Posted on 06/03/2024 5:36:12 PM PDT by DoodleBob
In an unusually public conflagration between an artist’s estate and a tech giant, the Ansel Adams Trust hit back at Adobe for selling AI-generated images using the famed photographer’s name.
Adams, a member of the famed Group f/64, is best known for his images of the American West, whose vast forests and mountains he photographed in sleek black and white. On its stock photography website Adobe Stock, the company was selling pictures produced using generative AI that recalled Adams’s work, albeit with noticeable differences.
In one picture that has since been deleted from Adobe Stock, a cloud rolls into a valley, cascading above a serene river—seemingly a reference to actual works that Adams shot in the ’30s.
But unlike Adams’s photography, which is rich in detail, this image appears clearly digital, with darkened mountains and flat-looking trees. That image, made available under the title “Nature’s Symphony: Ansel Adams-Style Photography – AI-Generated,” could be bought under extended license for $79.99.
According to Adobe Stock’s terms of use, users are not allowed to upload AI-generated pictures “created using prompts containing other artist names, or created using prompts otherwise intended to copy another artist.”
“You are officially on our last nerve with this behavior,” the Ansel Adams Trust wrote on Threads on Friday, receiving more than 2,800 likes on the post.
“Thank you for flagging as this goes against our Generative AI content policy,” Adobe wrote back the next day. “We’re glad our team was able to remove the content.”
But the debate did not end there. In reply, the trust wrote, “Thanks @adobe but we’ve been in touch directly multiple times beginning in Aug 2023. Assuming you want to be taken seriously re: your purported commitment to ethical, responsible AI, while demonstrating respect for the creative community, we invite you to become proactive about complaints like ours, & to stop putting the onus on individual artists/artists’ estates to continuously police our IP on your platform, on your terms. It’s past time to stop wasting resources that don’t belong to you.”
Adobe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I’m gonna use AI to make Hunter Biden originals and sell them on ebay for bitcoin.
Lawyers are going to have a field day with this stuff.
Adams was a real person who photographed real places. The AI imitation is fake and hideous.
A major insult to a great artist.
I have allways been enamored with his photography.
He probably took dozens of good photographs every year, hundreds or thousands, but only a small amount could pass a certain standard.
It’s like a bad movie with one good scene in it. Sometimes that one good scene was worth the entire movie.
Not that I have that eye or sense to know that level of quality.
Well when you are lugging around 8x10 large format cameras and associated gear through the mountains - and can take only one picture at a time before reloading - I get that.
Plus IIRC Adams did not enlarge early on - all his prints were contact prints.
I did that stuff in college so I know how hard and time consuming it can be, and I was using only a 4x5.
They like a cross between Ansel Adams (colors) and Bob Ross (composition).
The Adams gallery in Yosemite is wonderful.
Adams was a real person who photographed real places. The AI imitation is fake and hideous.
= = =
And the places he photographed were created by God.
And he just captured maybe a second or so of that scene. And we enjoy the beauty of it, as God made it.
Meanwhile AI is playing God, trying to create things. And they look fake and hideous, as you noted.
The Adams gallery in Yosemite is wonderful.
Well when you are lugging around 8x10 large format cameras and associated gear through the mountains - and can take only one picture at a time before reloading - I get that.
= = =
I read that he would find the scene he wanted, set up his camera and wait for the correct lighting and sun angle, waiting maybe (correct me as necc.) multiple days.
Then take one exposure. Why take more, they will be the same.
Shall I bring out the LeRoy Niemann paintings?
Yeah, like Ross in a off day.
On an off day.
The first pic is the real deal just in case anyone is confused.
he very likely did create many truly great photographs, but rejected them- artists are many times perfectionists- and won’t let something that they think is sub-perfect go public, but their scrutiny of their work is far too harsh usually-
I forget which artist it was, but he would paint something- people woudl rave about it, but he wasn’t satisfied about something, and woudl burn his painting out of disgust- who knows how many masterpieces he burned-
I love that the estate called them out for the their fake concern and made it clear that Adobe is responsible for policing their content, NOT the victim!
This may well end up being the end of AI being able to be ‘creative’, at least at the LLM level.
All bets are off when AGI is realized.
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