Author Topic: Rejection of a real travel photo because of AI generated content (Read 23866 times)

RalfLiebhold · « **on:** October 10, 2023, 11:34 »

At Shutterstock, a real non-AI travel photo (beach scene with people) was rejected today with the reason:

"AI Generated Content: AI generated content is prohibited. Repeated submission of such content will result in account suspension and/or termination."

This is an older photo that I post-processed with Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Gigapixel AI and then with the latest version of Photoshop. I did not use the AI functions of Photoshop. I have been using Topaz for years without any problems.

Does anyone have similar experiences and maybe know where the problem is?

I'm holding off on my uploads for now and waiting for Shutterstock to respond.

It is noticeable that the tone of the agencies has become harsher and more threatening since AI.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #1 on:** October 10, 2023, 12:40 »

I don't have any similar experiences, but I wonder if you might understand more about how this mistake occurred by looking at the metadata in your uploaded file.

When I was experimenting with Photoshop 25 and generative fill, I used an online metadata tool to look at and compare what was in the new file versus one created with PS 24.x. As far as I can tell from the limited tests I did, if you stay away from the AI-powered features, your Photoshop edited files should be fine.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z_2dnk-QdSpAU47AQZSXgwwPYRhIsa9A/view?usp=sharing

It's possible it's the Gigapixel tool that's embedding something that triggered SS's automatic screening, so possibly you need to clean the metadata out after that step and before editing in Photoshop?

Let us know what you find out.

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #2 on:** October 10, 2023, 12:59 »

Thank you, Jo Ann. I couldn't find anything noticeable in the metadata.
The only thing is the filename,which looks like this after using these tools:
053_drage-SharpenAI-motion-gigapixel-hq-scale-2_00x copy.jpg.

I would imagine that this could be a problem. However, only since today, because I use these programs regularly.

cascoly · « **Reply #3 on:** October 10, 2023, 13:16 »

I've had similar problems of false positives claiming ai-gen - sometimes 1 of a series is rejected as AI, all others accepted. all used Topaz, no ai-gen

in each case i contacted support & they gave me a case number to send to the reviewer and resub those images which were then accepted

my concern is we might get suspended because of false positives

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #4 on:** October 10, 2023, 13:33 »

Quote from: cascoly on October 10, 2023, 13:16

my concern is we might get suspended because of false positives

Steve, that is my concern as well.
Another rejection of this kind nowadays can quickly lead to an account block.

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #5 on:** October 10, 2023, 13:49 »

Just got the reply from Shutterstock, the problem seems to have been the use of Topaz:

"..... After checking the Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz Gigapixel software that was designed to remove noise of images and after confirming that you are the copyright owner of the content that was rejected on suspicion of being AI-generated, allow me to provide the follow steps:...."

I am now to resubmit the image with a case number.

Somehow everything is getting more and more complicated.

Camillo · « **Reply #6 on:** October 10, 2023, 15:18 »

The error is uploading to shutterstock in the first place. 10 cts sales are ridiculous.

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #7 on:** October 10, 2023, 15:31 »

Quote from: Camillo on October 10, 2023, 15:18

The error is uploading to shutterstock in the first place. 10 cts sales are ridiculous.

Somehow I expected such a stupid comment on this topic ,which is not really helpful.

Shutterstock is the strongest agency for me in terms of revenue.

If that doesn't work for you, I'm sorry for you.

But please vent your frustration on topics where it belongs. This was not the topic here and it annoys me.

yuriy · « **Reply #8 on:** October 10, 2023, 17:45 »

ouch, shots fired

Anyka · « **Reply #9 on:** October 11, 2023, 02:00 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 10, 2023, 12:40

I don't have any similar experiences, but I wonder if you might understand more about how this mistake occurred by looking at the metadata in your uploaded file.

When I was experimenting with Photoshop 25 and generative fill, I used an online metadata tool to look at and compare what was in the new file versus one created with PS 24.x. As far as I can tell from the limited tests I did, if you stay away from the AI-powered features, your Photoshop edited files should be fine.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z_2dnk-QdSpAU47AQZSXgwwPYRhIsa9A/view?usp=sharing

Interesting! Can you tell us which software you used to view the metadata? I just use Irfanview and their report looks totally different from yours ...

Also, I read this on DPreview :
The new Content Credentials feature attaches metadata to Firefly-generated images to let others know the creator, edits made, and the tools used, what Adobe is calling a "nutrition label" for AI images.

stoker2014 · « **Reply #10 on:** October 11, 2023, 02:54 »

Topaz Video Enhance AI can remove noise from videos and increase video size. So now you can’t use this program?

cobalt · « **Reply #11 on:** October 11, 2023, 05:38 »

Thank you for the warning.

Content for istock, deposit etc… I still process all that with an old photoshop elements version.

Content worked on with modern photoshop only goes to Adobe.

I will share this thread in a few places, things have truly become more complicated.

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #12 on:** October 11, 2023, 06:48 »

Quote from: cobalt on October 11, 2023, 05:38

Thank you for the warning.

Content for istock, deposit etc… I still process all that with an old photoshop elements version.

Content worked on with modern photoshop only goes to Adobe.

I will share this thread in a few places, things have truly become more complicated.

Just briefly to clarify, that obviously didn't come across right. My concern at first was also that you are no longer allowed to use Topaz and Photoshop.

These tools may still be used for Shutterstock.

The problem in my case was that I had visibly used Sharpen AI for the reviewer, he probably didn't know this tool and put my image in the Gernerative AI box. At least that's how I interpreted their answer.

The image has now come through the review unchanged.

alan b traehern · « **Reply #13 on:** October 11, 2023, 07:06 »

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 11, 2023, 06:48

Quote from: cobalt on October 11, 2023, 05:38
Thank you for the warning.

Content for istock, deposit etc… I still process all that with an old photoshop elements version.

Content worked on with modern photoshop only goes to Adobe.

I will share this thread in a few places, things have truly become more complicated.

Just briefly to clarify, that obviously didn't come across right. My concern at first was also that you are no longer allowed to use Topaz and Photoshop.

These tools may still be used for Shutterstock.

The problem in my case was that I had visibly used Sharpen AI for the reviewer, he probably didn't know this tool and put my image in the Gernerative AI box. At least that's how I interpreted their answer.

The image has now come through the review unchanged.

AI used to find AI is a bad decision. I wouldn't use the term AI in the file name in the future. Good that you brought this to our attention.

MPfoto71 · « **Reply #14 on:** October 11, 2023, 07:41 »

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 10, 2023, 11:34

At Shutterstock, a real non-AI travel photo (beach scene with people) was rejected today with the reason:

"AI Generated Content: AI generated content is prohibited. Repeated submission of such content will result in account suspension and/or termination."

This is an older photo that I post-processed with Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Gigapixel AI and then with the latest version of Photoshop. I did not use the AI functions of Photoshop. I have been using Topaz for years without any problems.

Does anyone have similar experiences and maybe know where the problem is?

I'm holding off on my uploads for now and waiting for Shutterstock to respond.

It is noticeable that the tone of the agencies has become harsher and more threatening since AI.

Thank you for sharing this info.

I would like to shed light on this from a technical point of view as I have had such cases happen to me myself with Shutter, Deposit and Vecteezy - i.e. rejection of images due to AI where a camera still took the image.

Why from a technical point of view - maybe this helps to understand why these automatic systems mark images as "AI".

Tools like Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Gigapixel use so-called GAN networks and rebuild a sharpened or enlarged image completely from our photo - i.e. from the original photo there is not a single pixel left in the final image.
The image is reassembled in small blocks from a GAN AI network similar to MidJourney, Firefly, etc. and the automatic recognition software now recognizes that certain features from a generative AI are to be recognized here.

You can see this effect especially well, if you for example scale small font with Topaz Gigapixel from 400% - then you have interesting "alien letters".
(You can see what I mean in the attached image - it is a nice scaling, but it is a generated image)

So from a technical point of view, an image sharpened or scaled with GAN networks is a generated AI image and that's why these systems strike.

In short, the systems are not good at deciding between "Generative AI for complete image generation" and "Generative AI for small image elements for image enhancements" - and no I don't want to defend the systems at Shutter & Co here, those systems need to be improved before letting them run on our content.

Sorry for the wall of text,
VG Michael

blvdone · « **Reply #15 on:** October 11, 2023, 08:52 »

I think upsampling with AI software is NG if they don't accept AI generated photos. Upsampled videos should be NG too.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #16 on:** October 11, 2023, 08:54 »

Do not apologize for the "wall of text" - that was very helpful. It spurred a lot of thoughts about a real tangle for agencies in evaluating what they will and won't accept in the future.

It also highlighted that I need to do a little reading - I am starting with this Google overview and will see if I can educate myself on this topic

https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/gan

I don't use Topaz's tools, but all my uploaded images have been massaged by RAW processors and Photoshop tools. I don't consider those changes to be generated, but clearly we're a long way from processing film in a darkroom

When Photoshop was a baby, it was viewed as suspect by some, but the message from those of using these tools was that it was just doing what you could always have done in the darkroom but without the chemicals and mess. Even if you just stuck with Capture One or Lightroom and Photoshop, we're way beyond that now.

Clearly agencies need to scale back on trying to cut costs by using inadequate tools to evaluate contributor's content, but it does raise the question of what the appropriate yardstick should be.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #17 on:** October 11, 2023, 08:57 »

Quote from: Anyka on October 11, 2023, 02:00

Interesting! Can you tell us which software you used to view the metadata? I just use Irfanview and their report looks totally different from yours ...

https://www.metadata2go.com/view-metadata

I made small versions of the images I wanted to check given that you need to upload to their website to use the free tool

pancaketom · « **Reply #18 on:** October 11, 2023, 10:30 »

Maybe sticking with the old non CC photoshop tools will be a selling point eventually. I'm surprised that the so called AI makes up nonsense text when it probably should be able to recognize what language it is and actually recreate the text even if it doesn't get the font or every word correct. It certainly makes any image that has been uprezzed a bit suspect now since it is actually making up details.

The lines between an image that is of reality and one that is of something more (or less) has always been a bit blurred, especially in the world of stock images, but this makes it a lot more of a gray area. I wonder if the next step will be a using a program to strip all mention of AI out of the metadata before uploading.

Using AI to identify AI probably usually works for now, but if you train the AI to make images that another AI can't identify as such that will probably work for a while too. What a mess the agencies are in. The fact that they are so bad at keeping people from uploading complete blatant copies, horrible obvious spammed keywords, and 3 legged 6 fingered people makes me think they won't do very well at dealing with this much more difficult challenge.

cascoly · « **Reply #19 on:** October 11, 2023, 12:55 »

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 10, 2023, 13:49

Just got the reply from Shutterstock, the problem seems to have been the use of Topaz:

"..... After checking the Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz Gigapixel software that was designed to remove noise of images and after confirming that you are the copyright owner of the content that was rejected on suspicion of being AI-generated, allow me to provide the follow steps:...."

I am now to resubmit the image with a case number.

Somehow everything is getting more and more complicated.

one of the early 'experts' said i should add "not AI generated" when submitting images! i escalated & got an intelligent person who set up a case file & the false positive were accepted

cascoly · « **Reply #20 on:** October 11, 2023, 13:07 »

Quote from: JustAnImage on October 11, 2023, 07:41

...
Tools like Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Gigapixel use so-called GAN networks and rebuild a sharpened or enlarged image completely from our photo - i.e. from the original photo there is not a single pixel left in the final image.
The image is reassembled in small blocks from a GAN AI network similar to MidJourney, Firefly, etc. and the automatic recognition software now recognizes that certain features from a generative AI are to be recognized here.
...
So from a technical point of view, an image sharpened or scaled with GAN networks is a generated AI image and that's why these systems strike.

In short, the systems are not good at deciding between "Generative AI for complete image generation" and "Generative AI for small image elements for image enhancements" -...

thanks for the details, but the results aren't consistent - i submit hundreds of images to SS and, luckily, only a few have been tagged as ai-gen (largest was 10 out of 100, almost all run thru Topaz apps including upscaling - I'm working thru niche subjects from scanned slides, and older images - Topaz has resulted in acceptance, and sale, of images rejected as out of focus or noisy tears ago.

RalfLiebhold · « **Reply #21 on:** October 11, 2023, 13:08 »

Quote from: cascoly on October 11, 2023, 12:55

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 10, 2023, 13:49
Just got the reply from Shutterstock, the problem seems to have been the use of Topaz:

"..... After checking the Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz Gigapixel software that was designed to remove noise of images and after confirming that you are the copyright owner of the content that was rejected on suspicion of being AI-generated, allow me to provide the follow steps:...."

I am now to resubmit the image with a case number.

Somehow everything is getting more and more complicated.

one of the early 'experts' said i should add "not AI generated" when submitting images! i escalated & got an intelligent person who set up a case file & the false positive were accepted

Yes great, titles will have to look like this in the future:

Beach - the image is not AI generated and I own all rights to the image (proof attached), focus on the sixth parasol from the left

cascoly · « **Reply #22 on:** October 11, 2023, 13:16 »

Quote from: pancaketom on October 11, 2023, 10:30

Maybe sticking with the old non CC photoshop tools will be a selling point eventually. I'm surprised that the so called AI makes up nonsense text when it probably should be able to recognize what language it is and actually recreate the text even if it doesn't get the font or every word correct. It certainly makes any image that has been uprezzed a bit suspect now since it is actually making up details. ...

terrible text is a direct result of ML - training doesn't recognize the content it's transmogrifying, much less that there is text & even less what language is there. if anything, just that is text (a failed example of the Chinese room metaphor). so when using the trained dataset (which has none of the actual images - much less the text on a t-shirt - it ends up creating hieroglyphs because many t-shirts have text on them.

cascoly · « **Reply #23 on:** October 11, 2023, 13:23 »

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 11, 2023, 13:08

Quote from: cascoly on October 11, 2023, 12:55
Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 10, 2023, 13:49
Just got the reply from Shutterstock, the problem seems to have been the use of Topaz:

"..... After checking the Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz Gigapixel software that was designed to remove noise of images and after confirming that you are the copyright owner of the content that was rejected on suspicion of being AI-generated, allow me to provide the follow steps:...."

I am now to resubmit the image with a case number.

Somehow everything is getting more and more complicated.

one of the early 'experts' said i should add "not AI generated" when submitting images! i escalated & got an intelligent person who set up a case file & the false positive were accepted

Yes great, titles will have to look like this in the future:

Beach - the image is not AI generated and I own all rights to the image (proof attached), focus on the sixth parasol from the left

may be i was foolishly poking the bear, but when the asked for details on how i 'generated' the falsely labeled images, i replied

1. Point camera
2. click shutter button
3. copy image to computer
4. add metadata
5. upload to SS

ole999 · « **Reply #24 on:** October 11, 2023, 16:44 »

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on October 10, 2023, 11:34

At Shutterstock, a real non-AI travel photo (beach scene with people) was rejected today with the reason:

"AI Generated Content: AI generated content is prohibited. Repeated submission of such content will result in account suspension and/or termination."

This is an older photo that I post-processed with Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Gigapixel AI and then with the latest version of Photoshop. I did not use the AI functions of Photoshop. I have been using Topaz for years without any problems.

Does anyone have similar experiences and maybe know where the problem is?

I'm holding off on my uploads for now and waiting for Shutterstock to respond.

It is noticeable that the tone of the agencies has become harsher and more threatening since AI.

Adobe is setting lots and lots of ports on hold. Long time contrubutors can't get in touch with Adobe and nobody know why. But it has to do with the AI. It's totally wild west ..!

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Author Topic: Rejection of a real travel photo because of AI generated content (Read 23866 times)

RalfLiebhold

Jo Ann Snover

RalfLiebhold

cascoly

RalfLiebhold

RalfLiebhold

Camillo

RalfLiebhold

yuriy

Anyka

stoker2014

cobalt

RalfLiebhold

alan b traehern

MPfoto71

blvdone

Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann Snover

pancaketom

cascoly

cascoly

RalfLiebhold

cascoly

cascoly

ole999

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