You should read through the license terms for the sites you submit to. It'll help you understand how things work

https://stock.adobe.com/license-terms

https://www.shutterstock.com/license
https://support.shutterstock.com/s/article/Standard-License-vs-Enhanced-License?language=en_US

Adobe Stock continues to show really strong growth in monthly $$ - up 22% on August 2022 which was itself up 10% over 2021. For a summer month, it's really good (better than any of the months in 2022 except Nov & Dec). I have zero AI content.

If you look at download growth August 23 it's up 40% over 2022 and that was up 23% over 2021. In other words higher volume growth than income growth. I continue to track subscription versus custom downloads as well as the occasional sub-38� download (just one at 33� in August) so the good news is that the RPD is largely stable over the last couple of months (although down from earlier years).

I stopped uploading to Adobe Stock in June because inspections had become so unpredictable I didn't want to deal with the frustrations.

iStock did reasonably well in July (I'll know August next month) - I decided in June and early July to upload a big chunk of my portfolio there (I had removed all but 100 images I can't license anywhere else in 2013 over the Getty-Google deal). I have just shy of 1800 images there. Sales volume is a small fraction of that at Adobe Stock, but in spite of a few of the sub-10� royalties the overall RPD was 63�. The highest royalty (my share) was $21.60 and the lowest 2�

Dreamstime continues to bump along with a very slim volume of sales - mostly 35� subscriptions, but one $7.90 credit sale. They don't do anything anti-contributor, so for now they can stay.

Pond5 photo sales are sad - nothing at all in August.

I wouldn't ban the content, just the description of it. So all the thousands of genAI images that say they're Paris, London, Seattle, Rome, Persepolis, etc. could still be uploaded but with general descriptions, not country name, town name, monument name, etc.

So if you searched for Big Ben, London, you wouldn't get any AI images at all. And I don't think images are well labeled on Adobe Stock - when you look at a page of search results you have no idea that there's any genAI content in there. If you just search, AI is on by default - you have to know to turn it off. And there's nothing - unlike with Editorial, or Premium - that shows you which images in a page of results are AI.

I am aware that having stock models pose as scientists in a lab isn't accurate either, but the sale of the fakery with AI is so vast - the entire factory, all the robots, the solar panels, etc. - and the surface appearance of reality is so different that I don't think it's a relevant comparison.

The example images should be labeled generically - "Modern factory with robot-controlled assembly lines" would have been fine

It might seem fruitless to urge new rules for genAI content when almost none of the current ones are being followed or enforced, but here goes.

Some locations - oil refineries, factories, research labs, outer space - are hard to access for stock photographs. That makes them ripe targets for the genAI factory producers who churn out content based on copying someone else's title and making it a prompt. I know Adobe says "don't do that" but there's a lot in the collection already.

I took a look at some examples of robotic arms in a solar panel factory - or what purported to be that. I then realized I don't know anything about the details of solar panel manufacturing, but did a little searching online to confirm a gut feeling that the genAI copycat content was rubbish. It looks high-tech-ish and robot-ish but it isn't real and arguably would harm the credibility of any buyer who licensed it to use with an article about increasing use of solar panels.

While looking at the human-produced solar panel factory images on Adobe Stock I recognized some of the prompts as ones used for genAI images. I took two and did searches and made screen shots to give a visual example of what I'm talking about.

It's possible this content would be OK if Adobe put a visual label on all genAI content in search results - to allow anyone who needs accurate images to avoid these. It's possible it should go on the no-no list - like specifying specific cities or famous places. The temptation is significant because of the lack of supply of the real thing, but I'm not sure that is enough to make this type of fake stuff OK to offer to buyers. And I'm not a fan of leaving it up to the buyers - how on earth are they supposed to separate the snazzy looking image with the copied title from the real thing?

I think stock agencies accepting genAI content need to think hard about setting buyer-friendly, trustworthy, sustainable policies about these sorts of issues

It is especially galling that the sort orders of "Relevance" and "Featured" put some of the newer genAI items ahead of the real images of solar panel factories.

The copied titles from the original (human-generated) content:

Wide Shot of Solar Panel Production Line with Robot Arms at Modern Bright Factory. Solar Panels are being Assembled on Conveyor.

Large Production Line with Industrial Robot Arms at Modern Bright Factory. Solar Panels are being Assembled on Conveyor. Automated Manufacturing Facility


Click for larger version - first one and first four images, respectively, are the human created photos.




Note: I can't be certain all the genAI images are all wrong, but I looked at a bunch of images online and accompanying articles about solar production and did not see anything that looked like what Midjourney (or whoever) came up with. Given that reviewers can't be expected to know the innards of a whole variety of factories or industrial processes either, I'd argue that points towards disallowing this type of content altogether

To illustrate my point, from new approvals

Logos - Midjourney loves Apple

.

Specific places - Persepolis was first up



Furious cobra logo (vector)



Warhol, Mondrian and Hockney (same images show up for both search terms), Jackson Pollock, Matisse

Something about reviews - for several days I have to accept conditions on pop-up after click "send". And It's a little crazy - I send editorial photos, and yet I have to accept that the photos have no visible logos or trademarks. And they threaten to suspend the account. I've sent a lot of pictures with logos before and they were accepted, what's the point?

See this thread

https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/adobe-stock-generti/msg591544/#msg591544

The Apple logos just keep on getting accepted

Fix the review process

No worries.  Buyers will fix them to make them make sense.  At least these are not copyright/trademark violations.  Reviewer AI clearly can�t distinguish 6 fingers, 3 arms, 3 legs and other weird images.

You mentioned trademark violations? Today's approvals have those too...

I found myself in the same boat. Have been a Fololia/Adobe contributor for 16 years. I had a few AI images accepted, but my portfolio consists mostly of "handmade" photos and videos. Thursday my port was blocked. It's frustrating that there was no warning, no communication, no reply for three days.

So sorry to hear this.

Adobe is wrong in the way they are handling established contributors who made a mistake with AI - and doubly wrong because their review process for AI images is so useless it doesn't catch any of the errors.

This isn't an intractable problem. It requires a bit of attention, possibly some extra staff assigned to the task and possibly some code. When a problem AI image is identified in an account more than one year old:

-Disable AI images temporarily while you investigate

-Email the contributor with the image numbers identified as problems and mark them in the contributor interface. Have a few categories of errors and specify what the errors are with each image number

-Block uploading but leave the account open for the contributor to delete items if that's their choice. Payouts should be available if the balance is sufficient.

-Respond to contributors with disabled images within a week - if their accounts are open, the urgency will be less.

-If the investigation takes longer than a week, allow uploading of non-AI images  until issues are resolved.

Established contributors have proved themselves with Adobe Stock. Treating them with respect, even if a mistake has been made (not only by them, but also by the reviewers), is the absolute least they deserve.

I'm staying waaaay away from all this AI nonsense, but what's the latest on us being compensated for our work being used by Adobe Generative AI tools?

I had fussed about that with the Adobe Express announcement earlier this month. Nothing but crickets from San Jose. I believe the subtlety of Firefly beta being rolled out with Adobe Express - as opposed to Firefly being out of beta - got lost by headline writers. The original promise was that we'd hear about compensation when Firefly was out of beta...

So I think the direct answer to your question is that we know no more than back in March when Adobe announced Firefly.

If I consult my (admittedly broken) crystal ball, I'd say that based on progress so far, Firefly will be in beta for years. Making guesses about Adobe's goals with this announcement, I think it's all about getting the AI buzz wound up for the company as a whole, primarily related to getting the stock price up, and that we (contributors to Adobe Stock) were just the necessary CYA for the messages about Adobe's AI stuff being safe for commercial use. So Firefly could never come to market as a product and Adobe would still be able to win.

There was never anything explicit said about compensation for generative fill in Photoshop even though what I read said to me that it was based on the same training.

Additionally, if you consider that all Adobe's genAI competitors (Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion...) are producing the 14+ million genAI collection at Adobe Stock - the stuff that Adobe was contrasting itself with and was painted as questionable for commercial use - the fundamental illogic seems glaring to me. Investors appear not to be paying attention to small details like that.

So my based-on-nothing-but-my-own-flawed-analysis guess is that you shouldn't book a vacation paid for by your Firefly compensation any time soon

Quote from: blvdone on August 26, 2023, 08:14

As I was looking through all those AI generated stock photos, I realized 70-80% of stock photos as we know can be generated by AI.  So, why bother to shoot stock photos anymore unless it's editorial news photos, I thought.  It's over for real camera shooters.  AI generators don't have to hire models, travel to locations and setup lightings.  Can't compete against those.

And further, why would anyone buy an AI generated stock image, when they could just as well have their own unique image AI generated?

I've looked at a huge number of AI generated images accepted at Adobe Stock, and I think the reason that people are buying, and probably will continue to buy, human-produced stock images is that a very large number of AI generated images aren't usable.

Impossible staircases in luxury interior shots, ladders you can't climb, kitchens with door handles at all angles, stools missing legs or sitting at bizarre angles, people with three thumbs, three legs or missing some body parts, hammocks suspended in thin air, table lamps growing out of books, doors you can't get to - it goes on and on and it isn't getting better with newer submissions.

Buyers can't use these except as novelty items or to create memes. My experience with images that sell suggests that there are lots of real world businesses that need real-world images for their marketing materials and web sites.

And then there are the people. By and large they look artificial - beyond any overdone retouching we've typically seen in stock shots. There may be a niche market for a small number of these, but I don't see this stuff going mainstream.

If you risk eyeball damage by looking over what Shutterstock has for AI generated images (what customers made with their Dall-E based tool) you'll understand why in the earnings call SS said that they saw lots of experimentation but few downloads. They expected that would improve when the quality increased, effectively acknowledging the quality problem they have.

Firefly is still in beta but widely available now via Adobe Express. Reviews of that earlier this month mentioned the poor quality of results (which my testing of the beta would agree with)

Fantasy content seems to be where AI does best - because there are no rules. It's where it intersects with the real world that it has trouble - and that's where a huge segment of stock licensing operates.

Edited to add: I just went to look at new genAI uploads and the first two images were of a kitchen. Just look at all the errors in this image (2nd one) - freshly approved...



The stool legs are missing parts of their supports; the cabinet handles are all over the place; stovetop knobs are mashed pixels; the stool on the far side of the island has mangled legs; there's a light cord on the left but no light; the fridge doors are missing handles - and that's just what I can see in the preview image. This is useless and should not have been approved.

More from the "how on earth can a reviewer miss these" department







And with the next two you get the three armed businessman as well as a logo...










etc., etc., etc.