Ansel Adams (Trust) picks a fight with Adobe

Alex Benjamin

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On Threads. Starts with Ansel (actually the Ansel Adams Trust) objecting to Adobe promising "AI generated Ansel Adams style photos."



Followed by:

 
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DREW WILEY

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From those generated samples, it's obvious that Ai hasn't acquired any real esthetic taste yet. In terms of phony AA imagery, even "Uncle Earl" had a better sense of composition. I wonder what Ai would do if you asked it to make a Gursky or Crewdson-like image - you'd need a wallpaper-sized printer, for sure. But which would look more fake?
 
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Alex Benjamin

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Poor composition is a minor issue. It can't compose precisely because its a composite of existing images. Hence why copyright is the major issue, and Ansel's beef with the company.
 

wiltw

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Ansel Adams died in 1984...is this supposedly communication with a legal entity which represents his estate?!
 

MFstooges

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Not only Ansel, I read somewhere that the new PS AI upsets a lot of photographers with their AI background too. It renders photographer as useless.
 

MFstooges

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wiltw said:
Ansel Adams died in 1984...is this supposed communication link with a legal entity which represents his estate?!
Click to expand...

It is in the original post : "(actually the Ansel Adams Trust)"
 
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Alex Benjamin

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MFstooges said:
It is in the original post : "(actually the Ansel Adams Trust)"
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And in the Ansel Adams post (emphasis mine) : "... stop putting the onus on individual artists/artists’ estates to continuously police our IP on your platform, on your terms. It’s past time to stop wasting resources that don’t belong to you."

As I mentioned earlier, there are major copyright issues at work. The mention of "IP" (intellectual property) makes that clear.

It's becoming more and more obvious that what AI is very non-artificially intelligent at is stealing other people's work.
 

Nicholas Lindan

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If you look closely - do the mountains have 6 fingers?

Horrid it may be right now, it will only get better with time. It is limited, though, to artwork available on the open internet. Maybe PhoTrio, LFPF & Co. should become closed shops. Aw, forget it, it would just pick the lock and get in anyway.

AI can only produce wannabe artwork, no matter how good it gets. Everything in its database is copyright/owned by somebody. I wonder what AI comes up with if it is asked to come up with a completely original image that has no link to any existing image. Something in it's N-dimensional space that no vector points to - the Bootes void of AI. Or does it just opt-out?

I wonder if we can hire Arnold Swarzenegger to come and take out the AIs. And what color pill are you supposed to take, I forget.
 

DREW WILEY

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Arnold's own Ai chip was melted down, along with him. Don't you remember that?

Alex - any copyright infringement would involve illicit use AA's name, which is legally owned by a trust. Thousands of AA wannabees have been making pseudo-Ansel photos for decades. But as mediocre as many of those might be, few are as downright corny as those tasteless over-the-top Ai examples.

None of this renders an intelligent perceptive photographer "useless". No machine has a soul. But it is probably already irreversibly changing the way most advertising imagery comes into being. It's not a very good time to seek a commercial graphic arts career, or even an honest photojournalist calling.
 
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Steven Lee

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MFstooges said:
It renders photographer as useless.
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A moist self-propelled tripod is not useless. But humans will have no business composing and chasing light in 2025+ The requirement for a warm body to be at the right spot at the right time to produce an image needed by a paying client has been fading away for a while now.

Once someone builds an AI-powered frame selector, we'll have drones feeding high-resolution video footage to other machines to pluck frames and post-process them to fit client desires. That's how composition, light, weather, and seasons will be implemented. When a drone won't fit, a moist self-propelled tripod will still be useful though.

It is the Ansel Adams foundation who is officially on my last nerve with their behavior, not Adobe.
 

MattKing

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I've tweaked the thread title.
And while for some purposes, entities like trusts may very well be treated in the same way as people, in many cases the legal expectations of the deceased are different .....
 

Sirius Glass

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Unfortunately the laws and controls over AI have not been developed fast enough. Abode has establish some level of self control.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
 

warden

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Alex Benjamin said:
On Threads. Starts with Ansel (actually the Ansel Adams Trust) objecting to Adobe promising "AI generated Ansel Adams style photos."

View attachment 371400

Followed by:

View attachment 371401
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This thread is reminding me to review Adobe‘s approach to making AI images and generative fill tools, which I use frequently. I was under the impression that they were training their AI system using their own stock image bank, but that might be wrong or could have changed.
 
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Alex Benjamin

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I also wondered about this. A later post by the Ansel Adams Trust made it clear that it was use of name, not of image, that they had problem with.


 

Don_ih

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Alex Benjamin said:
A later post by the Ansel Adams Trust made it clear that it was use of name, not of image, that they had problem with.
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At least in this instance. They did not rule out having a problem with Adams' images being the in the range of AI foraging. They said they have no problem with people being "inspired" by his photography. So, go take your own photos of large things in the western US - that's a-o-k. Just don't say they are Ansel-Adams-ish when you go to sell them. And probably don't get your computer to composite some mountain range from Ansel Adams' photos and claim it's original...

Total mess.
 

Sirius Glass

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While Adobe responded and removed the offending pages, it has failed to review all there threads, articles, sales items and put guard rails on there AI projects as well as appropriate notices on there articles, web pages and products.
 
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Alex Benjamin

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Alan Edward Klein

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jvo said:
tsk, tsk!

sadly, the US Supreme Court had ruled that corporations are people too!
Click to expand...

Corporations and trusts represent people who have a right to have their property protected from theft in a court of law.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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Getty Images is suing AI companies for infringement for using their stock photos to create new photos and train their AI generators. It's still in the courts. Companies like Getty are offering people to create AI photos - for a fee, which sounds like the right way of doing it. Owners would get a fee in the same way that their original photos could be used for a fee.

Where does Adobe get their stock photos to use in AI generation in their Photoshop, Lightroom, etc programs.? Maybe they made deals with companies like Getty to use their stock or directly with a trust like Adams.

Getty Images v. Stability AI | BakerHostetler

Lawsuit accusing Stability AI of infringing over 12 million photographs, captions and metadata for Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio.
www.bakerlaw.com
 
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