Generative AI approved by Alamy?

[Pav]

Can see a flood of images generated by AI, can't find/post here any info about it. Could anyone enlighten me what is the current policy on this site? 

[Keith Burdett]

Here's another piece relating to the point I was trying to make previously :

 

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/class-action-lawsuit-ai-generators-deviantart-midjourney-stable-diffusion-2246770

 

Seems Getty are getting involved legally to attempt to establish artists rights. 

[Aul Zitzke]

5 hours ago, Keith Burdett said:

Here's another piece relating to the point I was trying to make previously :

 

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/class-action-lawsuit-ai-generators-deviantart-midjourney-stable-diffusion-2246770

 

Seems Getty are getting involved legally to attempt to establish artists rights. 

 

The main argument of the artist group seems to be that AI generators have been trained with images from stock agencies. The companies behind those AI generators argue that AI only takes excerpts and could be considered as "transformative" enough not to violate copyright laws. In Germany it is called "Schöpfungshöhe" (= threshold of originality). It means that the works are independent from the original material. Like a collage, for example a portrait of a dog made with generative AI: The dog nose is taken from one image (and transformed), the fur, the ears and the legs are taken from another image etc. And then you have a completely new artistic work. 

 

That is also my opinion, but with Adobe Firefly there comes a new generation of AI generators. This new tool has been trained only with data taken from the public domain and should be even safer.

[Jill Morgan]

45 minutes ago, Aul Zitzke said:

 

The main argument of the artist group seems to be that AI generators have been trained with images from stock agencies. The companies behind those AI generators argue that AI only takes excerpts and could be considered as "transformative" enough not to violate copyright laws. In Germany it is called "Schöpfungshöhe" (= threshold of originality). It means that the works are independent from the original material. Like a collage, for example a portrait of a dog made with generative AI: The dog nose is taken from one image (and transformed), the fur, the ears and the legs are taken from another image etc. And then you have a completely new artistic work. 

 

That is also my opinion, but with Adobe Firefly there comes a new generation of AI generators. This new tool has been trained only with data taken from the public domain and should be even safer.

 

Adobe Firefly does not just use CC images.  It also uses the images in Adobe Stock.  They say this covers them, but then, the images don't belong to Adobe so I don't know why they would think this.  Using their stock images is still using other works they don't own to create new images.

 

Edit:  Have just read that Adobe plans to compensate contributors whose images are used for generative ai.  Not sure how they are going to figure that out. When the algorithm runs, will it inform adobe what images it has used?

 

Jill

Edited April 1, 2023 by Jill Morgan
adobe stance of compensating contributors

[Martin L]

1 hour ago, Aul Zitzke said:

 The companies behind those AI generators argue that AI only takes excerpts and could be considered as "transformative" enough not to violate copyright laws. 

How small does an excerpt need to be to be considered not violating copyright?

Seems like a copyright lawyers dream.

[Jill Morgan]

2 hours ago, Ognyan Yosifov said:

Jill, this is only for testing the Beta by chosen approved contributors for a feedback. After the trials, Firefly will be used only with files which are free for use (expired rights, etc....)

 

If they are using contributors images to train the ai, then that is where it will get its' base from when it goes live.  Using contributors image's to train the software means it is putting those images in it's dataset, so they are still being used once Firefly is out there.

 

Jill

[Taina]

You can check here if your images have been scraped to train AI

 https://haveibeentrained.com/

Search by your name, keywords or agency name ... "Alamy" yields a large amount of images (as do most stock/pod agencies). 

It's possible to opt out future projects but how and if this actually works, I don't know. 

[Steve F]

AI generated images no longer accepted by Alamy:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16643-alamy-update-on-ai-generated-images/

 

From the Alamy blog linked to in the post above:

"While the sources for AI image generation by many platforms are at worst scraped without permission and at best unclear, we cannot accept AI generated material on Alamy. It already breaches our standard terms and conditions because it is not necessarily free from rights. We are in the process of removing all of this content that we can identify."

[Harry Harrison]

and also...

 

"We’ll be making announcements in the next few days around changes to our contributor terms to make it clear that we don’t accept AI generated content, and to outline the model for sharing back licence fees we do get from ethical AI companies."

 

"We are in the process of removing all of this content that we can identify."

Currently 433,907 results for 'generative AI' on Alamy, back on March 9th when this was discussed this figure was 232,374 so up by 200,000 in 7 weeks.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16490-ai-selling-experience/#comment-335068

 

Some of these images,  a great many perhaps, will simply be illustrating the concept of AI and won't be AI themselves, a conference perhaps, news pictures etc. or they're illustrations.  If they're illustrations will they be exempt from this ban and how can they be separated from those that are photo-realistic and might therefore owe more to 'scraping'?

 

Only 423,313 images found for 'generative AI' if you're not logged in.

 

 

 

 

 

[wiskerke]

7 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

<>

  If they're illustrations will they be exempt from this ban and how can they be separated from those that are photo-realistic and might therefore owe more to 'scraping'?

<>

Only if they are uploaded via the Archival route. So yes all agencies using this will be exempt. But all individual contributors only when they also use Archival.

And they will only be exempt because Archival is not being vetted in any way.

The rest will be banned because of copyright not because of AI quality or true/fake problems.

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

20 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Only if they are uploaded via the Archival route. So yes all agencies using this will be exempt. But all individual contributors only when they also use Archival.

And they will only be exempt because Archival is not being vetted in any way.

The rest will be banned because of copyright not because of AI quality or true/fake problems.

Thanks, it will be interesting to see if the totals go down. I suspect that those previously submitting AI may feel aggrieved as there seem to have been mixed messages from Alamy judging from the posts.

[Jansos]

On 29/04/2023 at 00:38, Steve F said:

AI generated images no longer accepted by Alamy:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16643-alamy-update-on-ai-generated-images/

 

From the Alamy blog linked to in the post above:

"While the sources for AI image generation by many platforms are at worst scraped without permission and at best unclear, we cannot accept AI generated material on Alamy. It already breaches our standard terms and conditions because it is not necessarily free from rights. We are in the process of removing all of this content that we can identify."

I wonder how easy it actually is to identify and then remove AI generated content? When I had a look at the new version of MidJourney I was shocked by how good it now looks  - how will editors be able to detect if something has been created with Midjourney, for example? - https://prompthero.com/midjourney-prompts

[Steve F]

10 hours ago, Jansos said:

I wonder how easy it actually is to identify and then remove AI generated content? When I had a look at the new version of MidJourney I was shocked by how good it now looks  - how will editors be able to detect if something has been created with Midjourney, for example? - https://prompthero.com/midjourney-prompts

 

No idea. I assume you can't do it with an algorithm. And there's potentially millions of images to search through manually. Guess the main thing is not to sell AI images, but a lot of sales are probably without human involvement either. Difficult.

[Klinger]

On 01/04/2023 at 04:56, Keith Burdett said:

Here's another piece relating to the point I was trying to make previously :

 

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/class-action-lawsuit-ai-generators-deviantart-midjourney-stable-diffusion-2246770

 

Seems Getty are getting involved legally to attempt to establish artists rights. 

 

Good humor for an April 1st post. Getty interested in artists rights? The same place that licenses Public Domain images and then tries to sue people for using similar? The same place that licenses images that were gifted by an artist and then they try to sue her for using her own images? No, Getty is only interested in Getty.

 

I found this thread in a search because I was trying to find the current state of rules for Alamy on uploading text created AI images, especially from DALL-E, which is not the same as the more complex and pay systems. I recognize that I can't hold the copyright to any AI image as the US Copyright office says, they must be created by a human mind. But that doesn't mean I can't create, using AI, edit and make my own versions, that might be useful or sell on Alamy?

 

Or does that?

 

I think this looks pretty final? 👍

 

"We’ll be making announcements in the next few days around changes to our contributor terms to make it clear that we don’t accept AI generated content, and to outline the model for sharing back licence fees we do get from ethical AI companies."

 

"We are in the process of removing all of this content that we can identify."

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/ai-and-your-images-protecting-rights-and-creating-opportunities

 

And finally?  https://www.alamy.com/blog/ethical-ai-image-initiative-alamy-announces-industry-partnership

 

AI image generation technology opens up exciting creative possibilities for our customers, but it must be approached in the right way to protect the interests of Alamy content creators. As part of our commitment to exploring ethical opportunities within AI we are pleased to announce our participation in the ‘The Fair Diffusion Program’ – a ground-breaking generative AI initiative launched by BRIA AI in collaboration with Alamy, Getty Images, and Envato. This is an alternative to the AI models already in existence that have been built on unlicensed content – instead it’s designed to attribute and reward source material.

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by Klinger