..... all the cameras around you on every corner of the street do it 24/7 - and this is not even their intention yet.

I suspect you're arguing for the sake of it, but there is zero comparison between what a security camera on a street camera can capture and a quality high resolution image. Pixels on sensors aren't interchangeable and thinking that they are will lead you off into the weeds.

AI can only regurgitate if it's fed training data - as the world changes AI will need constant care and feeding to regurgitate up-to-date information. Companies inventing new, patentable things, will keep those quiet until after they've been granted their patent; AI can't imagine what a specific earthquake, volcanic eruption or tsunami will produce, only produce a "something like this" fantasy.

Your comments are not really adding anything to the discussion

A reminder for those who've been licensing stock for a while, and a history lesson for those who are new to this, it isn't the first time that Deposit Photos has claimed to have opted contributors out of a spectacularly bad deal but then secretly opted them back in again...

https://www.microstockgroup.com/depositphotos/dp-images-back-up-on-shotshop/msg375143/#msg375143

Quote from: Noedelhap on March 23, 2023, 18:14

I don't understand why contributors have not been ...,compensated already for use of their assets in Firefly's training.

Why is Adobe only at the 'exploring' stage of an opt-out possibility and still busy 'developing' a compensation model? Shouldn't that be the first thing on the priority list?
Once again it looks like contributors and compensation of them are treated as an afterthought, a nuisance, an annoying expense.

both AS & SS have the right to use those images under the TOS artists agreed to when contributing (everyone read those in detail, right?)...

Both AS & SS claim they have the right to train their generative AI model with their stock library content. Their self interest clearly indicates why they'd say that. Claiming it to be so doesn't make it so - but there'd need to be legal action to get a court to agree that the agreement doesn't mean what the agencies claim.

I think the notion of using contributor content to assist in creating new Adobe Stock features (such as a keyword suggestion tool) is fine and reasonable - I did read the agreement and given my assumption that the agency and contributor both have aligned interests in increasing the licensing of agency content, had no concerns about it. Contractual deals that don't result in contributor royalties have been an issue for years - SS's deal with facebook and the more recent 5 year contracts to allow use of their library for AI training. The deals would not have happened without the content in their libraries but all the up front revenue goes straight to the agency.

I can't imagine contributors having the money to take a case to court, but I think it would be possible to argue that what Adobe has done does not fall within the scope of (from Adobe Stock's Contributor Agreement section 1) "...developing new features and services".

The tack I would take is that the context implied in the agreement is that the features and services would be part of the paid licensing of contributor works that is the scope of that agreement. What has been built with Firefly is (if it succeeds) potentially a replacement for the licensing of all of the works currently in the library.

I'd argue that no reasonable person (the legal concept of the reasonable man) reading the current agreement would think they were consenting to allow their works to be used to eliminate all future commercial value for those works. Imagine investor excitement at a revenue stream in the future that doesn't carry any royalty obligations - it would make SS's "margin optimization" efforts since June 2020 look like amateur hour.

As an aside, I don't see the questionable quality of AI generated content to be any barrier to market success - good enough wins out lots of times as long as the price is right and it's easy to access. When SS was promoting their AI-enhanced Canva-clone, the video tag line was "No time? No budget? No designer? No problem!". In other words, it may not matter that contributor work is "better" than what Firefly generates, hence the worries about competition.

I watched two interviews - one with Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen and the other with their President of Digital Media, David Wadhwani. Other than the expected buzzy optimism about their new offerings, there were a couple of interesting (from the Adobe Stock contributor perspective) comments. Adobe plans to offer an API to allow other companies to use their generative AI model - nothing was said about whether and how Adobe Stock contributors whose work was the training basis for the model would be compensated in that cases.

The CEO mentioned t hat it would be possible to have stock contributors supply their styles to Firefly customers (no timeline or compensation model mentioned). He also mentioned offering Adobe's model to large customers who wanted to add their own repository of data to have a customized generative AI - no notion of whether there would be royalties to Adobe Stock contributors there either. I didn't care for the way the CEO referred to "our" model trained by "our" content in talking about this future product offering. Content on Adobe Stock is not Adobe's content. The CEO said they refer to the content supply chain and how important it is to get that worked out.

The interviewer asked David Wadhwani what the incentive was for Adobe Stock contributors to let Adobe train the AI on our images. The reply was a set of reassuring words about how this would be commercially good for Adobe Stock contributors. He didn't mention the less appealing reality that they didn't ask, so contributors had no say in this - not even to delete their portfolios if they really didn't like it - because the first we heard about this was after the training was complete.

There was a follow up question about compensation, citing Spotify as an example of how artists got tiny amounts per stream, and there was another fuzzy answer about this being worked out in concert and in conversation with contributors. I don't know anything about contributors being asked about how they'd like to be paid, but Spotify's model wouldn't be it (where they pay the big name artists a larger share of the revenue to keep them happy and the smaller artists get very little).

There was talk about growing the number of Creative Cloud subscribers - bringing in new users (I hadn't heard the term solopreneurs before) increasing Adobe's Total Addressable Market (that's aimed at keeping investors happy). No date given when asked how long the beta would be. Beta is just images and text effects. They will be doing video, layout, design, 3D, brushes & styles.

Here are the videos

Firefly AI: I speak with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen from Adobe Summit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04X6h2K2WDw


Generative AI Comes to Adobe Creative Cloud: Adobe's David Wadhwani on Firefly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4dgIUdiZfQ

Saw the Adobe CEO on some business channel discussing this. He was saying they are exploring ways for artists to opt out of AI training or be compensated etc. I was just thinking it sounded quite positive, then he said something dismissively like  �it�s initially just using public domain and our stock library anyway�. Realized he didn�t seem mean us when he said �artists�?

We - contributors - are not of much concern to the CEO of a $16+ billion company the bulk of whose income comes from subscriptions. Keeping the subscriptions going and growing is what matters to him. We need to be managed, but IMO we aren't of any concern unless the flow of subscriptions is at risk.

The Do Not Train tag is a promise, not something available today. I'm guessing that any use of it in material submitted to Adobe Stock would be disallowed, like putting any visible watermark on your uploads is today. In other words that wouldn't give contributors to Adobe Stock an opt out.

I had never heard of Plagiarism Today until I did a search after reading your post, but they have some interesting observations about the legal wrangles ahead.

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2023/03/22/can-adobe-and-nvidia-fix-ais-copyright-woes/

"Even if artists and photographers did sign away these rights in their contracts, that doesn�t mean that they approve of this use or direction. Though they might not have legal recourse, that doesn�t mean they won�t consider removing their work from the library or stop working with them for future work.

The agreement to pay royalties can, at least theoretically, go a long way to soothing potential tensions in this space. But the details are both important and unknown. We don�t know how Adobe or Nvidia will pay royalties, and we don�t know how much those royalties will be worth.

This is going to be a space to watch moving forward, whether the photographers and artists in those libraries feel that they are getting a fair deal."

Reuters says that NVIDIA trained their system on images licensed from Getty, SS and Adobe - perhaps that's in error. How would it be OK for Adobe to let a third party use Adobe Stock's library for training - that's not covered by the contributor terms of service:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-nvidia-ai-imagery-systems-aim-resolve-copyright-questions-2023-03-21/

Edited to add that NVIDIA's press release (look at the bottom) describes their partnerships with Adobe, Getty and Shutterstock. I think it says that Adobe will be using NVIDIA's services to create an Adobe product, but there's some mention of an NVIDIA product, Picasso, that will also use what's jointly developed.

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-brings-generative-ai-to-worlds-enterprises-with-cloud-services-for-creating-large-language-and-visual-models

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/adobe-and-nvidia-partner-to-unlock-the-power-of-generative-ai

Sounds as though this is skating right on the line between what's permitted in our contributor agreement (developing new Adobe products) and giving away our intellectual property (NVIDIA getting a new product powered by Adobe Stock contributors' content).

Ars Technica ends its article saying "As always, we'll need to take Adobe's claims with a grain of salt, and we'll keep you updated as new details emerge."

This is an investor and business focused take on the Firefly announcement, where the blurring of the meaning of creators comes up again - does it mean us, the source material, or those using Adobe tools built in part from our sources?

https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/news/365533294/Adobe-Firefly-brings-generative-AI-imaging-marketing-tool

"Don Fluckinger, an analyst at TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, added that Adobe's proposed safeguards for preserving creators' legitimacy is important for the future of generative AI.

"Adobe senior leadership's thoughtful approach to 'GenAI' with an eye toward protecting creators -- and making their creations commercially safe -- looks like a huge step toward legitimizing the technology for business use," Fluckinger said."

https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-drake-join-petapixel-to-lead-its-youtube-channel/

Not the same as the detailed in-depth reviews, but they do good overview videos. Glad to see they'll continue

I'll echo the terrible news thought - even though things got a little less in depth after Amazon bought them, it was still a good place to go to get solid information about camera gear.

I guess Imaging Resource will have to do...

I don't contribute to Deposit Photos, but just wanted to point out that you should give close to zero weight to the claim that this is additional income for contributors.

In time, the likelihood is that all/most subscriptions will be part of this all-you-can-eat buffet and other sources of credit/subscription revenue will shrink. It has worked this way even with "regular" subscriptions introduced years ago at sites that sold on a credit system - in the end it was mostly subscriptions (Dreamstime for example).123rf started out this way (again, years ago) and switched to a minimum subscription payout because a lot of contributors threatened to remove their portfolios if they didn't pay a decent amount per download.

The deal is so bad for contributors because it means the agency's interests and the contributor's are at odds - if the program is popular, the contributors are scr3*ed and the agency is happy the more people sign up as they get their 60% up front and regardless of what's downloaded.

As far as limiting who can sign up for this, does anyone recall the late unlamented Dollar Photo Club (search for that here if not) and how it was supposedly only for a select few but was in effect limited to whoever wanted to sign up.

If contributors opt portfolios out this program cannot succeed.

...Jo Anne, how do you figure out custom vs subscription sales? When I look at a week of sales, I see total earnings, but not downloads....

From this link (which is the one I bookmark when I want to go and see what has sold lately)

https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/insights/sales-earnings

To make things manageable, I change the date range on the upper left to a small-ish period - for the moment I've been looking at month to date, so 3/1/2023 to 3/19/2023 - and select the data type "Activity". That will list sales in reverse chronological order.

Then I select all the data in all the columns (including the thumbnails which Google Sheets just ignores) and copy

In Google sheets, I paste the data and then tab over to the column "License sold". From the Data menu, select Sort Range by column D (whatever column you've tabbed to) A to Z.

That will sort the range by that column which puts "custom" and "subscription" into two groups.

You can then put formulas into other cells to count the two groups (to get downloads for each), total the amount earned for each (from the royalty column) and calculate the RPD for each.

You could do very similar things with Excel, but Sheets is free and very easily shareable

Does that help?

The issue is Getty's controlled vocabulary, which iStock uses.

There is a process for requesting additions to the vocabulary, but even in the past that was a slow thing to get done. Again, in the past, you could put in an unknown (to the CV) keyword and it would permit it although a search had to be done in quotes for it to be found. I recently started uploading to iStock again and found that accepted images with unknown terms (place names in my case as in yours) had those terms flagged:

"Keyword in red is not found. Click for suggestions, remove, or recommend a new keyword."

I had used DeepMeta to disambiguate keywords into CV-speak and while it allowed me to upload with an unknown term, there were no useful suggestions and I didn't want to go through the process of adding hundreds of placenames.

So general location information - such as California or Oregon or or Haystack Rock or Pacific Northwest - were OK but not Arch Cape, Hug Point or other town or attraction names.

If you have stamina and time, request addition of the keywords to the CV. If not, put in state names or anything else that is already there (Deep Meta will let you know up front what you can use because you can't change anything after acceptance yourself - that'd be another support ticket)

I think it's mad, but it's been mad for so long that I wouldn't expect changes in my lifetime

Very interesting point, how could they buy eyeem if they have no money?

Having no cash while having places willing to lend you huge sums of money are apparently a thing

Talenthouse's investor relations section seems a bit out of date, but read from a late 2022 report on how it was restructuring its debt. Short term loans into long term loans or equity:

"During Q3, the Company has engaged in fundraising efforts and continues examining financing options, having already undertaken significant conversions of certain legacy
debt into equity during the period. Talenthouse has also refinanced 48% of its short-term liabilities into long-term liabilities during Q3, in order to strengthen its balance sheet position.

The Company had short-term obligations of USD 25.1 million as of 30 September. Withthe closing of the Coolabi transaction in July, the Company refinanced existing vendor loans of USD 30.4 million into a 5-year loan facility. Talenthouse also converted USD 7.4 million of debt into equity during Q3. Of the USD 62.9 million of short-term obligations as at 30 June, the remaining balance of USD 25.1 million at 30 September consists largely of shareholders loans.

Management will continue to steer the company forwards, maintaining tight cost control and driving revenue growth. Management believe they will secure additional funding, allowing the Company to invest in its growth initiatives."

They're still trading on the Swiss stock exchange but their stock has apparently lost 95% of it's value in the last 52 weeks...

https://www.six-group.com/en/products-services/the-swiss-stock-exchange/market-data/shares/share-explorer/share-details.CH0010819867CHF4.html#/

They can apparently find time to put together a visual trends in 2023 report, but not the expected quarterly financial reports

https://business.talenthouse.com/blog

I'd say their vehicle is coasting slowly downhill having run out of both gas and fumes, but possibly they'll figure out some way to put things right...

Look on the right side of a post, above the text. There's a plus sign. If you click on it, it will change color and the count will increment.

I changed mine about a week ago and they did change (I think it took 12-24 hours to see the change). There are bugs in collections though - if you change the cover image it appears never to show up if that collection is one of the featured in your portfolio.

I don't know if it's important to buyers (I'm assuming it isn't) and there are so many other things I'd prefer developers to focus on if they do at some point start to work on the contributor interface (stats on image earnings; searching one's portfolio by keyword on the contributor side, automatic monthly payments,  . . . ) that I'm not inclined to report the cosmetic problems