Artmageddon: The rise of the machines, and banning machine-generated images

A.I. images of 'female models' can be very convincing, However many are almost too perfect. We all need to look out for these to prevent or 'shout out' if they appear in PP

"To be clear, I am not against an artist using machine-generated images, and I find the future of such things to be very exciting. I just feel that PurplePort is simply not the venue for such things". Summed up perfectly, along with I'm sure, what is the view of most members here.

Fascinating

Thank you for clarification on this. I had no idea what AI images are, so you post was very informative and totally understandable. Totally agree with your decision.

Spilsten - Midjourney - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKWLgmaoQlI I find it disturbing and beautiful. S

Machine generated images are not photographs, and this is a photography website, so banning such images on this site is reasonable I think.

If you consider that the ethos of the site is essentially to showcase genuine talent and to “allow members to connect and create images” then there is no case whatsoever for a system in which the creative process has been replaced entirely by one which is randomly generated and artificially contrived. Creativity is by definition to demonstrate the originality of your ideas and thoughts, and to subsequently create or bring these in to existence. AI makes a mockery of this process. On behalf of all P.P artists, remember... Paintings start with a blank canvas, and the entirely manual process is an exercise in observation coupled to a disciplined and dexterous coordination of hand and eye; all of it completely controlled by the brain and devoid of any electronic or computer generated assistance. A million miles away from A.I

https://petapixel.com/2022/09/15/photography-website-bans-ai-generated-images-from-its-platform/

art is art, no matter how its produced, once you begin censoring it, it begs the question of why are you afraid it. I disagree with the statement that PP is for creatives, there are lots of good creative photographers on here, but outnumbered by the pure porn merchants, along with imagery that the sole purpose is just show how attractive a model is. taking a sharp well composed image with todays modern cameras is not difficult, A.I generated imagery is not for me, but if PP want o ban anything, ban the porn, I will no doubt get shot down for this post, but I dont intend to reply to the remaks it generates,

totally agree - it's an exciting innovation but doesn't reflect our photographic talent

So you can use it as part of the image but not the whole image. Would it be better if people tagged it with #AI as well?

Best decision ever!! :D

the right decision. nothing more to add

To add, a lot of the comments of bewilderment as to this decision are why it’s worth considering it’s use in some way or at least understanding it more. I’m convinced it will be seen as a viable method of creative expression soon enough and accepted as human made. As with all things lately, removing the hard work from any process is just widely accepted as the thing to do!

Bravo! This is going to become a thing regardless. Commercially it’s a no brainier unfortunately. For places like this though, I think the only sensible thing to do is keep it out of here. People will cry puritan for sure, but when human art that takes days, week, months, is being drown out in a see of content that takes seconds and is merely a clever visual remix of artwork from the greatest artists that have ever lived… how do you reconcile that? I’ve been using midjourney quite extensively (not to make “art” but to use as reference and mood boards). I was totally against it, then saw the proliferation of it. My instagram feed is full of it. I saw an FPI on here that was definitely AI. I realised it’s time to get ahead of it, commercially, because it is coming for jobs. Illustrators and concept artists are already feeling it’s presence on the market. Good move here. I’ve been systematically unfollowing artists I’ve come to realise use midjourney and don’t reference it. Honesty is needed

As others have said there are plenty of places for people to display this type. This site is all about photographers working with models to produce images, a process that requires a high degree of human input at all stages. This move is exactly the right reaction. Well done!

One-Hundred percent agreement. A well thought out & well-presented approach to an evolving issue.

I agree entirely. In my opinion images on Purpleport should be 100% the work of the uploading photographer (or their model). I have enough problems with guys with cameras submitting images from group shoots or 'remote' shoots where their main contribution is simply pressing the shutter when something pleasing passes in front of the camera!

I am happy to tell you I don’t like pictures done like this I don’t do a lot of stuff with photoshop because it you Have got your picture right the first time then you should Not need to use photoshop

This is THE best piece of written content I have read lately. While I find the technology and a website such as NightCafe truly amazing, I can't even begin to pretend to understand what this means for a graphic artist. As a musician and photographer I feel...uncomfortable. Mr. Russ, the way you reasoned your decision...I think it's 11/10. Top notch reasoning, respect!

I agree with the sentiment, but I have no idea why the example images would ever be on this site in the first place. I thought PurplePort was all about photographers and models collaborating to produce images. The images in this article have no models, are clearly not produced by a camera and would be more appropriately posted somewhere like Deviantart.

Good call: I agree. It's always a fine line, but I think there are plenty of other places for these kinds of images, and indeed, many other image formats.

Good initiative. It's nice knowing you do care about what we do. Thank you very much.

I fully support this decision. I don`t see any controversy here: the process of "creation" using AI is similar to situation where you talk to an artist painter and try to explain what the painter should paint to make you happy. Are you the author of the painting only because you talked to the painter? Personally I find midjourney exciting and worrying: it is exciting, because it is so good. It is unbelievable good. I just love some of images! This is, obviously, the reason why it is worrying too. The progress will not stop. Next generations will be better, and better.

Totally agree, there are many suitable platforms, we all create in our different ways but the point is we work with our original images

Rise of the machines. My son makes his living creating book covers and is rather worried about what will happen in the near future. However, some of it is not so good. He has seen generated images with watermarks implanted in parts of it.

trying to not going to choose a side on this one, but I’m skeptical of how you can accurately police this sort of thing, and also wonder where you draw the line. Policing it won’t always be a given, there are some masterful Photoshop guru’s here, and I can imagine someone being super frustrated if their image was banned because an admin believed it wasn’t original work. What about tools such as Luminar AI, which many people use for portrait retouching, and full on Sky replacements? Is that acceptable? How would you even know if a sky replacement was done by hand or by AI? And, does it really matter? It makes me wonder, who defines what art is? The curators/facilitators of sharing art, or the artists? Thanks for the update and your rationale, though. I don’t use any AI tools (yet), but I find them fascinating, and likely to be a big part of the future of creativity, particularly for concept artists. Interested to see how it develops and how creatives fold it into their workflows.

I see machine-generated images as more art than photography, so certainly not for PP. It will be interesting to see how they are treated by the Royal Institute when they turn up in their summer exhibition

So, in future, the best photographers - the highest-paid professionals and the amateurs who win all the camera club competitions - will be those who think up the best phrases? Joking aside, can this algorithm do anything with nonsense phrases, like "nounifying an adjective" to call yourself a creative?

A reminder of the ethos. PurplePort is a modern and refreshing approach to the problem of finding people to work/collaborate with. It doesn't matter whether you are an experienced photographer or a new model our mission is to provide you with one neat and easy to use service so you can find talented people to work with. Say no more.

Very interesting set of tools and techniques. I agree with your decision that it should not be allowed here. I agree that this is digital art but is it photography? I will be interested to read what others think of the concepts and what results. I am interested if I take a picture in studio that I then pass it through a program that I have, called StudioArtist v5.5 by Synthetik, if it would fall into this category of machine generated art. The program offers options to convert an image to a watercolour-like using parameters I have to set or watch the conversion to get best results. I guess reading down deeper in the thread that @Russ Freeman has said that since there is an original image that this would be probably be OK. Thanks Russ that is a good response in my book as this is like heavily manipulated or Photoshopped images.

Surrender to the machines! We have dug our photographic graves, now let us pose peacefully - deep inside them.

The right decision for PP which brings together creatives some of whom make a living from it. AI has its place but not this place.

Nothing but applause in this corner. Getting sick of all the counterfeitographers who would then masquerade as a photographer. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE APPLAUSE!!!!

This is disappointing, why assume people want to deceive?

This is a good decision. AI art is interesting and exciting and will have lots of applications, but it will be cheap and easy - let's keep this for people with artistic input, there will be other sites people can use if they are interested in AI

I completely agree with this decision and with all the reasons given!

Here is a question. How are you going to determine if something is made using those tools ? You're not actually going to manually check every single reported case and for individual photos?! You do realise people could create them faster than you could even ask for the originals. Let alone the work required to validate

Great, the main reason this site was created was to help photographers, models and studios network, communicate and work together in a safe place. This is not a place or exhibiting work unless its to help with the above. The use of digital work to create images is fine and some of it is amazing but on this site its a place to advertise your work to hopefully get to work with some amazing people.

Good job! It was really frustrating to go through the comments of a CLEARLY AI generated front page image and see that everybody was ecstatic and absolutely clueless about the fact that basically no actual work went into creating it.

All a bit weird, banning stuff. So you can upload a photo or a drawing of a building but not a computer image

Agreed!

This is a mistake. Banning images of any kind is a slippery slope. What's next---shall we ban "digital camera" images because analog came first? Should we ban images that have been post-processed since that is not what the camera "really saw"? Should we ban images that have been altered using AI-based algorithms in post, like those in ON1 Photo Raw, which I use with great pleasure? Lord, or should the ban be extended to those images that might offend prurient tastes and sensibilities (there probably goes half of the listings!)? Hopefully, those who have started down this slippery slope of censorship will come to realize that photographers and models alike will reap the benefits from technological change, including AI-generated images, since this merely expands the range of creative options.

Most of my work is Photo-Journalism and documentary. Other than cropping, slight exposure and using a lens profile I don't to any editing. In fact it is very rare I get out of Lightroom for editing. So the banning of machine generated images seems a given to me. I 100% agree with the rule. I disagree with the Mods that the AI generated images are not human created. They are human crated and credit should be given to the human mathematicians who devised the algorithms and the human software developers who implemented the software. Not to the person who entered the string that generated the images as they have no control. Without knowing and understanding the internal maths and implementation it is purely random input.

This is the correct move to make, though I find the images created using the AI engines fascinating, having only recently done some on midjourney and starryai. It's particularly relevant with the open sourced Stable Diffusion showing that the AIs have accessed thousands of images that might very well lead to copyright issues. I wonder if this is how artists felt when photography came on the scene. :)

Agreed !

I agree with the ban on 100% AI generated images. I have however been experimenting with the tools as part of a process where some elements of the image are from original photography and some are from the AI tools or feature AI manipulations. I consider those images to be composites where the AI element is being used as a part of a tool kit rather than the sole creation tool. In particular I am looking at it for set extensions. I have seen a few interesting examples of enhancing costumes with AI generated elements too.

Good decision.

AI is taking over. Your resistance is futile.

I suppose it was only a matter of time. Near everything is automated nowadays. The sheer number of photographers out there who never shift the camera off auto never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, can you really claim such images to be your work if the camera has done everything bar choosing the angle and subject? I was unaware of this latest automation and I completely agree that this has no place on a site such as Purpleport so I am very pleased to see you take this stance. That said I was unaware that you could do this to get images to use as backgrounds and I maywell investigate this further so thanks for bringing this to my attention

Huzzah, real intelligence has prevailed!

The age of Ultron is upon us, the puppet no longer has any strings.

A good rule, eminently acceptable for now. Then, there are always "borderline" cases, the odd creative who would publish a partly machine created background, let us say 5 square centimeters and a full length model standing in front of it...etc.. I have also seen some profiles here on Purple port with only a few very bland landscape pictures and no models of any kind (not even an animal, be it a dog,cat or owl even) so as always, one must question the why or motive behind every picture or profile first .. writing rules and applying them, it can soon become confusing...

Good idea.

Well said, totally support this decision.

Another supporter for this decision. Totally agree that PP needs to concentrate on images principally* the result of human endeavour AND human collaboration. * to explain 'principally' above, I have no issue with photographers including a limited proportion of non-human model work in their portfolio (eg 'scapes', wildlife, still life) for variety and to showcase their other photographic skills or models including some selfies (for example) particularly at the start of their model journey. However most of all portfolios should surely be showcasing work where 2 is more creatives have worked together to produce images.

I totally agree with your decision. I love the concept but it's not appropriate here.

Where do you draw the line? I have worked with many photographers who heavily manipulate the image afterwards using ps and other methods so it becomes a piece of art and heavily unrecognisable from the original image. How will it be decided what is and is not acceptable and also how will you know what is genuine and what isn't?

I totally agree

When it comes down to the images, they are other people's images, not your own, so publishing such images boils down to plagiarism.

AI goes against the ethos of human creativity so definitely not what PP is about, I totally agree with the decision.

The idea that such images are "banned from PurplePort until further notice" only to have three such images posted by Admin looks like a plot line for a future episode of Black Adder.

Totally agree

Photography is about physically taking a photograph of something, either with a camera, or other capture devices like iPads and smart phones. My philosophy has always been to take the best photograph I can using my skills, or lack of, as a photographer. So although I edit every image, I am only happy with those images that requires a minimum of editing to create something that is well exposed, sharp, and meets the brief. I do enjoy experimenting with, removing selected colours, removing the odd blemish, but in general I like to be photographer rather than an editing Wizz. I don’t see what place a completely computer generated piece of art has on this site anyway.

A good decision. Well done. It has its uses I'm sure, but I'm glad they won't be used here.

I wholeheartedly agree with this decision. Well done.

Good decision. I'd be very interested to know how this ban will be enforced (e.g. how you prove an image came from an AI, rather than a human) as I'm sure many of us will have the same challenge (e.g. running camera club competitions).

Well said I totally agree. Incidentally I think PP should be devoted to modelling images , increasingly there are other subject matter on display. Kind regards

I very much agree and glad to see you use the phrase "machine algorithm." The term "AI" is used far too often to describe software that is nothing of the sort.

I agree, it would be very confusing to have AI generated images proliferating on Purpleport. It's a fascinating new tool and I've been exploring its possibilities. It's exciting to be able to combine AI art with ones own photography or use it to modify your own images.

This is a difficult but correct decision that I think will benefit this community enormously, and the nuance regarding use as textures and backgrounds is valuable. Thank you!

A good decision in my opinion. As you say there is definitely a place for such art but if all you are doing is inputting what is basically a search command then I do not see how you can claim any artistic input. At least photo manipulation of an image (adding backgrounds, multiple imaging etc ) does require some sort of competence with an image editing programme and a level of imagination. I may sound like an old fuddy duddy but I am actually excited by the new technology I just do not think it belongs on a photography site in any way.

This is not photography