Hi Everyone,

I believe that soon it will be almost impossible to tell the difference between traditional photography and photography created using AI. Will 1x be left as dust for the dust bin or have its own little corner for its narrowly defined photography?

From Ken Rockwell's lates New's:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/00-new-today.htm

Do you agree?

AL

 Ken Rockwell is considered by many to be a bit sketchy.

Boy, once you start this conversation you jump into the age-old question of what is art and what is it good for. This YouTube video is interesting from a Philosophy of art point of view, no answer but points to a different axis. This video is not exactly the same topic.

https://youtu.be/cDi3CVof5RA

The discussion touches on "Artistic Intent" of the artist and touches on perception in a discussion of Abstract Art. I have had an interest in physiology of perception and how that affects our appreciation of or attraction to art but that is not the same thing.

So, is 1x a Fine Art site? Are we really seeing Fine Art here? and/or is that the same as Excellent Photography? Who answers this question?

In 4-5 years of looking on this site, I have chosen about 200 photos that I really liked, not really labelling as art, out of something like 50,000 images. How many of the 50k are "Art"?

Maybe every photo has been "post processed" and that has been true since at least as far back as Ansel Adams, so image manipulation is not new. Intent is different. If you are a Bird photographer you cannot manipulate the scene more than chosing the right place to be able to be at the right time (there was song about that!). Fashion and studio and product photographers have much more control of the scene. Painter on the other hand can imagine the scene out of whole cloth, like Peter Max, not that they all do. 

AI images may be generated like painters, imagining something, but they then "borrow" images from another source to fill the scene up and AI may even make design choices about positioning of elements. I saw a demonstration of Photoshop's AI Beta and a photo had a "bird" Added to the scene. It gave you a bunch of choices but not really "your" idea of that bird.

I have felt a big guilty of using Topaz Studio to manipulate images that make big changes but I rationalized that it was my image after all and the change was a change in the algorithm of the pixels which I could change. My image in this case was, after all, my image and all the elements were my elements and I could have control over the algorithm.

I wonder what you would get on AI if you said: "I want an image of giant Gorilla holding a girl in his hand climbing the Empire State Building? Would it be unique or one of the old poster for the movie "King Kong"?

Hi William,

Good post. I mostly agree with it.

I do conventional bird photography, but sometimes I like to play with my camera:

Not AI.

AI seems to scare some photographers, because it uses computers.

From the days of manual AI: https://www.uelsmann.net/

Isn't photography supposed to involve the use of a photographic camera? So it's easy to tell.
AI cannot create "photography" because it does not use a camera of any kind. It is a machine programmed to generate images based on a "prompt". So what it generates may look like a photo but it is a fake, an imitation. No technical or artistic skill needed for that, just the ability to write a good prompt and deal with the amount of randomness inherent to such generated images. So anyone claiming that an AI generated image which looks like a photo is a genuine photo, is in fact an impostor, regardless of whether the viewers can or cannot tell the difference.

Ludmila

1x.com is NOT a fine art site. It is a fine art photography site. 

And please stop referring to AI generated imagery as "photography created by AI". That is NOT photography. AI generates images based on algorithms. AI can generate pictures mimicking photos but they are not photos.
Photography presupposes the use of a photographic camera.

I thought it was common knowledge, especially for someone who pays a membership to 1x.com

Ludmila

I think the big problem that any artist should be concerned with is the use of copyrighted work being used in AI. If people don't mind their work being used to generate AI, then there is no problem, but I believe most artisst will not want their work used to generate a computer image that is now credited to someone else.

AI images are not photography. Here on 1x.com we showcase photography. Every photo is protected by copyright. 
An AI image generator uses an advanced machine learning algorithm known as artificial neural networks (ANN) to generate new images. The ANN, which is modeled on biological neural networks is trained on a large number of image-text pairs. Trillions of image-text pairs. It processes this information to learn everything, whether it’s Rembrandt's paintings, the yellow color, or what a tree, a table or a helicopter looks like. After learning the patterns and styles from the existing data, the AI image generator can interpret every text prompt to create new images mimicking any art form, including photos, drawings, illustrations. It will not "copy" specific photos like mine, yours or somebody else's.  It may render a certain style, in case the author is famous and has a recognizable style but not reproduce exactly that work. And anyway the person who generates that image cannot pass it as photography.

Why be afraid of something before being fully informed about it? 
L.

I read that there is pending lawsuits for using other people's work. Here is an article from the New York Magazine:https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-ai-art-stealing-from-artists

"Everyone knows what art is but won't accept anothers definition of it." Anonymous

 "Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas." Wikipedia (the essay is actually pretty good but won't substitute for a legitimate art course)

Latin "Ars" meant Skill separate from "Art", like "Medical Arts". I enjoyed this lecture on YouTube by Eileen Rafferty "Art Movements Through Photography"

https://youtu.be/r-Bx5krtLZY

and this by Ellen Winner

https://youtu.be/cDi3CVof5RA

The discussion is endless. Photography is both a "skill" and an "art form" and art may be better defined at the intent and the endpoint of the image.