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Messages - gameover
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102
« on: December 21, 2022, 01:41 »
I liked very much your post and think you are right as you say that AI is a tool - but it's a disquietingly clever one.
Your words started a disturbing chain of thought that I made into a post ....
Maybe it's just me, or maybe I've read too much Asimov... 
check out https://www.cold-takes.com/ai-could-defeat-all-of-us-combined/
SF is OK, I like it a lot too. But here S<<F...
104
« on: December 20, 2022, 07:06 »
Dont worry about all that.
The next generation of ais will all be very legally trained on OUR images.
Some agencies will ask for an opt in, others will just update their terms of service and tell you to pack up and leave if you dont like it.
Plus there is billions of visual content that no longer has any copyright, which includes some of the worlds greatest artwork.
In the same way ais will be trained in music, in writing, in software
The legal part is probably the easiest to fix.
So you can decide to complain forever or change your job, or find an intelligent way to work with the new technology.
Hi Cobalt, I liked very much your post and think you are right as you say that AI is a tool - but it's a disquietingly clever one. Your words started a disturbing chain of thought that I made into a post ( https://luisafumi-digitalart.com/blog/2022/12/20/food-for-thought/). Maybe it's just me, or maybe I've read too much Asimov...
105
« on: December 18, 2022, 15:57 »
@cobalt hi Cobalt, I totally agree with your thoughtful words. My hope is actually that the AI-revolution we're going trough now will lead to a different status for the artists: whereas the agencies will probably keep selling plenty of cheap mediocre pics (mostly AI-generated but not necessarily), those among us who aim a little higher (and hit the target) will most likely find it much easier to sell their works directly to a choosier clientele. This might be the right time for it to happen. Daumen drcken! 
106
« on: December 18, 2022, 15:07 »
Oh sorry, my mistake. I didnt realize it was just a toy. In that case I wish you much success in your pre-Christmas 50% down sale through your own AI shop and indeed the same for your AI portfolio on Adobe this coming year. You clearly deserve it.
Thank you for your heartfelt wishes, DavidK. I too was a little surprised that people seem to like (and buy) my AI-divertissements, but it wasn't me who made the humankind. As Dale Carnegie wrote, " when I go fishing I put a worm on the hook, although I personally prefer strawberries with cream"
107
« on: December 18, 2022, 14:04 »
I don't need to imagine that, I am one of them - and I don't care in the least. Right, it took me quite some time to hone my art, however I don't need months to create a piece. Michelangelo perhaps... Lol
Lol is right. Your art? Please. AI is not a tool. Its a crutch.
Personally I think you are looking at this all backwards. What took a comparatively short time was for the AI to teach you what it wanted, not the other way around. Making you the tool. This whole debate reminds me of a proverb coined by George Bernard Shaw. Those who can, do; those who cant teach. I never thought that was necessarily true, however in your case Those who can, do; those who cant, use AI seems fitting. I suspect Michaelangelo and DaVinci and all of the other actual artists of their day who themselves were not above using all of the tools available to them at the time would still chuckle a bit if they heard you refer to what you do as your art.
Face it, its not.
"Beware of false knowledge; it's more dangerous than ignorance." (George Bernard Shaw) BTW, what you're talking about is my toy, not my art 
108
« on: December 18, 2022, 09:45 »
What is being completely ignored, and should be front and centre, is the right of a company to use our work to profit without our consent. That's an interesting point that would pose several further questions. The first that occurs to me: an artist looks for inspiration, browses the web, scans a few dozen pictures (watermarked) until a good idea pops up; his or her work produces some profit. To whom should he or she pay the royalties: Google, the agencies that made the watermarked pics publicly available, the unmentioned and untraceable authors...? By the way, I have the disturbing feeling that the agencies watermark the images to protect their own profits, not the contributor's cents ;-) There are more parties involved than the artists having their work used and the customer using the AI app. There certainly are, and they all do their darn best to make money. Some of them quite successfully (I'm thinking of the agencies that cash gold and pay peanuts), others with less success (ourselves perhaps?). In places you even seem to go as far as treating the AI app as a person in order to ignore the actual third parties involved; the businesses making the profit. Far from that: the AI is just a tool - though a very interesting one. As for "the third parties involved" (I guess you mean Midjourney), I think they are just doing their business. I understand the temptation when you are the one benefiting, but imagine being the artists who spent years or decades honing their art to the point where they can spend several months creating one image just to have that work hovered up so you can pump out your pieces with so little (comparatively) effort. I don't need to imagine that, I am one of them - and I don't care in the least. Right, it took me quite some time to hone my art, however I don't need months to create a piece. Michelangelo perhaps... Lol I can certainly see both sides of the argument... Then you know that what an AI produces is definitely NOT a collage of bits and pieces stolen here and there: weren't it a stupid piece of hardware I'd be tempted to say that all it 'steals' is CONCEPTS, and never from one single artist at a time. If here and there you see something looking like a watermark on its product, that's because poor stupid AI saw it so many times that it decided that it must be a significant element of the image - and included it to add some realism :-D
109
« on: December 18, 2022, 08:03 »
The blog post even had a heading Self-awareness?. Lol
Do you always stop reading at the titles? Lol
110
« on: December 18, 2022, 01:19 »
So I just joined discord to generate some images with midjourney bot for fun, and guess what! I typed: portrait of next president of united states realistic high resolutioin... and it generated photo of 4 guys, 3 of them resembling Ron De Santis A LOT!
Very interesting.
Quite an interesting idea indeed! I'm now tempted to try with the next president of the Russian Federation...
111
« on: December 18, 2022, 01:16 »
Today I sold 7 'AI generative': 1 photo-realistic and 6 fantasy. More fantasy.
Thanks Luisa, I would never image that fantasy images could have good market in microstock, for sure you did a really good job 
Fantasy means actually many things: in the popular tradition it's mostly fairy tales, SF, dragons and horror. To imaginative minds it may mean a lot more. It's the art of the unusual, of the uncommon, of the grotesque, of the unthinkable... And it is a lot of fun  
112
« on: December 17, 2022, 14:27 »
Very interesting thoughts, thanks for share
I'm completely agree that AI is a powerful "tool" nothing more nothing less.
It's not so easy to produce good images. I'm working in it few days from now, and in few I can learn (Yes I learned FROM AI :-) ) a lot about how it works and how to produce good images.
It will be a long (or maybe not so long...) ride to technical perfection but in the end it will always needs a human being and his/her creativity to produce something new.
It's a completely new world to discover!
Luisa you say in your blog that you've started to sell some in Adobe stock market, may I ask you which kind of images? Fantasy or photorealistic ones, or both?
Today I sold 7 'AI generative': 1 photo-realistic and 6 fantasy. More fantasy.
115
« on: December 13, 2022, 12:27 »
I was one of the original site owners of the original symbiostock. I fought hard for it to succeed and paid dearly here at microstock group for it. FWIW I still have 2 original symbiostock sites that work and still generate sales. That's almost a decade of sales for a few months worth of work. (Note: I haven't updated anything on them since 2014 because I know if I do they will almost certainly crash forever.) At one point I had 5 symbiostock sites. 3 of them just stopped working for any number of reasons. I am sure the other 2 will also just stop at some point but for me they were well worth the effort.
Symbiostock was a good idea that couldn't work for all sorts of reasons. Regardless, of how people here feel about symbiostock I can honestly say that self hosting does work if you have the right images and a unique niche.
Here is why it works for me and how I am doing it.
I currently have 9 sites live (7 of which I still upload to, in addition the 2 I mentioned earlier)- approx 800-1500 images per site
I sell vectors. (which allows me to heavily watermark them and I charge a premium price for them)
I price my images just below the hourly rate it would take for someone to steal or trace my images.
The 7 modern sites are all woo-commerce based.
I use Elementor which gives me unlimited control over the front end which helps with similars and content location.
I use Yoast for SEO
I have a unique target audience and I have not uploaded any new images to the micros in 6 years.
I am very careful with my keywords (I use phrases not words) and my keyword phrases are unique for that image on all 7 sites.
I spend most of my uploading time optimizing my content based on the Yoast criteria.
Every image (on every site) I upload has a unique file name and metadata which matches the Yoast Focus Keyphrase exactly.
I will also flip images or put them on different colored backgrounds for each my different sites.
I have spent a good amount of time automating the upload process and can upload an image from start to finish at an average of about 4 minutes per image per site.
Unlike symbiostock my current sites are no longer developer dependent. WooCommerce and Elementor aren't going anywhere and I host them myself. As long as I update from time to time my sites are all stable and will probably be that way forever. Hosting does cost a bit a month but for me it is absolutely worth it. My sites outsell all of the micros combined about three to one and I only work on them when I have the time. I make daily sales and one sale is the equivalent to around 40 sales at the major micros.
By uploading only to my own sites my images tend to appear on free sites was less frequently than the ones that I uploaded to the micros. I sell way less volume but at a much higher price and considering what happened in microstock in the last 6-8 years that seems to be a much more sustainable way to go.
Originally I assumed my sales would soften the older the images became. What I am finding is that my older images are just as likely to sell today as they were 5 years ago. Based on this info I anticipate selling images I made 5 years ago 20 years from now.
I am certain there are a lot of people who will disagree with me or for whom self hosting was a dismal failure. I get it and I won't even try to argue those points. It works for me and for me it is far better than continuing to upload hundreds of images a month for .38 cents per sale or to dozens of sites who may or may not be around next year.
Thank you very much for sharing! I find very interesting your point of view and your experience. I think too that a very good niche and relatively few images may be more fruitful than thousands generic ones. Keep up the good work!
116
« on: December 05, 2022, 11:03 »
Hi again, moments ago, a blog article was published with more detailed information on this important announcement. You can read it here: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2022/12/05/amplifying-human-creativity-adobe-stock-defines-new-guidelines-content-generative-ai
Let me know if you have any questions.
-Mat Hayward
Hi Mat, thank you very much! It seems a quite serious approach and a way to clarify all the doubts expressed here. I think too that this is a new creative tool in our hands. One questions please: if the AI generated image is used as a sketch and heavily processed after, must we always write made with generative AI? Thanks in advance!
118
« on: October 01, 2022, 14:45 »
again, unsupported assumptions tending towards conspiracy theories- that's not how machine learning operates,
Then please enlighten us how it does work.
and your claim DALL-E copies other images is specifically denied by open-ai. you may choose not to believe them, but that doesn't justify your claiming to know how the image is created.
I am not claiming the Ai copies any specific image. I claim that the AI creates images on a variety of existing images and I claim that the AI has to store what it learned somewhere. We store information in our brain, computers typically use databases. Without a database or some other data storage the AI can learn nothing. So the question remains what exactly is stored in this data storage, what does the AI actually learn? Clearly it does not learn what a naval battle is. It only learns how images with that description or that keyword look like and it has to store this information somewhere. So it has to store for hundreds of thousands keywords how the images with those keywords look like. How else would it be able to create images when the user enters those keywords?
You seem to think that this is some kind of magic. I believe it is technology.
Speaking of database is quite reductive. Never heard of neural networks or deep learning? The images are not "stolen" but used to form concepts, as you do looking around, stimulating your brain through your eyes. Also if you are not a scientist there are tons of information online to begin to have a better idea of the machine learning process.
121
« on: September 16, 2022, 05:27 »
Nobody's killing anything. Results are out there for everyone to see and those that are cherry picked are mildly impressive. Technology displacement will make some jobs redundant eventually and will create new ones, like it did many times before. So please stop with this doom and gloom clickbait nonsense
I completely agree. I can add that I'm working with AI for almost a month now with great fun:it is another tool, multifaceted and there is a lot to learn to master and to build your own style. I'm also lucky to have developed software for so many years and this helps to understand how to move to get results. AI is continuously learning and in one year I expect the developments will be huge. Better to be ready
122
« on: July 09, 2022, 02:55 »
Not uploading any more images. All I am getting is $0.05 sales or less. If there are no decent sales like I once had soon I will close acct.
Maybe I've found a more terrorist defense. I have begun to 'freeze' some images I don't want to give away for nothing deleting all the keywords except one. Is a very easy thing to do with the image manager, as you can quick delete with one mouse click the keywords of a big bunch of images together and then upload a single one keywords to all. They insist a lot to put 45-50 keywords to make the image discoverable. You can always upload your keywords again if the situation changes.
123
« on: July 09, 2022, 02:36 »
I am still trying to understand what is the advantage over using Photoshelter or Photodeck?
Or Smugmug?
I think personally I would prefer a place that is officially an agency, lets me set my own prices and upload whatever I want, but does all the billing under their own system with the customer, so I just get my monthly summed royalty.
I was thinking of maybe using my pond5 exclusive account for a specialized theme for photos and videos. But I just learned that only video is treated exclusively.
Most important I need a defined subject with at least 1000 files.
And if they are good enough, they should probably go to higher end agencies, like stocksy.
But I will follow your project with interest.
The advantage of a shop would be if it can be integrated into my own website, so that longterm people bookmark my site without being dependent on an agency.
Shopify seems to have an SEO advantage with Google so I'm giving it a try to see what happens. Like with any personal website, success lies in getting your own traffic and having something unique buyers want.
Photoshelter - I just dropped them after having a website for over ten years. I no longer have any confidence in their longevity. Long time ago they tried to launch an agency and abandoned it. Then they did a much advertised platform update (named Beam?) which seemed half baked. Then they shifted their business away from photographers/artists to chasing corporate clients with digital asset management. Then they went back to chasing photographers/artists so I'm not sure if DAM is still a core part of their business. Then a few years ago they made a highly promoted announcement of massive platform updates. During this time my sales went from okay to nothing. Their platform isn't overly customizable and the user interface is a cobbled together bandaged mishmash of UI designs from different time periods. Now they seem to only spend time on writing posts on their blog which I really dont care at all about. They just seem to be struggling to find their way as a business but that's only my perception.
Photodeck - My main website is with them and overall I'm happy. It's a small UK based company so there's always a concern with them deciding to exit the business. However, they post somewhat regular updates about new functionality they've added. Platform is highly customizable, SEO capabilities are reasonably good and I get decent traffic and regular sales. Performance is very fast and the user interface is well organized and intuitive but probably leaning a little more toward techie than the bubbly friendly UI of Shopify. The licensing options include prints, RF and RM. I totally customized the RM configuration to meet my needs. I get a mix of higher dollar RM licensing sales and print sales. They also have a handful of print integration partners for automated fulfillment. Overall a very nice website platform for artists who are a bit more into customizing.
Shopify - Just setting up my site now. I want a platform I dont need to worry about spending a ton of time on and then them going out of business. And I want more traffic and sales. My Photodeck site gets decent traffic but I seemed to have hit an SEO wall where I'm not able to increase traffic any further. As a test I did a bunch of Google searches to see which art websites showed up toward the front. After getting past the big sites, usually next up were independent artists with Shopify websites. The Shopify user interface is very slick and intuitive with a ton of apps you can add for SEO, customer live chat, stock licensing, and even fully automated POD fulfillment such as through Printful. With Printful, Printify and other POD apps, customers can place orders and you dont need to do anything. The Shopify order automatically goes to Printful and they print and ship.
Smgmug - Tried it for a while and didn't like the platform and had zero sales.
Thank you very much for sharing your quite valuable experience! I was impressed by the Shopify fast loading pages and a fast website is now absolutely important for traffic and sales.
124
« on: July 08, 2022, 16:00 »
In another words, you opted out 1st April but THEY opted you in.
She doesn't mention ever opting out, unless I am misunderstanding something here?
I opted out the Novel use and they told me that I should have to opt out distributor,ha, ha. Since I am so many years in distributor without problem, I thought the Novel (the new use) was the cause of the few cents sales. The real problem is they do not inform you (on purpose?) what exactly do you opt in/out
125
« on: July 07, 2022, 14:27 »
I am still trying to understand what is the advantage over using Photoshelter or Photodeck?
Or Smugmug?
I think personally I would prefer a place that is officially an agency, lets me set my own prices and upload whatever I want, but does all the billing under their own system with the customer, so I just get my monthly summed royalty.
I was thinking of maybe using my pond5 exclusive account for a specialized theme for photos and videos. But I just learned that only video is treated exclusively.
Most important I need a defined subject with at least 1000 files.
And if they are good enough, they should probably go to higher end agencies, like stocksy.
But I will follow your project with interest.
The advantage of a shop would be if it can be integrated into my own website, so that longterm people bookmark my site without being dependent on an agency.
I can only say that years ago I discarded these websites, because there were not enough automatism to upload quickly many images at once and populate the pages accordingly. You have a lot of hard boring work to do without the time to concentrate on what you want to do. The difference using Pixify is striking.
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