Gallery photos: size limit, and should we allow AI content?

[koraks]

But this ingestion by LLMs is a violation of my IP Rights, and violates Flickr’s Copyright settings as determined by me.

I do think it is "so complex and abstract these companies can essentially get away with it".

Is scraping and training data not simply a new technique of copyright infringing?

I think what's missing in the (admittedly selectively quoted) statements above is the notion that legislation, including copyright legislation, simply does not yet allow for this new form of re-use of existing information that sits somewhere in-between replication and generation. Of course, we can blame tech corporations for exploiting that legislative void. Much like biological life, business (=ultimately people like you & me) finds a way to occupy each available niche - and often even the unavailable ones. We can lament the situation, and perhaps ultimately that might even contribute to some form of change. Who knows.

So to the managers of this forum I ask: is this a site about photography? Or will there be an asterisk on the end of Photrio in the future?

I think I've already explained multiple times what this discussion is about, what the options are and why we're considering them. The notion that the scope of this forum is somewhat fluid is not new and there are ample precedents on the forum. Recently people moved to include 3D printing to the scope because it can relate (through e.g. darkroom trinkets, camera repairs etc.) to photography. Chemigrams I've mentioned several times. We have the Lounge where a variety of topics is being discussed. In fact, the forum accommodates discussion on virtually everything save for a couple of contentious areas of subject matter that we have known to cause problems in the past. AI has already been part of the scope for something like a month in the form of a dedicated subforum and we've seen threads on AI attract hundreds of posts over the past year or so. The notion that at some point imagery would be added to that mix is just an obvious consequence. We're trying to determine how to deal with that. We do that by listening to you, by trying as well as we can to think/project ahead, and somewhere in the process we also have to deal with the constant barrage of psychological threats and dogmatic yelling that's being thrown around. We do our best.

My position is it can be discussed in this subforum "AI in Photography and Other Arts" or if someone wants to create a group in the social groups area they can.

There you go; there's a corner where people can explore AI within the greater scope of Photrio and that corner is easily ignored by anyone who's offended by it. If you don't like it, look away. There's no proposal, intent or plan to shove anything down anyone's throat.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I think the consensus is, and always has been on this forum, that AI-gen imagery is not photography. However, as I've said several times already, this is not the question at hand. With all due respect @MurrayMinchin and others who continue to debate this issue - I believe it's a waste of time. Nobody here disagrees with you. We don't have to establish that 'promptography' (hah!) is not photography. We already did that.
On a sidenote - no, @cirwin2010, chemigrams do not involve light. So we do have a precedent (albeit a very marginal one) in something other than photography being included integrally in the scope of this forum.

The assumption is apparently that Photrio is focused exclusively on photography as we know it, and that this scope is constant. The question at hand is whether we want that scope to be static, or whether we want to allow it to follow (to an extent) the developments in the real world. I notice a couple of arguments against this - arguments that have underlying sentiments, expectations and concerns that to a large extent I share. I would like to comment on a few of these.

In doing so, I want to emphasize that there's no concrete plan or proposal towards expanding the inclusion of AI in the forum as it is now. There is the subforum that @Sean already linked to. That's all we've got for now. A loose idea would be to have a similar thing in the Gallery where we could perhaps create a sub-Gallery specifically for AI-gen content, with that content not appearing in de sidebar etc. That's all we have in terms of a proposal - which is basically nothing. There's no proposal, no plan, no 'new deal'. At this point, all we have is an open discussion.

I notice that there's a stream of thought rising that the idea to "do something with AI" somehow traces to a desire for 'maximum engagement' (@retina_restoration, earlier also expressed by @Alan Johnson). I want to be very clear on this: the fact that we bring up this question is 100% responsive to what we see happening on the forum. The very recent trigger was the upload of some AI-gen images to the gallery. We have also seen previous threads with lengthy discussion on AI. Apparently there's an interest in AI - albeit that this interest is for many not necessarily a keen one. The tricky bit for us is to figure out to what extent within the present Photrio demographic there is a desire to discuss/view/create AI-gen content.

Gauging this potential interest is apparently tricky in itself because of the deep concerns among some of our participants. There's one concern I'd like to address:

"AI will flood the forum" or "corrupt the essence of the meaning of the forum" (@Taylor Nankervis on the latter quote).
I really don't think so for a couple of reasons:
1: We're not going to allow it under any circumstance. Everyone here recognizes the value of the in-depth discussion on Photrio, and nobody in their right mind would want to somehow harm that. So if we're going to put the door ajar to AI-gen content, it will remain limited to designated places in the forum and included in such a way that forum users can ignore it (e.g. by ignoring a subforum about AI and/or by deselecting specific tags).
2: This extends to our demographic. If we allow some form of AI-talk, this doesn't automatically mean Photrio will become a supermagnet for AI-afficionados. Looking at new registrations in the present day, we see mostly people joining us with an interest in (also) analog photography. Why? Because that's where we have critical mass. That balance is not going to flip overnight. Communities just don't work that way. They grow organically.
3: Given the scope of most of our sub-forums, it just doesn't invite any AI-gen content. If you have a thread on let's say how to best develop TMAX100, there's just no sensible reason to start ditching AI images into that thread. It turns out that people just don't do that. They don't start talking about the best recipe for chili all of a sudden. They don't start dumping AI images into a thread all of a sudden.
4: Conversely, if you make a dedicated place for AI-gen content, this acts as a shunt for whatever tendency/need/desire to discuss/show that sort of content. If any AI-gen content ends up in a non-AI place, we can always move it. Moving something is also generally appreciated more by the person who posted something than seeing their stuff deleted outright.

Overall, I think if we include AI in the scope of the forum, it will be much like how we deal with digital. It'll be a limited component, there will be some opportunity for people to play with it on the forum, and for those who don't want to be involved in it, it'll mostly remain hidden.

For now, we see a very vocal subset of the population voice their concerns. It's not clear whether that sentiment is representative of the majority, and whether we should even focus on a majority to begin with in any decision-making that may follow. The alt. printing crowd is a small subset of the population and we cater to them as well. This seems to work without being detrimental to other parts of the forum. We could do the same with AI.

Finally, I'd like to observe that the AI subforum that @Sean mentions has been around for something like a month now. People haven't even noticed. Nobody filed a report. Nobody cried wolf when it was created. Apparently, it can co-exist quite peacefully with the rest of it.

I think that is a reasonable solution for now. One thing that will come up though, is that AI is already being used as a tool to improve editing programs like Photoshop. For example, rather than manually eliminating dust spots on scans, the program automatically does it with the AI tool. I think that would be a legitimate use of AI, just as sliders are used currently to adjust exposure values. So there will be posts regarding how some are using AI to edit and those posts should be allowed.

 

[koraks]

I think that would be a legitimate use of AI, just as sliders are used currently to adjust exposure values. So there will be posts regarding how some are using AI to edit and those posts should be allowed.

Yes, I agree and so far I've not noticed any resistance to discussion or mention of such features. So I trust this particular avenue is not associated with the same ideological/fundamental objections that we have to contend with when it comes to truly generative AI. Thanks for adding this nuance; I think it's very sensible.

 

[retina_restoration]

Site owner here. To be clear again as the thread meanders, there is no proposal by the site, so no 'vote' is needed.

My position is it can be discussed in this subforum "AI in Photography and Other Arts" or if someone wants to create a group in the social groups area they can. My position is that 100% AI generated 'promptography' is out of scope here, but not banned from this particular subforum. I think that gives any members interested in it the ability to discuss it within the community or post promptographs in a thread within this subforum.

Thank you Sean.
That's fine by me. As long as I don't have to look at Promptography when I come here, I'm okay with that. I come to Photrio to escape the wider world of image-making, where encountering the worst promptography has to offer is now unavoidable.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The are copyright lawsuits regarding AI underway that will define what's allowed and what's not allowed. It extends beyond photos to books, Hollywood movies, and other products.

AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuits – Autumn Update - GrayZone, Inc.

Legal action by creators, publishers, labels, and other entities against AI companies for copyright infringement continues unabated. Following is a round-up of settlements, statuses, and new lawsuits since the summer. Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement This class-action lawsuit brought against AI...

grayzone.com

There are about 60 lawsuits currently underway around the world. Here are two of them, including one with Getty Images.

MSN

 

[retina_restoration]

I think what's missing in the (admittedly selectively quoted) statements above is the notion that legislation, including copyright legislation, simply does not yet allow for this new form of re-use of existing information that sits somewhere in-between replication and generation.

Actually I did imply this when stating (regarding Flickr's stance on AI scraping): "they know what’s happening to their users work, but there is no legal path forward to prevent this kind of abuse".

 

[4season]

AFAIK, lack of originality is baked into the current AI learning models, because they have no way of experiencing the world in their own terms, only via the content we feed them. For creative works, that's a problem. For now, I think AI's real strength lies elsewhere, particularly in applications which rely on pattern recognition.

 

[mshchem]

TL;DR My point isn't that "AI" is good or bad or if it's photography or not. It's that it's close enough and also such a threat that to not include it and the discussions around it makes no sense.

I'm a "mature" student undertaking a Photography degree. I've used film for years from 35mm to 7x17" ULF and I've used digital also including medium format digital. The point of doing the degree is not to learn how, I know a lot of that already. The point is to learn why? With that in mind, Post Photography is a hugely fascinating area of photography that interests me. Mishka Henner's use of Google Street View and Google Earth is amazing. Most people would accept they are photographs, just not originally his. He didn't take them, he sat at his computer, for hours, searching for the compositions he wants, for the themes and projects he wanted and crafted a collection of images that suited. He edited those to produce his work.

(As an aside: 3D Google Earth are not "real" photographs, there are generated from a database of multiple data sources: Satelite Photographs, LIDAR, RADAR, GIS infomation).

Phillip Toledano created a project called We Are At War. It imagines the lost Capa images from D-Day, using "AI". Sacrilege I hear you cry. It's presented in the form of a newspaper, contact sheets and prints. What's the point of that? For me, it raises questions, as good art should do. About war, about truth, about photography, about AI. Importantly is not merely easily "AI" generated images that are meaningless. It's used in a considered, artistic context to prompt discussion.

For my Photography degree, I recently did a project producing physical postcards using "AI" generated imagery from extracts of W. G. Sebalds The Rings of Saturn with associated "AI" generated postcard text on the rear. I've submitted these to a traditional Art Gallery of some standing in my region and they have accepted them. To quote the curator "We particularly liked, though were somewhat discomfited by, the AI postcards.". I'm not claiming these are photographs, I'm just showing that people need to have an open mind and discuss where this kind of creative work sits.

The Rings of Hallucination

W.G.Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn is a seminal piece of writing. Ground breaking in it’s style and approach. To do it a complete injustice, it’s a narrative of a walk around the co…

andrewkeedle.com

Finally, Gemini can now flow an image through a series of "AI" edits. If the original was a photograph is the final result one also or not?
Original is B&W film with a Fujifilm GW670
Second is colourised using Gemini
Third is made to look like Autumn using Gemini

View attachment 412585 View attachment 412586 View attachment 412587

I don't know where the boundaries are. I just know that I need to try understand what it can do, what threat it is and also what use it is.

Just my 2 penny worth

All interesting stuff!

 

[mshchem]

AI is just another form of a Graphic expression. The D Day art looks like a comic book to me, graphic novels. Which is ok,can be great. Not photography.