5 ms·

Surprised there was no mention of the upcoming threat of AI stock photos, and how easy it will be to generate massive amounts of these fast and cheap. Ne real p

by x__x 7y ago

Surprised there was no mention of the upcoming threat of AI stock photos, and how easy it will be to generate massive amounts of these fast and cheap. Ne real people, who won't have to sign contracts or be paid. https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-ai-photos-stock-photography-royalty-free https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-ai-p...

rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
The (human) models and photographers will be in real trouble when generative models are able to make an ad on the fly with a fake person who looks like your neighbor with the best landscaping using the advertised lawnmower.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    When the AI worked it worked well but when it failed the failure was obvious and creepy.
  - qxnqd 7y ago
    Some looked creepy, others looked average, others looked practically real. You can still retouch them a little using Photoshop and you have something that is 99.9% real. Good enough for a campaign.
  - irrational 7y ago
    It's time to check again. The latest ones are indistinguishable from real humans, at least to my eye. Somehow the uncanny valley has been crossed already.
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      Form what I remember that AI could only do one pose.
  - SignalsFromBob 7y ago
    This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      You're right, that's better than it used to be by orders of magnitude. However, there remain things that "just don't look right". The most obvious I can spot is the teeth, followed by warped edges (odd indentations, a missing ear that ought to merely be partially hidden), followed by the eyes(more subtle, but definitely there). The "big swathes of skin" are generally fine. There are also wrong numbers of teeth, partially missing eyebrows, etc. Finally, there's not much correlation between apparent ethnicity and facial characteristics or hair. All these "just look wrong" enough to put someone off of a marketing brochure.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        These are random images though. If you do want something specific, you can dial the right knobs to fix the issues you mentioned and match up the features you don't like. Adding some extra constraints should be possible if you actually want commercial usage.
    - plorkyeran 7y ago
      I reloaded the page ten times and every single one had something clearly off.
      - cycrutchfield 7y ago
        It's hard to generate perfect images at high resolution. The fact that they are even plausible at high resolution is very impressive. If these were downscaled to 128x128 you would literally not be able to distinguish real from fake.
  - smabie 7y ago
    When was the last time you checked? Because the last time I checked I found it hard to tell the difference.
masona 7y ago
Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! Just the rights management issue of the training set is a tough question. Then you have to account for quality, direction and dimensionality of light, food styling, props, custom products or ingredients, the list of challenges goes on an on. Then after the image is produced, if you're a food company, all your imagery is a kind of 'claim-based' imagery meaning consumers assume it is real and in some cases, there are laws preventing the use of fake foods in ads. I'm curious about the implications of a world where AI stock photos are ubiquitous, but some styles of imagery are pretty far out at the moment. Source: Spent 15 years in the commercial photo industry.
- mkirch 7y ago
  I do wonder if the rights management issue is impacted by the decision referenced in this article regarding training machine learning models on copyrighted material: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    It seems like part of that case hinged on economic impact. If you're using copyrighted books and show snippets of the book that's one thing. But using copyrighted material to build something that is attempting to replace the copyrighted material seems like it could have gone the other way.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  > Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! I can’t wait for a chef to throw their arms up because they get tasked to create an AI-generated non-existant food tray that performed well in Amazon Turk focus groups.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rangibaby 7y ago
Once AI is good enough to take photos better than a human, I think AI will be good enough to make entire categories of jobs obsolete. Photographers will at least have a fun hobby to enjoy while collecting their basic income.

by x__x 7y ago

rm_-rf_slash 7y ago

The (human) models and photographers will be in real trouble when generative models are able to make an ad on the fly with a fake person who looks like your neighbor with the best landscaping using the advertised lawnmower.

zozbot234 7y ago
Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  When the AI worked it worked well but when it failed the failure was obvious and creepy.
- qxnqd 7y ago
  Some looked creepy, others looked average, others looked practically real. You can still retouch them a little using Photoshop and you have something that is 99.9% real. Good enough for a campaign.
- irrational 7y ago
  It's time to check again. The latest ones are indistinguishable from real humans, at least to my eye. Somehow the uncanny valley has been crossed already.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Form what I remember that AI could only do one pose.
- SignalsFromBob 7y ago
  This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    You're right, that's better than it used to be by orders of magnitude. However, there remain things that "just don't look right". The most obvious I can spot is the teeth, followed by warped edges (odd indentations, a missing ear that ought to merely be partially hidden), followed by the eyes(more subtle, but definitely there). The "big swathes of skin" are generally fine. There are also wrong numbers of teeth, partially missing eyebrows, etc. Finally, there's not much correlation between apparent ethnicity and facial characteristics or hair. All these "just look wrong" enough to put someone off of a marketing brochure.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      These are random images though. If you do want something specific, you can dial the right knobs to fix the issues you mentioned and match up the features you don't like. Adding some extra constraints should be possible if you actually want commercial usage.
  - plorkyeran 7y ago
    I reloaded the page ten times and every single one had something clearly off.
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      It's hard to generate perfect images at high resolution. The fact that they are even plausible at high resolution is very impressive. If these were downscaled to 128x128 you would literally not be able to distinguish real from fake.
- smabie 7y ago
  When was the last time you checked? Because the last time I checked I found it hard to tell the difference.

masona 7y ago

Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! Just the rights management issue of the training set is a tough question. Then you have to account for quality, direction and dimensionality of light, food styling, props, custom products or ingredients, the list of challenges goes on an on. Then after the image is produced, if you're a food company, all your imagery is a kind of 'claim-based' imagery meaning consumers assume it is real and in some cases, there are laws preventing the use of fake foods in ads. I'm curious about the implications of a world where AI stock photos are ubiquitous, but some styles of imagery are pretty far out at the moment. Source: Spent 15 years in the commercial photo industry.

mkirch 7y ago
I do wonder if the rights management issue is impacted by the decision referenced in this article regarding training machine learning models on copyrighted material: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  It seems like part of that case hinged on economic impact. If you're using copyrighted books and show snippets of the book that's one thing. But using copyrighted material to build something that is attempting to replace the copyrighted material seems like it could have gone the other way.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Scoundreller 7y ago
> Lately I've been imagining what it would take to create an AI-generated food image. It's super hard! I can’t wait for a chef to throw their arms up because they get tasked to create an AI-generated non-existant food tray that performed well in Amazon Turk focus groups.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rangibaby 7y ago

Once AI is good enough to take photos better than a human, I think AI will be good enough to make entire categories of jobs obsolete. Photographers will at least have a fun hobby to enjoy while collecting their basic income.