Author Topic: MASSIVE ACTION NEEDED - we are closing stock accounts of image thieves (Read 2657 times)

Mifornia · « **Reply #25 on:** January 26, 2024, 11:10 »

Quote from: cobalt on January 26, 2024, 03:19

They take your descriptions on ADOBE and feed them into midjourney. And many of them have public accounts, so now the prompt and the resulting image are publicly visible.

Even if your midjourney account is private, your descriptions on Adobe are public. Hence my suggestion to adjust your descriptions so it will not generate a copy on midjourney.

A lot of ai people just copy each other, what you think are copies from your port might be an endless stream of copies from people copying others.

I now have extremely generic prompts "Beautiful easter eggs with copy space" but nothing special that will generate a duplicate.

They can still take a screen shot and ask midjourney for a description. But when I tried that with my own images, the results were very different photos.

I used to have copy cats on istock, especially when istock marked high selling images with little flames. As soon as one of my new images got a flame it was copied by at least 10 ports.

And while I do "simple still life" with easter eggs and flowers, the precise composition can make the difference between earning thousands of dollars or nothing. It often takes me a whole day in studio for 2-3 really, really good images.

I understand the frustration with copy cats. But your first post was not very helpful, sorry.

Adjusting your descriptions is the only useful suggestion I have. Some people also add slightly misleading keywords in the title. It still describes the image, but will generate something very different with midjourney.

My description for that image will not result in a prompt that will resemble my bestseller image, since it was mostly hand-drawn. (I tried it after I’ve read your post) But “describe” eventually will.

However , I tried it on my MJ generated images and you are correct, even I don’t put prompts as my description, if description is detailed, v6 now easy spits out very similar images. Good to know not to put detailed descriptions.

Good point about misleading words as well, I didn’t think of that. I also see some bestsellers from others with a 3 word descriptions, does description even counts? Or it’s mostly keywords?

So it seems, (mostly) hand-drawn illustrations do have at least that going for them, not easily copied … for now.

Mifornia · « **Reply #26 on:** January 26, 2024, 11:27 »

Quote from: Her Ugliness on January 26, 2024, 06:43

While this is very unfortunate that this is happening and while I actually 100% believe this to be true (have seen to many AI images that had the exact same title as other people's photos), I do not believe there is anything you can do about it or Adobe will do anything about it.
The stance of microstock agencies has always been that it was completely okay to steal other people's ideas.

I know this from the past when people came here showing illustrations/vectors that were copied. It even happend to me once myself. People take other people's artwork, basically redraw it with minor changes and submit it. And in some cases there were way too many almost identical illustrations in the ports for it to be a coincidence only.
I know that whenever the contributors complained to the agencies the reply from the agencies where that there was nothing wrong with this. Stock agencies only consider it theft when an exact image is stolen, but don't care when the image idea, title or keywords are stolen.

It has always been very upsetting and of course it's even more upsetting now. At leats with illustrations the thieves "only" stole the idea, but still had to do some work. Now AI does all the work and other people just leech off other peoples' real work.

Thank you for this detailed explanation. Ok, I get it now. The only solace that when so many people copy a bestseller, it becomes a tiny-seller for them as well, yet it brought me good money (I clicked on their accounts and it’s not even on their first pages)

Ugh, the most thing that I enjoy is to think of new ideas, that’s why I can only submit 2-10 images per day, unlike 50-100. It’s the process of seeing my idea on “paper” (IPad now) that brings the most pleasure and frustration if I can’t transfer it to paper.

Processing images in Lightroom, doing healing brush, uploading, keywording, is my least favorite task. With MJ, it’s the longest tasks now, and with BFA in Fine Arts it’s a very sad reality. I really need to find another outlet…

cobalt · « **Reply #27 on:** January 26, 2024, 13:21 »

2-10 files a day if they are really good quality and widely useful is more than enough to build a very good income.

I have seen people with less than 1000 photos making more than 10k a month. For years.

While the environment has changed from 10 years ago, portfolios where literally EVERY SINGLE FILE is a true bestseller quality will greatly outsell all those ports with 70k files filled with 1000s of extreme similars.

You can read that in various groups, new ai producers with 50k+ files cannot even make a weekly payout.

All agencies promote "efficient" portfolios, i.e. with a good factor of sales to portfolio size.

If you just have volume but no sales, you will sink your own boat.

So best of luck to you. If you have great ideas, you will always outrun the copy cats.

Mifornia · « **Reply #28 on:** January 27, 2024, 02:14 »

Quote from: cobalt on January 26, 2024, 13:21

2-10 files a day if they are really good quality and widely useful is more than enough to build a very good income.

I have seen people with less than 1000 photos making more than 10k a month. For years.

While the environment has changed from 10 years ago, portfolios where literally EVERY SINGLE FILE is a true bestseller quality will greatly outsell all those ports with 70k files filled with 1000s of extreme similars.

You can read that in various groups, new ai producers with 50k+ files cannot even make a weekly payout.

All agencies promote "efficient" portfolios, i.e. with a good factor of sales to portfolio size.

If you just have volume but no sales, you will sink your own boat.

So best of luck to you. If you have great ideas, you will always outrun the copy cats.

Thank you for encouragement. Those incomes are quite impressive, I didn’t know that it can be done. I honestly thought I was doing quite bad, was surprised with 3 times on top sellers list for illustration , but then I thought for sure people are making peanuts, since I wasn’t making anything sustainable.
I know what will not sell. I know approximately what may sell, but still surprised by what becomes a bestseller. Most times nothing impressive, many of my favorite designs that I would spend 3 days drawing would make $5. Now, I’m making the same amount with 30 pages that I use to make with 5 (copycats)
Onwards and forwards, thank you again for advice.

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Author Topic: MASSIVE ACTION NEEDED - we are closing stock accounts of image thieves (Read 2657 times)

Mifornia

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