6 ms·

I really have fun with all this image generation stuff but can anyone explain what the real $$$ benefit of all these funky dreamlike pictures is? As massive VC

I really have fun with all this image generation stuff but can anyone explain what the real $$$ benefit of all these funky dreamlike pictures is? As massive VCs are starting to take note, it's starting to feel a bit like the crypto scene. Interesting tech without much real-world application.

thundergolfer 4y ago
I think it could be incorporated into 'for the masses' design software suites like Canva.com. If done right, image generation and augmentation could be a powerful and valuable feature.
- ilikerashers 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Like an ideation assist.
themanmaran 4y ago
I could see a valid use for generative assets in game dev. Some open world type game with different landscapes / backgrounds that are all autogenerated.
- ilikerashers 4y ago
  I can see that for 2d backgrounds and pixel art.
  - themanmaran 4y ago
    Oh that's an easy and practical application. Want to start on the MVP and I'll email Sequoia the business pitch?
    - ramoz 4y ago
      Photoshop has a beta feature for generating backgrounds using their "neural filters" a few in the community are diving deep on game assets: https://twitter.com/emmanuel_2m https://twitter.com/emmanuel_2m
bsenftner 4y ago
The trillion dollar answer is Personalized Advertising: your images trained on DreamBooth or similar and used to generate advertising of you and your associates (friends and family) using various products in a happy manner, or even using competitor products in an unhappy manner. Celebrities beside you stating how wise you are using said product, beer commercials with the latest sports heroes sharing drinks with you, and major release feature films with you appearing as an extra for at little as $1 more. Yes, it is going to happen quickly. As long as the immature pornographers can be kept at bay. There is far more revenue in advertising than jerking off, porno morons. FYI: I created a feature film quality actor replacement system aimed at Personalized Advertising over a decade ago with an earlier version of this generative AI technology. But investors (both VC and angels) could only see porn as a viable application, while I offered presentation after presentation of how Personalized Advertising is a holy grail of advertising revenues. Perhaps it will happen this time. Immaturity can only last so long, right? Maybe?
- ilikerashers 4y ago
  Sounds like you were early and should give it another try!
- trention 4y ago
  I generally want to see no ads. Why would I want personalized ones?
  - gaterin 4y ago
    Given how advertising currently works our smartest minds will dedicate their lives to force them upon you.
- dpflan 4y ago
  Indeed, personalized advertising to match your psychological profile as much as possible, with just the right incentives/brain-hijacking. Then, why not just do this for all "ads" for all industries (politics is one of the most aggressive currently), and, then, why not all information one is exposed to? Let's get extreme, and look at the diplomacy-playing CICERO, that can employ strategic reasoning for how to best shape ads for you. A/B testing will becoming A/(infinity) testing until you've made a "purchase". A further balkanization of reality.
nmca 4y ago
Here are some more recent generated images, more or less indistinguishable from real fashion photography. Can you not see the value? https://twitter.com/rainisto/status/1597206841813274626?t=7B5VEnPH4uYl5GnbdKZ9ug&s=19 https://twitter.com/rainisto/status/1597206841813274626?t=7B...
- ilikerashers 4y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something but they look slightly out of proportion and somewhat bland. Not awful but I wouldn't bet the house on this just yet... The future is going to be a mish-mash of the past?
- ruddct 4y ago
  Not trying to underplay how impressive the tech here is, but could you expand on what you see as the ($) value of something like this? From my perspective, these look like not-so-interesting stock-photography-level photos, nearly all of which have clear tells that they're AI-generated.
  - askafriend 4y ago
    Well...look around you. Stock photography is used everywhere.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      Stock photography is copyrighted and licensed. AI art is not copyrightable.
      - daveguy 4y ago
        I think this is not necessarily the case. At least one of the generative models (DALL-E?) has a license that you own the images it generates from your prompt and can copyright and license those images.
        freejazz 4y ago
nsonha 4y ago
as starting point for people to work on when creating graphical content. This will save a lot of time for everyone and allow non professionals to create their own assets.
potatolicious 4y ago
I suspect "let the public type in prompts and generate funky images" isn't going to be a significant market. But with improvements to the models I can see it fitting into a "integrated into professional creative tooling" business model. Generate a rough "first draft" based on a prompt and edit. It simultaneously keeps a human in the loop to filter some of the model's zanier outputs, makes sure the output coheres with some design vision, and also people using these features professionally are much more likely to actually pay for what will be fairly expensive-to-operate features. I'm excited about generative models, buuuuut I will echo the other thoughts here re: VC hype. The last cycle of VC investments turned out to be full of hot air and no substance. The kind of hype around generative models feels a lot like crypto: lots of breathless excitement combined with few details. We are simply being promised that this technology will usher in some kind of golden era but nobody can seem to point to killer use cases. There's so much hand-waving around actual applications that it threatens to generate a hurricane from the sheer amount of air being displaced. As someone who works in the AI/ML field I've explored this stuff and it's definitely promising for some use cases and can potentially be transformative for some niches, but I do not see this as world-transformative at this point and considering where said breathless hypeness is coming from I'd encourage caution in over-exuberance. [edit] My sincere hope for this new cycle of tech hype is that we actually create some businesses of worth. I do not expect this to come from VC-world, who seem to have spent the last decade building wholly incompetent businesses and foisting them on public investors (or in the case of crypto and ICOs, just fleecing retail investors directly). My hope is that developers can actually use these models to do valuable things that people will pay for, as opposed to shovel yet more money into yet more furnaces to prop up absurd valuations around comparably tiny revenue.
- freejazz 4y ago
  There are some serious copyright implications if the initial design of anything is going to be done by an "AI". Because copyright cannot be granted in AI work, any subsequent work based upon the AI's original creation will have to be scoped out from its relation to the original work, not leaving much for copyright to protect. This is a business concern for any business that relies on copyright to ensure their materials are not copied (pretty much all businesses).
jasmer 4y ago
Those dreamlike images are human-generated. And they can be narrowed in focus. You will see: Animated series generated from words and text, no labour needed. Just make the characters, the base models, a few demos. South Park has a staff to do all the animation - no more - now they'll just tweak a few things. You will see some amazing, raw creative stories come out of this that are going to be entertaining in ways we haven't fathomed. That may be a bit of a meme. I suggest it may fundamentally alter low-grade creative content. Basically, second tier fiction I think will be a total commodity. So cheezy romance novels, fantasy - I'll bet in 10 years AI is as good as most mediocre authors. They are already generating news articles. Bloomberg has an AI creating articles. Basically to 'verbalize and organize facts'. One thing coming I think nobody is talking about is lighting and it will change everything. Lighting on set is a massive pain, everything revolves around it. Being able to use AI for lighting will change production costs dramatically.
kingant 4y ago
Generative AI is not limited to image generation. For instance, GitHub CoPilot is generative AI.

thundergolfer 4y ago

I think it could be incorporated into 'for the masses' design software suites like Canva.com. If done right, image generation and augmentation could be a powerful and valuable feature.

ilikerashers 4y ago
Yeah, I agree. Like an ideation assist.

themanmaran 4y ago

I could see a valid use for generative assets in game dev. Some open world type game with different landscapes / backgrounds that are all autogenerated.

ilikerashers 4y ago
I can see that for 2d backgrounds and pixel art.
- themanmaran 4y ago
  Oh that's an easy and practical application. Want to start on the MVP and I'll email Sequoia the business pitch?
  - ramoz 4y ago
    Photoshop has a beta feature for generating backgrounds using their "neural filters" a few in the community are diving deep on game assets: https://twitter.com/emmanuel_2m https://twitter.com/emmanuel_2m

bsenftner 4y ago

The trillion dollar answer is Personalized Advertising: your images trained on DreamBooth or similar and used to generate advertising of you and your associates (friends and family) using various products in a happy manner, or even using competitor products in an unhappy manner. Celebrities beside you stating how wise you are using said product, beer commercials with the latest sports heroes sharing drinks with you, and major release feature films with you appearing as an extra for at little as $1 more. Yes, it is going to happen quickly. As long as the immature pornographers can be kept at bay. There is far more revenue in advertising than jerking off, porno morons. FYI: I created a feature film quality actor replacement system aimed at Personalized Advertising over a decade ago with an earlier version of this generative AI technology. But investors (both VC and angels) could only see porn as a viable application, while I offered presentation after presentation of how Personalized Advertising is a holy grail of advertising revenues. Perhaps it will happen this time. Immaturity can only last so long, right? Maybe?

ilikerashers 4y ago
Sounds like you were early and should give it another try!
trention 4y ago
I generally want to see no ads. Why would I want personalized ones?
- gaterin 4y ago
  Given how advertising currently works our smartest minds will dedicate their lives to force them upon you.
dpflan 4y ago
Indeed, personalized advertising to match your psychological profile as much as possible, with just the right incentives/brain-hijacking. Then, why not just do this for all "ads" for all industries (politics is one of the most aggressive currently), and, then, why not all information one is exposed to? Let's get extreme, and look at the diplomacy-playing CICERO, that can employ strategic reasoning for how to best shape ads for you. A/B testing will becoming A/(infinity) testing until you've made a "purchase". A further balkanization of reality.

nmca 4y ago

Here are some more recent generated images, more or less indistinguishable from real fashion photography. Can you not see the value? https://twitter.com/rainisto/status/1597206841813274626?t=7B5VEnPH4uYl5GnbdKZ9ug&s=19 https://twitter.com/rainisto/status/1597206841813274626?t=7B...

ilikerashers 4y ago
Maybe I'm missing something but they look slightly out of proportion and somewhat bland. Not awful but I wouldn't bet the house on this just yet... The future is going to be a mish-mash of the past?
ruddct 4y ago
Not trying to underplay how impressive the tech here is, but could you expand on what you see as the ($) value of something like this? From my perspective, these look like not-so-interesting stock-photography-level photos, nearly all of which have clear tells that they're AI-generated.
- askafriend 4y ago
  Well...look around you. Stock photography is used everywhere.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    Stock photography is copyrighted and licensed. AI art is not copyrightable.
    - daveguy 4y ago
      I think this is not necessarily the case. At least one of the generative models (DALL-E?) has a license that you own the images it generates from your prompt and can copyright and license those images.
      - freejazz 4y ago

nsonha 4y ago

as starting point for people to work on when creating graphical content. This will save a lot of time for everyone and allow non professionals to create their own assets.

potatolicious 4y ago

I suspect "let the public type in prompts and generate funky images" isn't going to be a significant market. But with improvements to the models I can see it fitting into a "integrated into professional creative tooling" business model. Generate a rough "first draft" based on a prompt and edit. It simultaneously keeps a human in the loop to filter some of the model's zanier outputs, makes sure the output coheres with some design vision, and also people using these features professionally are much more likely to actually pay for what will be fairly expensive-to-operate features. I'm excited about generative models, buuuuut I will echo the other thoughts here re: VC hype. The last cycle of VC investments turned out to be full of hot air and no substance. The kind of hype around generative models feels a lot like crypto: lots of breathless excitement combined with few details. We are simply being promised that this technology will usher in some kind of golden era but nobody can seem to point to killer use cases. There's so much hand-waving around actual applications that it threatens to generate a hurricane from the sheer amount of air being displaced. As someone who works in the AI/ML field I've explored this stuff and it's definitely promising for some use cases and can potentially be transformative for some niches, but I do not see this as world-transformative at this point and considering where said breathless hypeness is coming from I'd encourage caution in over-exuberance. [edit] My sincere hope for this new cycle of tech hype is that we actually create some businesses of worth. I do not expect this to come from VC-world, who seem to have spent the last decade building wholly incompetent businesses and foisting them on public investors (or in the case of crypto and ICOs, just fleecing retail investors directly). My hope is that developers can actually use these models to do valuable things that people will pay for, as opposed to shovel yet more money into yet more furnaces to prop up absurd valuations around comparably tiny revenue.

freejazz 4y ago
There are some serious copyright implications if the initial design of anything is going to be done by an "AI". Because copyright cannot be granted in AI work, any subsequent work based upon the AI's original creation will have to be scoped out from its relation to the original work, not leaving much for copyright to protect. This is a business concern for any business that relies on copyright to ensure their materials are not copied (pretty much all businesses).

jasmer 4y ago

Those dreamlike images are human-generated. And they can be narrowed in focus. You will see: Animated series generated from words and text, no labour needed. Just make the characters, the base models, a few demos. South Park has a staff to do all the animation - no more - now they'll just tweak a few things. You will see some amazing, raw creative stories come out of this that are going to be entertaining in ways we haven't fathomed. That may be a bit of a meme. I suggest it may fundamentally alter low-grade creative content. Basically, second tier fiction I think will be a total commodity. So cheezy romance novels, fantasy - I'll bet in 10 years AI is as good as most mediocre authors. They are already generating news articles. Bloomberg has an AI creating articles. Basically to 'verbalize and organize facts'. One thing coming I think nobody is talking about is lighting and it will change everything. Lighting on set is a massive pain, everything revolves around it. Being able to use AI for lighting will change production costs dramatically.

kingant 4y ago

Generative AI is not limited to image generation. For instance, GitHub CoPilot is generative AI.