Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on July 19, 2023, 07:37

...
Canva unilaterally closed my account (for public complaining) before the payment cuts; otherwise, I expect I'd have complained

Oh wow, didn't know that, or forgot about it! All these agencies really are cut from the same cloth.

https://www.microstockgroup.com/canva/after-a-hiatus-they're-deleting-approved-files-again/

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on July 06, 2023, 13:59

What is the top 200 rating? is there a way to see another photographer's rank?

Anyone?

The "How it works" text from that page might give a clue:

"The goal of this feature, apart from celebrating our talented contributors, is to inform you of what type of content is trending based purely on sales data.

Recent top sellers are determined each week using the following process:
For each asset type we generate a list of 200 contributors who made the most sales in the previous week, only considering their uploads from the past six months. Then, we order the list based on each contributor�s uploads/sales ratio, and the top 10 contributors on this list are featured as �Recent top sellers�.

Contributors are eligible to be featured at most once every five weeks. This selection process is subject to change in the future."

Edit: Weird how much outrage there was about SS cutting minimum paymet by 3-4X while Canva cut payment by 10X+ with little or no pushback.

Canva has never had the broad base of contributors that SS has/had. SS had also been around a lot longer with an early history (for those of us contributing then; I was contributor number 249) of growth in royalties as well as income. Ever since SS went public in 2012, things were increasingly less contributor friendly, but the overall sense of betraying those who had made their success possible boiled over with 2020's "margin optimization" moves.

Also, Canva was never just a stock agency. They were a web based design tool where images were just a necessary part of the package. Their main goal was to corner that market with their freemium model and then earn from subscriptions to their web based tools.

Canva unilaterally closed my account (for public complaining) before the payment cuts; otherwise, I expect I'd have complained

Not sure how good the evaluations were (no idea who/what Insider Monkey is) but here's there take on the top 15 AI image generators (note that for the top 5 you have to follow a link, and then to get 4-3-2-1 you have to click "Next" links like a slide show. The site is littered with ads)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-best-ai-image-generators-050331833.html

You can contact Adobe's IP compliance group with the link in the page below:

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/content-usage.html

It's pretty pathetic that this other portfolio is not content with churning out his own AI content but wants to steal someone else's, but putting the legal wrangling over copyright in AI-generated images to one side, you created content and if you're a paid subscriber to Midjourney, you own the copyright to what you created. You could then send Adobe a DMCA notice if you don't get a response just from contacting them

Good luck

July 17 collection sizes (I took iStock out of the list. Their count went down, I think because they removed some of AI content and lots of the rest is about AI not created by anyway.)

Adobe Stock AI collection
12,151,135

Dreamstime AI collection
3,572,918

CanStock collection (search for "generative ai") [search for "ai generated"]
(853,302) [853,284]

Shutterstock collection
734,014

123RF collection (search for "generative ai") [search for "ai generated"]
(626,080) [822,286]

DepositPhotos collection (search for "generative ai") [search for "ai generated"] - "Fresh" versus "best match" gives a *very* different count - this is fresh; last week was best match
99,652 [79,955]

91,006 [77,242] vectors
8,646 [2,713] photos
2,399 [1,292] illustrations
247 [1,365]videos

I have no idea, but as SAG-AFTRA is now on strike too (as of midnight), anything still in production will be shut down. So you might see a further bump downwards if it's related to movie/tv production or not much change if it's AI

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on July 07, 2023, 19:26

There are over 114,000 photos marked as generative AI and over 8,000 vectors. I thought the rules said Illustration category only.

I have few of them, some AI marked as photo, probably just because I forgot to change the category during submit process. I wrote to support to change that (because I can't do by my own) and after several days woithout answer I ask to Mat to help to correct this issue.
It's quite easy to forget to change category from photo to illustration, even after flagging the image as "AI Generative"; and I'll probably did this mistake for some images

Completely understandable that mistakes happen, but this needs to get fixed during inspection or sent back to the contributor to fix (and make it possible for the contributor interface to make that change).

Perhaps they could get Chat GPT to write the code for them to update the software

This evening there are over 16,700 vectors tagged as generative AI - more than double what was there a few days ago. Over 179,000 genAI photos now.

One option would be to change the rules...

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/07/12/does-shutterstocks-new-partnership-with-openai-mak/

"The obvious issue is one of proper compensation. For example, a photographer could put photos or videos online to make money. But generative AI image applications might access these images and add them to its dataset. Users could then create images based on the photographer's copyrighted images and make money from them, but the original photographer wouldn't see a dime. And that's a problem. Shutterstock is a marketplace platform -- it needs both content contributors and paying subscribers."

"The problem is that Shutterstock also risks losing paying subscribers as generative AI grows. People increasingly want the features these other applications provide -- it looks like it could be the future of stock photography. But as already stated, it can't risk upsetting its contributor network in the process. It needs to keep both parties happy, which is why I believe that embracing change through its OpenAI partnership is the way to go."

Edited to add this link with an estimate of what SS has paid out to contributors for data set training - no comment yet from SS

https://petapixel.com/2023/07/12/shutterstock-may-have-paid-out-over-4-million-from-its-ai-contributor-fund/

I think this thread explains it - and other users have seen what you are seeing.

https://www.microstockgroup.com/shutterstock-com/new-data-data-set-licensing/

The logic, however self-serving, is that you're opting out of it being used currently, but they put it in the catalog (and I guess contributors have to trust them that it's disabled; there'd be no way to check that) so you could later change your mind and turn that option on.

"Software giant Adobe has banned employees from using their private email addresses or corporate credit cards to sign up and pay for machine learning products and services."

https://petapixel.com/2023/07/06/adobe-limits-its-employees-use-of-generative-ai/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/10/in_brief_ai/

Emphasis mine - I wish contributors to Adobe Stock had that option...

"Adobe hasn't banned third-party applications like ChatGPT outright, but has strict restrictions in place on what is and isn't allowed on such systems. Employees should not reveal their input prompts, upload private Adobe data or code to generate email drafts, summarize documents, or patch software bugs.

They should also make sure to opt out of having content from their conversations being used as training data. In addition they can't sign up to use these tools with their own private email addresses or pay for a subscription with their corporate credit cards (or pay with a personal card and claim it back as an expense). "

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/shutterstock-expands-partnership-with-openai-signs-new-six-year-agreement-to-provide-high-quality-training-data-872644267.html

The stock's up this afternoon, so investors must feel it's a good deal for them

"OpenAI has secured a license for access to additional Shutterstock training data including Shutterstock's image, video and music libraries and associated metadata"

"Shutterstock's high-quality content library, enriched with vast metadata, leads the industry in size, diversity and annotation�making it unrivaled for training AI capabilities."

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/11/shutterstock-expands-deal-with-openai-to-build-generative-ai-tools/

"Stock content galleries like Shutterstock and generative AI startups have an uneasy � and sometimes testy � relationship. Generative AI, particularly generative art AI, poses an existential threat to stock galleries, given its ability to create highly customizable stock images on the fly.

Contributors to stock image galleries, meanwhile, including artists and photographers, have protested against generative AI startups for what they see as attempts to profit off their work without providing credit or compensation."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/11/shutterstock-stock-up-on-openai-deal.html

Love the jargon - the shares "popped" today

Edited July 13 to add today's closing stock price - $56.95 -and some comments from The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23791528/openai-shutterstock-images-partnership

"Unlike other image-sharing platforms like Getty Images, Shutterstock is fully embracing AI � and all the consequences that may come with it. Artists have expressed concerns about their work getting scraped to train AI models, which Getty Images has addressed by banning AI-generated content from its platform completely. ...

While Shutterstock may see its library grow through its integration with DALL-E, it might not save the platform from the legal gray area surrounding AI-generated content."

...While the TOS could say that, it wouldn't make the rights grab legal.

With contracts, you're in the realm of civil law and enforcement of contract terms isn't handled by any agency or any state, but by one of the parties to the contract taking the others to court and claiming damages or a declaration that a particular part of the contact is invalid (specific performance is another, very rare, remedy but isn't relevant here).

Lawyers are expansive, court proceedings lengthy and the outcome uncertain. In practice, without some foundation or the ACLU or some deep-pocketed philanthropist who hates scummy stock agencies, the power imbalance between the agencies  and their suppliers is what determines the outcome, not whether the contract terms are actually enforceable.

In other words, "you, and what army..."

In Shutterstock's case, the terms of service have a binding arbitration agreement, so you can't even go to court directly: "The TOS also includes a binding arbitration agreement that requires arbitration of covered disputes instead of litigation by court or jury trial."

(I think version 10 is the most recent version of the TOS, but it still references forums which are long-since removed).

It all s@�ks, but your only realistic option if you want to stop SS grabbing your stuff and refusing to let go is to stop uploading for the moment.

If SS changes the terms for the better, it's always worth remembering that the terms of service say that they can change the agreement at any time...

"Please note that Shutterstock reserves the right to modify these terms at any time in its sole discretion"