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Messages - cascoly

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276
deleting your account  only hurts you - i haven't deleted my wirestock acct since they find sales on agencies i dont submit to. but i have stopped submitting to them.

277
I am losing hope, if I am not wrong, an announcement for the bonus program was in late January or early February

last year's was late feb/early march

278
i use same metadata for similar sets

captioning images is the most time-consuming part of submitting microstock - i have thousands of images needing metadata, so if i can do multiple images at once, i can submit more. and at the $ we receive it isnt worth the time to tweak  each image without knowing if any of them will sell

trying to game the system without knowing the rules of the game is a losing strategy, especially when each agent has its own secret  rules

279
Adobe Stock / Re: Why no portfolio follow option in Adobe Stock?
« on: February 09, 2024, 21:09 »
I liked some contributors portfolios but why there is no option to follow them? Why?
are you a buyer or a flaneur?

stock is not fine art & names/branding don't really matter, except perhaps in extraordinary cases

to work in stock photography, you have to abandon ego - buyers don't care about your brand/portfolio - this is a hurdle for 'pros' who want to sell stock, but it's easily overcome with the right attitude

stock images are a commodity - most buyers aren't interested in the artist - they want work that fits their current needs - so broad portfolios don't add much, and like categories are a waste of time. at best when they view your port, tghey might look at similar im ages, but don't care about your other work.

280
There are a lot of people wo are selling 120 images of dogs for $1.50 and seems to be making a lot of sales. Those images are not processed well, but just rendering them, converting them , zipping and uploading + customer emails - scaring me off from trying it myself.

Anyone tried it successfully?

I haven't but I have seen just what you say and they list sales, and they appear to be successful. I see sets that are nothing but a large selection of right click images, zipped and then sold for a low price. No I haven't done that and I won't.

I tried to make some high quality sets of specialized images, high resolution. No market. That's the way it goes. Crafters and scrapbook people just want bits and pieces, not high res, high quality.

since i already have galleries on my blog , and collections in FAA, all meta-dataed, i'll try this out -all i need to do is resize to 640-400 n& list on my dormant etsy acct - it's worth a try & will report on the monstrous sales i get

281
I can't use Midjourney's imagine feature on the website yet I have over 5000 images in usage-Any thoughts?

how are you trying?  i had trouble when i typed  /imagine   but when i just typed '/' and chose /imagine from the menu above, it always works. weird

282
...
"each image is broken down to tokens and there's no way to reverse the process to identify where a token came from" Yes, and that's why we can't get credit for each new image. There is no one to one relationship from the original images to connect to the AI creations. Once trained the AI is on it's own.

I think Thaler intentionally went this way and more than once, has challenged, to cause a decision and bring Machine Learning into the court system as a test case. No one would try to register an art work as created by a machine, when they know the laws say, that can't be approved.

yes, that's the distinction most of the anti-ai faction fail to understand -- that scraping for training may have copyright violation implications., but is not relevant for the second component - making a new work

thaler's rejected case was provocative =- claiming the ai software was the creator. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/design/copyright-ai-artwork.html

but that ruling goes against the copyright office (CO) view that ai gen is the creator and thus the human can't register a copyright.  So thaler was actually helpful by getting a legal decision that rejects the CO claim.  And if the AI is not the creator, then the human must be!


unfortunately, thalers case is mistakenly quoted to support the opposite of the ruling  (by those who didn't read it, or misunderstood it or purposely choose to misconstrue it) -- claiming that his loss means AI work is not copyrightable when it actually means the opposite

 the other point they ignore by claiming that the CO ruling means AI gen work is public domain is that a work is still copyrighted, by law, on creation.  the overwhelming number of copyrights never go to the CO but are never 'public domain' and that can only be changed by congress changing the law.

283

yes, that's my biased opinion - your 'biased' is my ' intelligently informed opinion'


Thanks for understanding that I'm also intelligently informed and just came to a different biased conclusion.  ;D

Two very simple points, as the laws are now.
1) Only natural persons can be considered inventors
2) AI creations from scraping the web for training, are fair use.

For #1 copyright will be rejected, no matter how intricate the whole creation process may be, or whether it can be detected as AI or not. #2 the current laws defend the right of the AI companies to look at images and use that to create training.

For myself, on the other side, I still say, we added the captions, or some human did. (unless someone uses AI keywording) The text, description and keywords, included in the images, is our work and individual writing, which can't be used for training as fair use. That's my data and I own the right to that. The keywords are being illegally appropriated.

detail #1 - inventions can't be copyrighted but can be patented, so the question comes back to creation. i spent an afternoon earlier and my initial prompt didnt give what i asked for, but eventually used it to springboard & eventually ended up with 6 distinct series - it was not a simple prompt = final image; instead using a tool to refine whhat the tool gave me

 individual keywords can be copyrighted,. and since the training only uses individual words, there's no violation.

the main claim for fair use is that by scraping billions of images, no individual image is copied. instead each image is broken down to tokens and there's no way to reverse the process to identify where a token came from

284

in an often cited case, they rejected a copyright when the owner oddly claimed the ai was the creator and he owned the copyright as a 'work for hire' - the office rejected these arguments, which is not the same as saying an artist cannot copyright a work they CREATED using a computer program.

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/docs/us-cross-motion-for-summary-judgment.pdf

the core of the decision was the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that
operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human
author
.
  and the applicant undermined his case by declaring the work was created autonomously by machine.. this judgment was different from declaring ai assisted works cannot be copywrote.

my emphasis shows the issue that  remains to be directly litigated or legislated.


Yes, but you are biased towards one side of the decision and cherry-picking your defense.  :) 


When an AI receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, users do not exercise ultimate creative control and the resulting work is not copyrightable

When a human selects, arranges, or modifies AI generated material in a sufficiently creative way, the work may be copyrightable

Yes, AI work can be copyrighted, if a human selects, arranges or modifies... Thaler could have said, he edited the output and then what?

yes, that's my biased opinion - your 'biased' is my ' intelligently informed opinion'

Quote
Courts in the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, have all held that only natural persons can be considered inventors.

Yes there is investigation and there will be more cases, but I don't think this is going to be as simple as, someone typed the prompt, so it's something that can be protected. Will AI chat text and articles be protected, because someone asked for the subject?

My best argument in favor of our work being protected would be, I generate the prompt, and there's an image, which, after that, I the human, edited and altered into a new work, which therefore means I can protect my human creation, based upon an AI, public domain image.  8)

A guiding human hand is necessary for authorship, and I am that human.

you keep agreeing with me!  another point is that the court has no way to know what the creative process was & how creative the artist was - they can only look at the work. what's their opinion when the work  alone is submitted with no indication it was ai generative? 

285
I'm surprised that anyone would buy a download of prompts. It just seems they are already done, and anyone can copy or use them. What's the value in making something that's already made and can be duplicated by anyone, with the same prompt? AKA, Sliced Tomato isolated on white.

rather than the text part, looking at the commands (stylize, aspect, etc) help create the look you want - but these are easily available on searches. 

286
Adobe Stock / Re: What is best?
« on: February 03, 2024, 19:52 »
If I have ,say, 5 images all on the same theme (For example people playing tennis) Am I best to submit them all side by side?  Or should I  separate my submission of them out over a few days?

Thanks
the advice to 'choose your best' is just silly - no one can predict which technically similar images will sell best


 i'll submit several from the shoot, then others in later submissions.  AS in particular seems to be more open to a series where the images are similar in subject but distinctive in actual content. and i usually have the same meta data for all - that doesn't seem to matter, so not worth your time to make each description unique

certainly 5 isn't too many.

factors the agencies have finally realized is they can't really predict which image from aseries will sell the m ost, and that often buyers will take multiple from the series

YMMV

287
...
I don't see how this is diverse, as there are nothing but people of color? No Latino, no whites, no European South, no Asians. So much for AI knowing what diversity really means.
...

hard to tell without the prompt - did it actually ask for diversity? or for POC and then keyword for diversity?
 diversity doesn't mean all possibilities must be shown in ever work -- and  i've seen diversity in MJ images where i didnt ask for diversity

288
I had a look at the mage page.

In the terms of service it says that everything created is public domain.

Not sure if that is ideal.

Everything created is public domain because AI can't be copyrighted. A machine is not a human mind.

not true - the basic law hasn't changed so images are copyrighted by their creators (humans using tools) and there are cases i n several jurisdictions pending - even there, a decision on one US circuit does not apply to others. and EU and th er countries may have differing standards.

AI gen is not a 'machine' but software , the same as PS or others. the mind doesn't creates ideas, but it takes a tool/machine whether pencil or camera or computer to create the expression of that idea which is automatically grantved copyright

US copyright office disagrees with you, and contradicts itself, but China says they are protected. The EU doesn't know what they think. There's no unity to the union. When the supreme court decides we'll know.

true, but the copyright office is not he law, but offers its opinion on whether a partivcular work is covered. and only congress can change the udnerlying war. . the copyright office is currently conducting a review of the issue.

in an often cited case, they rejected a copyright when the owner oddly claimed the ai was the creator and he owned the copyright as a 'work for hire' - the office rejected these arguments, which is not the same as saying an artist cannot copyright a work they CREATED using a computer program.

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/docs/us-cross-motion-for-summary-judgment.pdf

the core of the decision was the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that
operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human
author
.
  and the applicant undermined his case by declaring the work was created autonomously by machine.. this judgment was different from declaring ai assisted works cannot be copywrote.

my emphasis shows the issue that  remains to be directly litigated or legislated.



289
or look at the many books about ChatGPT & Midjourney - i have kindle unlimited so can get many of these for free - almost all are generic whaledreck. the only substantive ChatGPT book was stephen Wolfram's (mathematica)

290
That looks a lot better. Thank you!

or positively identify the color - in  recent session, i changed prompts from 'red and gold' to purple and silver' and all images were correctly colored'

291
I had a look at the mage page.

In the terms of service it says that everything created is public domain.

Not sure if that is ideal.

Everything created is public domain because AI can't be copyrighted. A machine is not a human mind.

not true - the basic law hasn't changed so images are copyrighted by their creators (humans using tools) and there are cases i n several jurisdictions pending - even there, a decision on one US circuit does not apply to others. and EU and th er countries may have differing standards.

AI gen is not a 'machine' but software , the same as PS or others. the mind doesn't creates ideas, but it takes a tool/machine whether pencil or camera or computer to create the expression of that idea which is automatically grantved copyright

292

As I recall, you are not in the US. It seems this "revenue reduction" many of us are seeing (and is reflected in the poll results) is geographically dependent.
My best guess is that  perhaps SS is spending its marketing dollars differently in different parts of the world.

Other agencies have been more or less on an "even keel", whereas SS has dropped like a rock for some (US based?) contributors.

and for others has stayed the same, but we still see these general statements claiming it's a disaster

location of an artist has little effect, since we get global sales

and one more time - the poll has been worthless for a long time -'self hosted' as really shot up to 4th over istock & SS?   


293
This topic has been moved to new AI area.

 

294
...
But if you pick out special subjects, e.g. photorealistic wildlife shots of animals, of which there were obviously not that many used for the training, it sometimes happens (at least with Stable Diffusion) that you discover blurred copyright labels in the corner of the image.
So if the AI would generate complete new images than copyright symbols should not appear.
The AI image generators currently have no ability to abstract like a human and create new things by itself. It's only morphing of pictures. ...

one source of the copyright  is not taken from 1 image but from the multiple copies of that image on free sites.

once again, AI doesn't 'morph' pictures - the billions of images are each broken into many small matrices and transformed before being saved. then images are created de novo, starting with a completely randomized 'image' & making many thousands of passes as that new image slowly emerges. you can get an idea of how this proceeds by watching the midjourney cevelopment

296
..

"Regulations" generally speaking only affect the little guy - and are used for anti-competitive behaviour.    ...

And lol - the only reason "ai" tools have difficulty with hands - is because they didn't have massive amounts of images to steal it from. People don't generally take pictures of their hands or feet and post those to social media, or stock media accounts. So it's kind of hard for them to steal it when the number is limited.

right, why does the little guy need regulations to, provide them with transportation safety, 40 hr work week, ensuring drugs are safe, clean air, clean water, etc etc lets go back to Dickensian times

hoist by your own petard winner this week:
https://petapixel.com/2024/01/24/trump-shares-ai-image-of-himself-praying-with-six-fingers/

as far as the hands problem, there are certainly enough hands & arms in the world image base, but the problem more likely lies in the fact that most pictures with people don't have hands, arms, etc as tags, so there's less to train by.

297
General Stock Discussion / Re: best agencies
« on: January 27, 2024, 14:08 »

best for submitting:  ...DT only allows 1 image at a time

Please explain? One image at a time? They have copy keywords and a kind of batch thing. I don't use it, because mostly nothing I do is the same, but there's some kind of populate from previous image. Or did you mean something else.

other agencies allow you to seect multiple images with the same catvegory, even when title, etc are different so you can submit 30-40 images at a ti
me

DT only lets you submit 1 at a time - even if you use autofill -  it takes time & you often have to scroll down to get to the submit button.

one of best features of canva is they dont /require you enter anything (categories are worthless - who uses them? ) so few clicks & 50 are done. of course, the minor downside is these days 95% are rejected - mostly immediately.  still canva usually makes me more than AS

298
I asked in German groups and there are still producers with around the same sales as the years before.

Perhaps this is mostly a problem in the US markets?

How are the Europeans here doing?

and only few/some folk in the US - many of us have seen little decrease - and there's still copious anti-SS venom polluting the waters of discussion

299
Alright guys, I will write it once again. It's not about me and my portfolio.

Prolonging discussion about my portfolio doesn't make sense, because I wanted YOU to check if someone is not copying YOUR portfolio.

If you don't care - I'm fine with that.
If you create generic stock AI images you don't have to check.
If you have some creative and specific content and you are ok with other people stealing your images and using it as a reference for AI in order to copy your portfolio then I'm ok with that as well.

but you made the initial claim your work was stolen,  but don't provide comparison images

most of are images were likely scraped already multiple times - it's done, and nothing can reverse that - limits on future scraping are where the battle should be fought (in order to get tiny fractions of a penny for each mage scraped)

 

300
General Stock Discussion / Re: best agencies
« on: January 25, 2024, 14:28 »
I guess what I'm looking for is one more website to constantly reload the contributor summary page on.  Seems to me it's pretty clearly AS in first place, istock in a distant 2nd and SS is trying to win the race for last place (for photo and a little video).  If I'm going to waste time submitting to SS maybe I can waste a little more at dreamstime or depositphoto or something?  Seems dreamstime is the consensus 4th least worst?  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Nope you're not wrong. The problem comes down to, what are your images and how many? Then how much time will you have to spend to drop those images into a black hole?  ;) Yes, DT is probably the next best after the three, and maybe DP is next after that.

If there was a 4th I'd want to know that too.

My point of view is, there are only 3 right now. Yes I have a DT account, I'm trying to make it to $100 so I can close it. BUT... I have a friend or two that make payout there, every few months. I think there are others here who say they like the returns from DP. And there are people who have dropped SS when the reset and 10c commissions came in.

In the end, you'll have to try and see or depending on what your images are, see what your personal results are. Mine say, AS, SS and IS. All the rest that I hang on to, are dying or dead.
which best ?

best in sales, setting SS at 100, Canva is 80, AS is 40-50, alamy 30, DT  is 25

best for submitting: Canva easiest, SS slightly better than AS which has too many useless clicks, DT only allows 1 image at a time, alamy is terrible  - 1 bad image and entire batch is rejected

best for review's: DT & SS, AS was rejecting entire batches for 'quality'  over last few months, but seems to have fixed it, Canva rejects most images as soon as they're submitted

DP was 10-20 for sales before i canceled in January. but i accidentally found some of my images were still there - and a search for 'cascoly' as contributor says 57K images online- working with DP support but no solution yet.  they were very fast to respond. when i try to login, it says my acct is blocked - as it should be


as always -- YMMV

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