Reaching for the light...

How many times have you heard an "expert" claim you can't get bokeh with a M43 (micro four thirds) sensor, zoom lens or stopped down to more than f4? 

Sometimes you just need to ignore those rules.

Opt-in & Opt-out Talk about #AIart and Have I Been Trained website

 Nothing brings the finer points of a debate into the spotlight than personal involvement.

The big AIart news of the last few days is that Stable AI will allow artist to opt out of being included in the next dataset being used to train the neural network to be used for Stable Diffusion 3. Well at least you can opt-out for the next couple of weeks, so follow this up now. 

There is a site, that can check whether you have been included in the massive Laion-5B & Laion-400m neural networks used in Stable Diffusion & Google's Imogen, yes they were trained on 5.8 billion images. I haven't established its legitimacy as an ethical stance, but it does seem legit. It doesn't appear to be a sneaky way to get more images (with so much hacking and phising establishing trust is a big issue in the #AIart discussions)

https://haveibeentrained.com/ 

However, when you see you are one of the artist whose images have been used to train the Lioan Neural Network and had no idea they are in there, some things suddenly confront you.

It took me very little time using the image search feature, to find two of my works. They were part of my Retracing Darwin exhibition in early 2010 and very early examples of my personal technique I call photoimpression. I actually don't mind if others study my method and even create examples of their own. I would like them to acknowledge me, which is becoming a hollow wish on today's web. I don't blame redbubble either, I am sure they didn't know and/or had not given permission either,

I really don't want my work, especially my own special techniques, style, mark-making colouring or composition used without my permission. This is the stuff that makes my work original. Firstly because I know I'll never be acknowledged, that others could profit from this work or contribution to this work to what is presented as their original, I also actually find a lot of the so-called art generated by these AI's a bit scary and I don't approve, and finally I find the whole process a bit morally questionable and not ethical.

So I've made up my mind, Now I do want to opt out.

Now I have to find out how? 

Damn! I have to do it image by image. Cest La Vie

GrandFather, Father, Son archive startegy

It's December already and I'm still contemplating the Backtober idea. Something more distracting seems to arrive everytime I stop to consider a NAS (network storage) option, and I really haven't given trueNAS a real work-out yet either. What I have done is dropped back to the very old Grandfather, Father, Son  Archive strategy from the days when anything off the computer was stored on large reels of magnetic tape. In those days Backup was rightly considered as different to Archive. Usually the backup set was in two parts Full (everything import) and Incremental (only those files that have changed since the last full backup).

What has helped is I am recycling the older USB portable hard drives to store different sets of the data I am now archiving (Largely photos, some finished videos and some PDFs & documents). Swapping them around to fit the file organization. Where once I had the oldest files on the smallest drives (they have been there all their lives) and the newest files on the larger drives (I was moving files to larger drives as I filled them). I now have all the oldest (and theoretically less accessed files on the larger newer drive) and most recent files on the smaller (and older drives). I'm also now convinced that drives need to be exercised (Rather than letting them slowly fail in a cupboard un-noticed so I am now reformating the grandfathers as I recycle them).

The three disks on the green sleeve also act as my Backup set, they are kept on my desk under the shelf/alcove lifting up my monitor to eye level. They are normally not connected to any computer but can be. When I retrieve my grandfather copy from remote storage I immediately clean off the disk (a full format as that does checks of the disk for problems and will map out and mark any problem areas).

I then run copies of the master data and folders on my computer(s) to the freshly formatted disk, There is lots of software to do this, I just used windows backup and restore features built-in windows 10/11. This can take a fair while so best done overnight or in the background. The Incremental Backup can be run manually, just copying files and folders you have been working on to the Incremental disk. This requires a bit of discipline but easy to do at the end of the day or as a task is finished. When I load a batch of photos from my camera I also direct copies to the incremental disk. Alternatively, you can use specialized backup software to automate the process.

AI moving fast and probably in the wrong direction

The developments in AI (well large-scale machine learning in natural language and image generation areas) have been astonishing. However, the "viral" usage seems to be sliding towards that all to common race to the bottom. Well, several bottoms, exploiting others to make money for nothing, chasing fame and likes, selling  AIart as NFTs and now creating and selling books (children's stories in fact). All that as others question the ethics and legality of profiting off someone else's work.

Today I became aware of two books that have been raced into production using these AI tools. (I say this confidentially because the tools to create them have only been available in recent months and the better version in the last weeks)

You can read a wordier (somewhat promotional) story about creating the book on Time (its a pay wall site and wants you to subscribe but you can read this story for free, just ignore the all the ads). The book Alice and Sparkle follows a young girl who builds her own artificial intelligence robot that becomes self-aware and capable of making its own decisions. Ammaar Reshi used ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI tools were combined to create the book. At the time the article was written he had sold about 70 copies through Amazon since Dec. 4

This was in the normal Blurb email mailout. Guess what it's about dystopian bees. Story by the child of artist Mark Terry and art by artifical intelligence tools. It not exactly cheap but you can get your print on demand version already on Blurb

"I think this book is a glimpse at what anyone can do with merely some AI software, basic Photoshop skills, and an idea. If my [idea] can be turned into a book, then I'm sure your far better ideas can, too!"

—Mark Terry of The Truth About Bees

In the other camp are many unhappy artists ask the question why are these people profiting from our work when we are ignored? Afterall all machine learning system get fed a lot of work created by humans, that's what they learn from. 

So is this straight-out plagiarism? Well not exactly because of the way most Text to image AIs work. They are not directedly copying the "pixel" (or actual marks made) they are learning from a translated space (not the graphic one we see) with an emphasis on things like style, colour choice, composition constructs etc. The Ai then builds the objects "as if" they were painted by a given artist following their style, or a particular photographer or illustrator etc. even just following a generic artistic, cinema, computer game "look". In legal terms this may not be considered as copying (as argued by well-paid lawyers).

What is clearer is the lack of ethics. Profiting (and they can be large profits) from someone else's work and in most cases not even acknowledging them is poor form, not moral and unprincipled. I don't think it is too late to fix this. The argument that the dragon has been let out is valid. Artist should be told (or at least able to find out) if their work in involved in a given neural net and that they can ask their work is removed and the net rebuilt (similar to a take down notice). This will require the licening or similar (we already have creative common licnes) and any the big internet groups applying them to any "content" they make visible on the wider internet. We also need to quosh the idea that anything on the net can be copied and reposted without permission.

Yet I do see that there is great potential for many artist being able to use these Ai tools as aids to improving their skills, helping with inspiration and understanding, and even making their own unique tools on a much smaller scale. As Alice's story says there is power in these tools which can be used for good and evil, depending on how they are guided (what they given to learn)

What can Relight AI do?

It was just a snapshot to show our Christmas tree and decorations to the family, and very ordinary. To dark overall, the dark to light to dark depth confused the autoexposure and the depth of field was a big challenge even for the small aperture used ... etc 

Ok it did the job for the family what's app group but not worthy of sharing outside that.

So I started thinking could Lunimar Neo's new-ish RelightAI tool help out? It has sliders for adding brightness near or far and/or warming to cooling again near or far. Whilst the result is definitely not yet spectacular but it is a definite improvement.

I couldn't help noticing a couple of items lower in the creative block was the Sunrays tool and I just couldn't help myself!

Who said post processing couldn't be fun?

Its about time I had something truly photographic

The weather really picked up a notch today. First real summer weather. Not a cloud in the sky.

So that means the sunset was a little ordinary. BUT still great to watch it set.

You really don't have to photograph everything, just being there can and taking time to gather in the ambience is all you need. Way better than a selfie on your phone that you never look at again.

But a cloudless sky sets a promise of stary night. Forgot it is almost full moon and the bight moon really diminished the star gazing. AND yet just taking the time to view it is also rewarding.