machine learning tools like ChatGPT were on a number of people's minds during a recent "town hall" style zoom meeting with execs. And for good reason, imho.
First, some jobs were outsourced to domestic contractors. Then some more jobs were offshored to corporate subsidiaries in Asia or elsewhere. And soon more work will be performed by AI computers. Let the formerly-employed and the soon-to-be-unemployed eat cake? The only thing is, if fewer and fewer people are employed / employable, who is going to be coming up with the spending money to continue enriching our overlords?
But I think the bigger fear will / should be what AI and deep fakes will do in the hands of the next power-hungry, fascist, wanna-be-king politician?
Ken
What will happen when AI images flood the web and become part of the dataset for AI image creation?
"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
-- Douglas Adams
A pulpit. Now there’s a thought. Perhaps I could use one of those, powered by an AI thinkbot to make up for my utter lack of anything worth preaching. A new dawn is breaking…
By the way, did you know there’s a guy offering an online course in how to use AI platforms to write short books which then can be voiced by AI voicebots and offered for sale on Audible?
The theory seems to be that a proprietary (meaning you pay for it) form of Google search will produce an irresistible set of titles based on trending search topics, plus an infinite stack of golden-oldies evergreens. An AI service will spit forth the compelling prose needed for an audiobook recording. You, the author, may then pay next to nothing to have it turned into audio by a voicebot - or get it done for free by contracting with one of thousands of would-be narrators willing to work for the “royalty share” arrangement offered through ACX, Audible’s online meeting place for authors and voice talent.
Somewhere, someone is reaching for his credit card…
Here are a few random thoughts that have shared conflicted space between these two ears of mine - obviously take it for what it's worth
We all know what happened when photography took over from painting back in the 1800's, right? The subtle pre-photoshop lies of art were laid bare by the pimply, saggy fleshy, rotund truth-telling of photography.
Folks living in the US seem these days to be very comfortable with lies. Cherry picking from things that confirm their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs while accepting lies rebranded as "alternative truth" (or whatever people call such things now). What is "AI" image making but a lie built on copy-written (perhaps photoshopped) works? I don't think most people will care how an image was generated.
I wonder where the similar gnashing of teeth was when surprisingly large segments of the fashion industry went to CGI? How many fashion photographers have been displaced and are now having to find something else to do?
Where was the similar gnashing of teeth when Sports Illustrated tossed career sports photographers out on the street and told them to "sign this contract" and go buy your own gear?
What is the actual state of cash on the barrel-head photography these days? Who is actually paying for what? How are viewers consuming images? To what purpose?
I don't think we as humans have yet learned how to manage the unintended fall-out of these kinds of computer product shifts. As I write this I'm thinking of how long it took for humans to grapple with changes that came from writing, book reproduction, radio, TV, and the internet.
Current "AI" softwares are _not_ artificially intelligent. What is a computer actually learning? To illustrate this point, ask a supposed "AI" a basic physics question. From what I read 90 percent of the answers are wrong. No, the currently marketed concept of "AI" is not what it's claimed to be. File this under the heading of "smoke and mirrors."
While this debate remains active, we may get some breathing room and a bit of time to debate this stuff further if those companies that scraped copyright materials are sued into oblivion.
I'm very fortunate to not have to make a living at image making, and, so, photography is simply an avid pursuit where I can give zero flying fekks about what's happening in the avant-gard artsy hipster in-crowd world.
As a former chapter president of the ASMP I can assure you that we were loud and engaged in each of the events you mentioned above. The problem is that professionals are a tiny proportion of the total market. It's the people not affected who didn't give a feek.
We've (ASMP) fought for the copyright and for property rights since at least the 1960's. Did I see you on the ramparts as well?
"... Did I see you on the ramparts as well?"
Funny you should ask. Well, yes, you might very well have.
After a career in technology that included advising legal council on copyright, intellectual property, and licensing matters, I came to realize you need a "lever", or nothing will ever change.
Which is why I suggest that if you really want to slow down this "AI" insanity you need a lever and that lever might very well be copyright. It also helps to have a legal system that will hear and then rule in your favor on legitimate copyright claims against the Bag Guys.
I'm curious, how did your ASMP efforts at keeping photographers employed work out?
Getty Images is suing at least one of the chatbot services for using its images to train its AI. I doubt copyright law is going to help in the long term, but it will be useful whenever a chatbot coughs up enough of a recognizable image.
As a nearly lifelong technologist I can tell you that we're at the doorstep of the most significant technology paradigm shift since the introduction of the microprocessor. It is impossible to predict the arc of AI and ML and the effect it will have on culture and society, but I do strongly agree with one of your sentiments (fears?), it absolutely will be leveraged by corporate and political entities to manipulate populations. I just hope all the shiny baubles don't distract us from the truly important goals of trying to wrangle our climate altering bad behaviors and exploring our way across our solar system to ensure that humanity has a future beyond this very pretty but increasingly smaller rock.
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