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> This is a fantastic and time saving photoshop plugin. But what do we have really? Stock photography sales are in the many billions of dollars per year and cu

> This is a fantastic and time saving photoshop plugin. But what do we have really? Stock photography sales are in the many billions of dollars per year and custom commissioned photography is larger still. That's a pretty seriously sized ready-made market. > But if doesn't spit up exactly what you want can't edit it further. I suspect there's a big startup opportunity in pioneering an easy-to-use interface allowing users to provide fast iterative feedback to the model - including positional and relational constraints ("put this thing over there"). Perhaps even more valuable would be easy yet granular ways to unconstrain the model. For example, "keep the basketball hoop like that but make the basketball an unexpected color and have the panda's right paw doing something pandas don't do that human hands often do."

johnwheeler 5y ago
Or as a precursor to Meta Horizon build a 3D world with speech https://www.fastcompany.com/90725035/metaverse-horizon-worlds-meta-quest-2-builder-bot https://www.fastcompany.com/90725035/metaverse-horizon-world...
recuter 5y ago
Certainly food for thought. Say I'm looking for photography of real events and places, like a royal weeding or a volcano erupting does this help me? Of specific places and architectural features? Of a protest? You're suggesting clipart on steroids: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com https://thispersondoesnotexist.com I think if I was istockphoto.com I'd be a little worried, but that is microstock photography. I'm not sure that is worth billions. In fact I know it isn't. Besides once this tech is wildly available if anything it devalues this sort of thing further closer to $0. It would probably augment existing processes rather than replace them completely. If you are doing a photoshoot for a banana stand with a human model with characteristics x,y,z you're still going to get a human from an agency or craigslist to pose. If suddenly the client informs you that they needed human a,b,c instead maybe one of these forthcoming tools will let you swap that out faster. You'd upload your photoshoot and an example or two of the type of human model you wished you had retroactively and it would fix it up faster than an intern. Cool.
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  Shutterstock is a direct competitor of iStock and is a $3B company. I personally pay them $200/mo. Maybe you just don't know enough about this industry?
  - recuter 5y ago
    Seems about right. Their yearly revenue is $700 million, I don't know about iStock as it isn't public. Any other big ones? My hypothesis is that it could be a partial replacement/competitor and devalue their offering - reasonable to assume you'd be paying $99/mo soon and it will gradually decrease as the tech spreads and more competitors emerge. Adobe is also in this game (https://stock.adobe.com https://stock.adobe.com), they are not unfamiliar with AI. You can see how a lot of people will jump on this if it proves to be lucrative. I don't claim to be an expert and I didn't say this is worthless.
dhosek 5y ago
I've adopted a practice of having odd backgrounds for video conferences.¹ I generally find these through Google image search, but I often have a hard time finding exactly what I would like. My own use case is a bit idiosyncratic and frivolous, but I can see this being really handy for art direction needs. When I used to publish a magazine, I would often have to commission photographs for the needs of the publication. A custom photograph (in the 90s) would cost from $200–$1000² depending on the needs (and none required models). Stock photo pictures for commercial use were often comparable in cost. Being able to generate what I wanted with a tool like this would have been fantastic. I think that this can replace a lot of commercial illustration. ⸻ 1. My current work background is an enormous screen-filling eyeball. For my writing group, I try to have something that reflects the story I'm workshopping if I'm workshopping that week and something surreal otherwise. 2. My most expensive custom illustration was a title for an article about stone carver/letterer David Kindersley which I had inscribed in stone and photographed.

johnwheeler 5y ago

Or as a precursor to Meta Horizon build a 3D world with speech https://www.fastcompany.com/90725035/metaverse-horizon-worlds-meta-quest-2-builder-bot https://www.fastcompany.com/90725035/metaverse-horizon-world...

recuter 5y ago

Certainly food for thought. Say I'm looking for photography of real events and places, like a royal weeding or a volcano erupting does this help me? Of specific places and architectural features? Of a protest? You're suggesting clipart on steroids: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com https://thispersondoesnotexist.com I think if I was istockphoto.com I'd be a little worried, but that is microstock photography. I'm not sure that is worth billions. In fact I know it isn't. Besides once this tech is wildly available if anything it devalues this sort of thing further closer to $0. It would probably augment existing processes rather than replace them completely. If you are doing a photoshoot for a banana stand with a human model with characteristics x,y,z you're still going to get a human from an agency or craigslist to pose. If suddenly the client informs you that they needed human a,b,c instead maybe one of these forthcoming tools will let you swap that out faster. You'd upload your photoshoot and an example or two of the type of human model you wished you had retroactively and it would fix it up faster than an intern. Cool.

weird-eye-issue 5y ago
Shutterstock is a direct competitor of iStock and is a $3B company. I personally pay them $200/mo. Maybe you just don't know enough about this industry?
- recuter 5y ago
  Seems about right. Their yearly revenue is $700 million, I don't know about iStock as it isn't public. Any other big ones? My hypothesis is that it could be a partial replacement/competitor and devalue their offering - reasonable to assume you'd be paying $99/mo soon and it will gradually decrease as the tech spreads and more competitors emerge. Adobe is also in this game (https://stock.adobe.com https://stock.adobe.com), they are not unfamiliar with AI. You can see how a lot of people will jump on this if it proves to be lucrative. I don't claim to be an expert and I didn't say this is worthless.

dhosek 5y ago

I've adopted a practice of having odd backgrounds for video conferences.¹ I generally find these through Google image search, but I often have a hard time finding exactly what I would like. My own use case is a bit idiosyncratic and frivolous, but I can see this being really handy for art direction needs. When I used to publish a magazine, I would often have to commission photographs for the needs of the publication. A custom photograph (in the 90s) would cost from $200–$1000² depending on the needs (and none required models). Stock photo pictures for commercial use were often comparable in cost. Being able to generate what I wanted with a tool like this would have been fantastic. I think that this can replace a lot of commercial illustration. ⸻ 1. My current work background is an enormous screen-filling eyeball. For my writing group, I try to have something that reflects the story I'm workshopping if I'm workshopping that week and something surreal otherwise. 2. My most expensive custom illustration was a title for an article about stone carver/letterer David Kindersley which I had inscribed in stone and photographed.