Can You Compete With Google?

[ReginaldSMith]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15973712/google-ai-research-street-view-panorama-photo-editing

Google's AI software was easily able to tackle making photographs out of crap, and able to compete with human photographers. This is just the first baby steps of what AI can do, and what Google will be able to do with the jillions of photos people are storing on their cloud.

Companies who sell stock will soon find themselves competing with a Google automaton that can generate any "photo" in a nanosecond at well, no cost really. For example, my wife buys stock all the time for her work. She typically enters a long list of keywords to help narrow the search of course. It won't be long before those keywords will simply be fed into Google's "photo-maker" and in a nanosecond, a photo will appear for a fraction of the cost of stock. Who cares? Publishers won't care, fashion magazines won't care, only the lowly guy who used to making a living shooting pictures. It will be hailed as massive progress of course, a huge boon to the publishing industry.

Of course, this will lead to a new, highly touted branch of "photography" wherein um, *cough* 'photographers' sit in front of a Google app typing in keywords as an artist would stroke his brush, creating new masterpieces - no clumsy cameras needed, thank you!

 

[ReginaldSMith]

And then this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...ts-photos-as-animals-with-creepy-results.html

What's fascinating is that none of the reportage even attempts to read between the lines. They just accept prima facie that all this "fun stuff" is why Google spends billions of dollars a year developing AI. No one reasons, imagines, guesses, or predicts what the world's most nefarious company might do with this behind the closed door.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

And then, getting to the real nut of it: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...rt-disease-looking-pictures-retina/344547002/

And watermarks are no challenge at all for AI. So, any image on the 'net is essentially fair game.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4803562/Google-AI-easily-erase-watermarks-photos.html

 

[faberryman]

I thought the stock photo business was dead already.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

I thought the stock photo business was dead already.

Nope.

 

[slackercrurster]

OP...I don't use Google like that. Google helps me with exposure of my work.

 

[removed account4]

the trick is not to upload imags to the web
and if you do, tag them all NSFW

 

[Sirius Glass]

the trick is not to upload imags to teh web
and if you do, tag them all NSFW

+1*1023!!!

 

[moose10101]

I thought the stock photo business was dead already.

It’s just pinin’ for the fjords.

 

[TheRook]

I thought the stock photo business was dead already.

Have a closer look at the annoying advertisement brochures you get in the mail. You will see many examples of stock photos being used.

 

[moose10101]

Have a closer look at the annoying advertisement brochures you get in the mail. You will see many examples of stock photos being used.

The stock business still exists, but the possibility of making decent money from it has shrunk drastically.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

My wife is in publishing for 35 years. She used to pay $1500 - $2500 for a photo for a book cover. Today, she pays less than $50 for the same thing.

 

[jvo]

as we get ever larger corporate behemoths looking to do it cheaper, people are fodder - when the elephant rolls over, some get crushed... , maybe they'll even say " oops!"

 

[blockend]

My wife is in publishing for 35 years. She used to pay $1500 - $2500 for a photo for a book cover. Today, she pays less than $50 for the same thing.

That's commercial photography in a nutshell. There are undoubtedly people out there who have monetised the photographic image to their advantage in the digital age, but the majority are not photographers.

 

[jtk]

My wife is in publishing for 35 years. She used to pay $1500 - $2500 for a photo for a book cover. Today, she pays less than $50 for the same thing.

Your wife isn't the enemy, though she's probably not helping photographers. Some photographers have agents and some agents find good assignments. The work is still out there, even though everybody thinks they're a photographer today. Saw that coming decades ago when architects generally lowered their standards for photographic work, accepting their own snaps.

I know people who are well-paid to make photos. They are called "professional photographers."

I think submitting photos to stock companies is a ripoff: some alleged "photographers" represent themselves as stock companies in order to make money off real, if misguided, photographers.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

My wife is just a cog in publishing. She doesn't drive prices, the publishers do. When they create a budget for a new book, art direction gets a portion of the budget. When photography was more rare, the budgets had to reflect the market and pictures had a lot of value. As I said, up to $2500 for limited rights to a premium photograph. But when micro-stock boom hit the marketplace and every owner of a digital camera became a stock photographer, the volume of images in the market exploded geometrically and the flood drove prices down to pennies. "Commodification" had hit photography and the injured parties were those who had made their living with superb photographs.

 

[jtk]

My wife is just a cog in publishing. She doesn't drive prices, the publishers do. When they create a budget for a new book, art direction gets a portion of the budget. When photography was more rare, the budgets had to reflect the market and pictures had a lot of value. As I said, up to $2500 for limited rights to a premium photograph. But when micro-stock boom hit the marketplace and every owner of a digital camera became a stock photographer, the volume of images in the market exploded geometrically and the flood drove prices down to pennies. "Commodification" had hit photography and the injured parties were those who had made their living with superb photographs.

Don't know what a "premium photograph" is, except use of that label means specifically that IS is a commodity. Basic marketing/economics. Seeing somebody as a "cog" makes them a commodity as well.

I doubt many self-respecting photographers have ever looked to book covers for their income... And I doubt many worthwhile publishers or their authors want stock photos anywhere in their work. Self respecting photographers want credit more than money from book covers, they make their money elsewhere.