As I told you...

Land to Russia
Minerals to USA
Slava to Ukraine

Clownskyy literally destroyed your country

For those of you in countries other than the USA, how many Chevys, Cadillacs, or Ford vehicles do you see on a daily basis?  Know why you don't see as many as Toyotas or BMWs? Because your county has had outrageous tariffs and/or crippling regulations on the USA for years, causing American-made vehicles, as an example, to be outrageously expensive compared to the Volkswagens, Hondas, or Audis.

OK, quick check, "top selling US cars in USA?"

You get Chevrolet Silverado at the very top of the list.

Lets pick a cheapest 2025 model...Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD 2025


Cheapest price in US ?  45.300 USD

https://www.chevrolet.com/trucks/silverado/2500hd-3500hd


Cheapest price in EU ? 41,952 EU or 45.600 USD

https://www.ccarprice.com/eu/chevrolet-silverado-3500hd-2025-price-in-europe-24088


You might rarely see Silverado in EU for various reasons but outrageous tariffs and outrageously expensive are not one of them.


On the other hand, EU best selling car is Dacia Sandero, which is pretty much the cheapest car in the class and its not even available in US because the market demand is completely different.

On best selling 15 cars list in EU there are 10 extremely small cars that US production doesn't even focus on, EU has old cities with narrow roads and extremely small parking spaces that are mostly impossible to find, people focus on low-consuming cars cause 1L in EU is like 2$ per liter while its 0.82 per liter in US.


Simply, just looking at best selling cars, EU has products for US market while US doesn't focus on what Europeans buy at most .












 

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on April 01, 2025, 12:43

Quote from: stoker2014 on April 01, 2025, 08:12

Everyone knows that the EU offers Ukrainians various financial allowances, etc., and thus steals people in Ukraine. You Europarasites solve exclusively your demographic problems and look for cheap labor, and do not help Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Your reaction to unbureaucratic and quick help for Ukrainian refugees is impertinent and ungrateful.

All these measures were decided when Russia was marching towards Kiev and the course of the war was completely unclear - also with the fear that the entire Ukraine would be conquered by Russia.

I have regular contact with Ukrainian refugees.

Unfortunately, I realized that most of them have your mentality. They are demanding, exacting, arrogant - but above all ungrateful and only take advantage of the system.

You are welcome to have your compatriots back.

1. Not Kiev, but Kyiv. Don't repeat Russian propaganda.
2. Of course, Ukrainian parasites have come to you. But they are our parasites, so bring them all back home. They themselves will not return, because you pay them money only for the fact that they solve your demographic problems there.
3. I did not ask you to accept Ukrainian refugees.
4. At least 2/3 of Ukraine's territory is safe, of course with adjustments for war conditions.
5. Of course, I don�t speak to you Germans as friends, because Merkel pursued a pro-Russian policy and because Germany finances russia even now.
6. Yes, Ukrainians are demanding because they die defending the EU and die without the necessary weapons. This will all lead to the Ukrainians knowing that the EU is bad. And if it suddenly happens that the Russians occupy all of Ukraine, it will be easy for Russian propaganda to convince the Ukrainians to go and occupy the EU countries.
7. As for me personally, I would never go to Germany even as a refugee. I have principles and I am not a parasite. I also really don't like the German language.
And if I were to go somewhere, it would only be when the entire territory of Ukraine would be occupied, and not before.

Volodymyr  sdat really you? 

Is even local pronunciation of city names propaganda now?

Defending your ass not EU, EU is not under attack and not in war.

You are defending yourself mostly because you let your little nazi Azov gangs into the official military forces to legally molest minorities and do the ethnic cleansing while inviting rocket systems at the gates of a giant in a game where you were just a tool for showing the muscles and the giant reacted more aggressively than the other giant behind your back was willing to gamble, risk and follow.

Now they are even using the situation to pull the profit, and not just any profit, they want complete control of all of your main resources with 5 members board in which they would have 3 members. While you kneel in front of those you dare to call Europeans parasites after 200+ billions that they gave you without any interest. 200 billion is almost half of the price of a military shield over the EU that no one would even try to mess with, so we can build our own gates.

Now EU people should all stop with our lives and put them at risk together with our countries because you elected a puppet clown as a leader and risk a nuclear war or continue to throw money into a pit of war that you will never win.  Sure.

Repeat after me, EU is not at war, there is no world war III and the only ones that wish for it are the Ukranians cause they brought themself into a catastrophic situation with the extremely stupid political decisions in which they totally neglected their geostrategic position and completely misjudged the level of risk that the "partners" are willing to take to back you up.

And from all of the people, you, obviously a member of the flat feet or anemic brigade have no shame in calling people parasites. 

Witkoff, another Mossad agent on Trump's team. He is also Jewish.
Israel is pursuing an unfriendly policy towards Ukraine

Yeah for some reason they tend not to like swastika tattoos on high military officers who celebrate Bandera's legacy.

It makes me extremely sad! A small country is being attacked by a big country - a nuclear power. The small country has complied with the memorandum and no longer has nuclear weapons. In return, it had the promise of territorial security and integrity. And now it has to listen to another large country that not only signed this memorandum, but also helped to initiate it: "You're in a bad position". Therefore: Give me money for what I have given you. And let Russia take your country afterwards. Because we won't help you.

So that's the big deal that was announced.

That makes me so sad that words fail me. I could cry. I feel so sorry for Ukraine and Zelenskyy. For the whole situation. But today, especially because of this absolutely lousy treatment. Nobody deserves that.

And Putin is happy. That's the worst thing about it. Because now he has a free pass from his oligarch friend Trump for all his next actions.

What a crappy day!

Still funny? Not anymore! Never ever!

And was it funny in the early 90s when Serbia did the same thing to Croatia and most of the Europe not only that it dint helped Croatia at all but they pulled an embargo on Croatia for buying weapons and Croatia with population of only 4 millions and no army at all had to fight 4 fourth strongest army in Europe with no absolutely no weapons in the start when it lost 1/3 of its territory.

And note that they were not asking it for free , just to buy them fairly. They didn't even give the permit to transport it trough EU countries when Poland and some others decided to sell.

Guess who was also among the first ones to vote for that embargo. Our friend Ukrainians here, who were lighting candles together with Russians for their Serbian brothers to crush people in ex YU which had nothing to defend their self with   

In bad times It's always nice to take a look at their stock price, especially the jump in 2021 at our expense and then...that beautiful slider 

For someone who is just starting it is going to be near impossible to reach decent spots in the search engine on any term that is likely to get sales. Shooting at low competition keywords might be the way but prints don't sell as nearly as stock photos so you might to wait for years for a sale even with larger portfolios. If you take a look at recent sales you might get the idea what sells there...florals, famous portraits, movie posters and a lot of thing from the...lets call it the gray space concerning trademarks.

It literally for people with huge portfolios shooting in the dark or people that build themself as a brand and bring their own traffic and than sales push those artworks higher in the search engine, which btw rarely changes and highly favorites images by SALES. No fresh stuff, no chance for new stuff etc.

Free tip...first 10 keywords carry way more weight but its literally build with stuff that sold more so if you want to push out the current images you must beat their sales...and good luck with that.

   

Also, forgot to mention that I personally got signatures in the bottom corners. I really wonder if they are real, and if they are,  it pulls a lot of questions.

First one is , is the technology really just using training to create something new or its directly scrapping parts of existing artwork, because how to justify signatures if they turn out to be real. ( Which I can not claim now, but personally I think its a matter of time someone will start creating art based on his name a get a signature if that's the case)

I am really curious to have the same conversation with all of you in a couple of years.

Right now there seem to be a lot of artist who jump on the trainwagon, seeing there is easy money for them to be made with AI generated images. So they claim it's "just a tool" for them and everything is fine and it's not basically the first step towards the end of human made art. Hey, that's just advanced technology, we have to go with the time and can't stop progress, right?

But I am curious to see what they think once they realize that this is not just a "tool" for them, but also for the customers.
How long will it take till the last customer has realized that instead of going to a microstick agency site or a self hosted photographer/artist site or even commissioning an artist/photographer for lots of money, all he needs to do is to go to midjourney, DALL-E or whatever other AI image generation sites are or will be out there and can just describe to the AI what he needs, instead of entering the words in a microstiock search bar or describing it to the artist? 1 year? 5 years? The way things are progressing why do you think the customer will even have a need for you as a traditional or digital artist or photographer in the future? Someone who needs an image will not need you as a "middle man" to describe stuff to the AI and re-sell what the AI creates for you, he will eventually just go to the AI site and describe what he needs to it himself. "AI picture describer" is not something I really see as a job to bring in money in the future.

And the whole problem goes much further than this. The next step after AI generated paintings and photos will be AI generated videos, AI generated stories, AI generated music. In a 100 years there won't be any artists left, because who ever will persuit art, if no one can live from it anymore, because an AI can do it faster and cheaper than you anyways. And that's incredibly sad, because humanity is basically killing off part of what makes it human.  I am glad I will  not live long enough to see that art-deprived mankind where human creativity has been snuffed out.

I don't agree, even until now customers were free to invest in their own tools (lets say cameras, or paint and brushes ) , invest even more time and learn how to use them and create professional level images. Is it really as simple as that ?

Even with AI, someone will not just be able to buy some credits and create something they need at the level of someone else who invested enormous time into that. Sure, serious hobbyist will be able to go really high in the quality of their work but they were able to do so in photography also.

The biggest problem that I see is in the actual amount of work someone is going to be able to produce in small amount of time when he finds his style which will have to be tricky to reproduce if that someone wants to stay recognizable. We are talking about the ability to create a full portfolio in couple of sleepless nights which until now it would takes years to create.

I'm sure there will be superstar AI artists with unique styles which will brand their work under their their name, earn based on social presence, more or less like in any form or art in the history.

Also I'm really against stuff that started to happen when people use at the end of their prompts "in style of artist name". In my opinion that's not only stealing the style, that's stealing the whole identity and brand that someone worked his butt for.

In case of machine learning I'm really not against that that much because there is not an artist in the history of the world that has not stolen part of his style or work from someone else. But when you mention that name to get more attention, or to build your style...that's a problem.

 

not sure how much applies to your life changes, but it's amazing (sort of) how 'christians' can cherry pick what proves their 'belief' while ignoring evolution, climate change, slavery, human rights, and most recently the freedom of women to make their own choice about their bodies

If it was only that, there a new groups that showed up recently that also want to control and force the control on all people about the choices on their own body limiting their human rights if they refuse which puts them in same category with religious fanatics but they will just close their eyes and try to justify that with almost the same stupid arguments religious fanatics use.

So the payed services are rushing down to 0, and the free ones are running from 0  in opposite direction towards them.

Where will the hug happen ?

I can hear Semprini's orchestra playing in the background 

 

Quote from: Lizard on September 19, 2022, 12:05

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 19, 2022, 11:15

Quote from: sharpshot on September 18, 2022, 05:53

Quote from: offisapup on September 18, 2022, 01:11

Quote from: stockastic on September 17, 2022, 22:19

Ok then, I can read a book that you wrote - take detailed notes page by page - then "write" my own book and sell it. Hey, I just used yours to "train" myself.  Or as you put it, to "move towards" my own version. You can't point to any identical sentences so my conscience is clear.

Hey, that's how QUentin Tarantino makes his movies.

And how The Beatles wrote several of their songs. Then Oasis did it, and got all the criticism.

Really? Several? Name a couple, and the source material, I'd be interested.

Quote from: offisapup on September 18, 2022, 23:28

Quote from: cascoly on September 18, 2022, 13:51

Tarantino first buys the rights to the book, even if the result has little relation to the original

No pretty much every single scene in Tarantino's films comes from a film he saw. He has taken hundreds of those influences and made something completely different (which is exactly what AI is doing). And he hasn't bought the rights to any of the films he's borrowing from but if you read his interviews, he's acknowledged quite openly where he's taken some of his moments from.

That's not unusual as for years the movie and TV industry has been doing "inspired" scenes by using bits of previous works. The film Noir, some of the methods and blocking, are identical to older films. Those old films, sequences were copied from other old films. People like Lucas and Spielberg are known for filmmaking craft. They use classic scenes, remade and woven in to fit their movies.

This is interesting for people asking about the legal aspects:  https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/22/commercial-image-generating-ai-raises-all-sorts-of-thorny-legal-issues/

"...there isn�t a direct legal precedent in the U.S. that upholds publicly available training data as fair use." There's already a case in the system arguing that rights are being infringed upon. If the case ends up being, the scraping the web for PD sites and who knows where else is not fair use, then the AI creators will have to license the data they use. How much would those initial 5 million images cost?

Oh a couple of IS and SS subscriptions and we get our 2 cents and the system puts us out of business, with our own images.

I Saw Her Standing There - Chuck Berry, "I�m Talking About You"

Lady Madonna - Humphrey Lyttelton, "Bad Penny Blues" + Dan Burley, "South Side Shake"

I Feel Fine - Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"

Come Together - Chuck Berry, "You Can�t Catch Me"

Revolution - Pee Wee Crayton, "Do Unto Others"

Yesterday - Nat King Cole, "My Love"

Hey Jude - John Ireland, "Te Deum"

Run For Your Life - Elvis Presley, "Baby Let�s Play House"

Great list, some inspired is not copying. Louie Louie, Hang on Sloopy, Call any Vegetable, and many more could all be the same song. But thanks, that was interesting.

n 1973, The Beatles were sued by Big Seven Music Corp which handled Chuck Berry�s �You Can�t Catch Me�. They claimed that not only was the beat from �Come Together� just Berry�s song slowed down, the lyrics were also stolen.  For reference, the lyrics in question are John Lennon�s �Here come ol� flattop, he come groovin� up slowly� to Berry�s �Here come a flattop, he was movin� up with me�.

Both parties settled out of court, but Lennon wasn�t done.  He vowed to record three more songs owned by Big Seven Music Corp.  Big Music responded politely by doing the same thing to John Lennon, releasing a series of unauthorized outtakes designed to embarrass Lennon.  When it was time to take the wreckage to court, both sides lawyered up in what must have been an epic legal showdown.  In the end, it was John Lennon that won, to the tune of 85 grand.

That's what the courts thought.

Hey here's another, a movie, and I liked both of them.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) / Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Is using an image to train AI infringing? Since that's in the courts now, the answer should be interesting to all of us?

Faces? "IBM allegedly created, collected and stored millions of face templates�highly detailed geometric maps of the face�from about a million photos that make up the �diversity in faces� database. Janecyk claimed that IBM obtained the photos from Flickr, a website where users upload their photos. "

The future of this, when it's out of beta testing and to the point where the developers are confident in their ability to produce a useful commercial product is known as pay-per-query.

Hats off to the OP that page is interesting to see what come up for a search. That could be useful in itself for ideas?

Want something more personal and scary?  https://exposing.ai/  I didn't find myself. Not sure if I care? But it was interesting that Flickr and other databases are forming a collection of faces.

I agree but as they even changed the songs after being accused does nothing but proves they inspired themself a bit to much. Copying the exact bassline can not be inspiration

And the whole industry is full of examples like that. Bob Dylan career skyrocket after he did what he did with House of the rising sun or Blowing in the wind of which he changed complete verse later if I recall that right. He didn't even credit House of the rising sun and a career of a pure genius started like that.

Hello I love from the Doors is an example of a blatant ripoff and pretty much everyone did it in the music history not only at that or this times. Some things go a bit beyond "inspiration"

Quote from: Lizard on September 01, 2022, 20:20

 If you don't want zombies, use something like cute

First and only try on your Bulldog.

I can only repeat the exact same answers I wrote above already:
If you only tried Bulldogs once, you don't have much to draw conclusions from.
If I use cute, I get zombies.

And since you apparently reply before reading, just repeating your original statement and this conversation is going in circles, this is pointless and I am out of here.

No angry 

Yes i do cause I tried the elephants, tried the horses and I was getting the same thing before like your example. So I started researching, reading other peoples experiences , looking for other peoples prompts etc.

Here is a little hint to get you going... for starters , htf can it know that you want a photography from your prompt to begin with ? You didnt even mention what media should it generate. And thats just a drop in the ocean.

If you can not get a result from something you just started with , you might want to consider that you don't know how to use the thing and that this is the main part of your problem.