how to avoid ai art?

[EkorrenHJ]

In recent weeks, the galleries have been swarmed with artists selling AI art, many of which are basically just variations of the same images. I licensed a few of these before I knew what they were. Because of the controversy surrounding AI art (using stolen art/replicating art styles/etc), is there a way to get Adobe Stock to enforce a disclaimer for AI generated art so that it's easier to spot and avoid?

[Abambo]

There isn't any system in place to mark them as AI art. There is even an ongoing controversy concerning the copyright of such art. Contributors have expressed an interest and buyers have asked questions in this sense. And I do not know if any of the Adobe employees is authorized to make any statement on this. If there is a statement, I would expect this to be a declaration in an official Adobe blog post with a wording that has been cleared by the Adobe legal team. Currently, however, there is no search filter in place, filtering those assets out.

(as you may have guessed: I'm not working for Adobe).

[WendellaBee · Accepted solution]

We are evaluating this issue and appreciate your feedback. I've shared this with our content review team.

[heinerd87664483]

This is from September. It's November now. I just involuntarily licensed cr*p AI art I'm never going to use. This is absolutely unacceptable, I use this for commercial projects. Trust towards Adobe Stock just plummeted to 0%.

[Nancy OShea]

@heinerd87664483,

Just curious, how do you know it's AI generated art? 

• What proof do you have that a human didn't create it? 
• What type of license did you obtain  -- Standard, Enhanced, Extended or Editorial Use Only?

Adobe Stock License Information & Terms of Use

https://stock.adobe.com/license-terms

If it was licensed for Editorial Use Only, you can't use it in commercial projects anyway. Editorial content is for non-commercial news reporting, journalism, blogs, etc...

[heinerd87664483]

It's not editorial; it was a standard license. As for proof: No hard proof, but enough experience. If there's dozens of basically the same image with slight variations, you know it's someone testing out variations of a prompt. There's also certain subtle details that give AI art a specific "feel". It's not super apparent, but once you see it in an image, you can't unsee it.

That said, this isn't a topic just about those specific images I encountered. It's there, and that's a problem. AI "art" is a hot mess, not only from a legal point of view, but especially from an ethical one, and I don't want anything to do with it.

[Nancy OShea]

Personally, I haven't seen anything I could easily identify as AI art on Adobe Stock.   But with 160 million assets, it's possible some have slipped under the radar. 

That said, I think you'll be hardpressed to find any microstock service that hasn't received AI submissions.   Short of shooting all your own photographs and hiring custom commercial artists, I don't have an easy answer for you.

[heinerd87664483]

I'm aware it might not be 100% easy to solve this, but it's not like Adobe doesn't have the resources to at least try. At the very, very least they could either exclude AI art or make it necessary to label it as such in their guidelines. And those sellers acting against it could be blocked (and possibly even have to pay back their illegally acquired money).

Since Adobe doesn't do anything like that, I assume they don't care, which only underlines my loss of trust in them.

[Abambo]

I suggest, you post the asset id (best in a new thread) and someone from Adobe will check this and will possibly grant a replacement license. As @Nancy OShea said, well done AI art is very difficult to detect. 

In all cases, it can be used commercially, and you should not expect a copyright claim on this. If you get one, you will have the Adobe protection if yo react accordingly to the procedure laid out by Adobe. 

The problem is, that the image may not be copyrightable, but that is a problem for the contributor and Adobe stock, not yours! 

[heinerd87664483]

Thanks! I'll try that as soon as I find the time. Very helpful!

[WendellaBee]

If you have a problem with an asset you licensed then please report it in the forum with the asset ID. Someone will forward your concern to the content team for review.

[Nancy OShea]

Speaking as a digital artist, I see a lot of uses for AI-generated assets in my own projects, although I view it more as enhancement rather than art.  AI-generated images are bringing to art what CGI  brought to motion pictures.  Neither one are going away anytime soon. AI is a sophisticated tool that rightfully belongs in the artist's arsenal alongside paints, pastels, brushes, cameras and software.  Photoshop contains AI-assisted technologies.  So I see this as the next logical extension to the tools we currently use.

I fear not every artist will use AI correctly or is taking necessary steps to ensure they have sufficient copyright to sell their AI-generated assets commercially.  Midjourney's free service does not include copyright, one must purchase at least a 2nd tiered subscription for that.  And Midjorney maintains shared copyright to use the assets on their platform.  Artists wishing to remove assets from public use must pay additional fees to Midjourney.

The AI prompt creation process is itself tedious trial & error.  Many new artists opt to use prompts and assets created by other artists as a starting point.  This introduces other legitimacy concerns.  What exactly do artists have copyright to?   It's unclear.

Getty Images has banned the sale of AI-generated artwork through its service.  Similar image synthesis bans are occurring on smaller art community sites  which found their sites flooded with AI-generated work that threatened to overwhelm artwork created without the use of those tools.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/fearing-copyright-issues-getty-images-bans-ai...

"Shutterstock allows AI-generated artwork on its site (and although Vice recently reported the site was removing AI artwork, we still see the same amount as before—and Shutterstock's content submission terms have not changed)."

Humans still remain the best judge of what works and what doesn't work artistically.  But AI-generated images deserve classification.  I hope Adobe Stock will eventually embrace AI for what it is and not what it isn't.  I would hate to see a wholesale ban on AI-generated assets.

[aartturi]

I would love to agree with you, but sadly ai image generator tools have become only a powerful art steal tools. People can basically take any image online and create variations of it to be sold. And that's visible on AS also. It seems no one is interested to stop it, because now it looks like that it's generating money for while. Soon it's very hard to see which image is human made and which one is made by computer. 

What is happening is basically wrong in my opinion and it is not empowering artists. It's empovering art theft. 

In the other hand, ai tools that for example sharpen images or do color corrections etc. Those are in my book on the good side of ai usage. 

[Nancy OShea]

I would love to agree with you, but sadly ai image generator tools have become only a powerful art steal tools.

By @aartturi

=========

Blaming art theft on AI tools is absurd. Tools don't steal.  Only people with a mind to steal will take what doesn't belong to them.

With the right tools you could counterfeit currency, too.  Does that mean that we should prohibit use of high quality printers & scanners because someone, somewhere COULD create counterfeits?  Of course not. That would be counterproductive.

In the wrong hands, any tool can be misused including Photoshop.  See screenshot.

I guess we can be grateful that the majority of self-respecting professionals have more common sense than to blatantly lift images from the Internet and sell them as NFTs.  But I digress...

AI is no worse than other digital artist tools. Until something better comes along, I'll continue using it when it's appropriate.  However, you may do whatever you wish.  Remember, nobody's forcing anyone to buy AI artwork if they don't want it.  But it's there for customers who do want it. Your choice.

End of story.

[Michael2631962819zv]

Lol "end of story" like it's all up to you and the feedback of other users doesn't matter.

If Adobe decides to go the route you're describing, fine, but I sure hope they make it much, much easier to avoid AI art than it is currently. An "AI" tag doesn't help me much when there's currently no way to do a stock search that excludes specific tags - that I know of, anyway. If I do a search for which there are lots of AI-generated uploads, I might have to do a lot of scrolling, browsing, and tag-checking just to figure out which images are AI-made and which aren't. It feels very reasonable to request that AI get its own category (alongside photos, illustrations, etc) or search tool (e.g. "show AI? Yes/No").

[Abambo · Accepted solution]

A Filter to exclude/include AI art would be enough, like here.

[aartturi]

The problem with the currently popular ai generators is not how people use them, but how the generators themselves were created. 
It's very much on grey area to have billions of images without asking them to create a tool based on their likeness, their art works and labor. No one should be forced to be part of some tools like that, which directly will drop the value of their actual work. 

With this system I could be taking photos rest of my life and they could be taking my photos and converting them to neural networks that are designed to clone my style and overall photos after every time little bit better.
It's not okay as far I didn't opt in to such system. If I opted in, then it would be ethical and okay. 

[Michael2631962819zv]

If AI art is going to stay on Adobe Stock's platform, I 100% agree it should be clearly labeled, or even sorted into its own category (alongside photos, illustrations, and vectors). I certainly think at least some of these images probably do not follow copyright laws correctly, which is also a major concern. Adobe Stock should be a leader in resolving these ethical issues, or else it will quickly fall behind other stock image sites which are less overwhelmed by artificial intelligence synthesis-imagery

[Nancy OShea]

Read this article. It sheds more light on the legal controversies.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/art-artificial-intelligence-recent-copyright-law-develop...

[GalleryHakon]

I agree. AI art needs to be clearly flagged.

I love generating AI art, but I will never upload any to Adobe Stock as is, though I may use compositions, elements and take inspiration from it. Even if many of them are, in my view, unique and original enough to allow them to pass all tests allowing a new copyright to be generated. Prompting, selecting and evolving images, unlike what some people might think, can be a time-consuming and deeply creative process that requires a skilled artist's imagination and critical eye to glean great results.

But, as long as the general copyright status of AI art is not fully established, it remains in a bit of a grey area when it comes to the contributor rules being that you ascertain that you and only you have the intellectual property rights to the images you upload. This is extra important since it is potentially being licensed for commercial use, meaning any AI image later found to be derivative can retroactively cause anyone using it commercially to be liable for infringement damages, and additional licensing and penalties from other rights holders, or the expense of tangible goods having to be destroyed for displaying it.

In forums and the public Midjourney gallery, I have seen a lot of AI artwork infringing trademarks, famous people's right to their own image, as well as other elements of intellectual property that would never pass as fair use in a copyright trial. And something many don't even take into consideration when using AI is that by specifically prompting for something containing named people, trademarks, and artists, the evidence against them will be that any similarity found is deliberate and not coincidental. That could be legally important as intent to infringe weighs very heavily in infringement cases, where the defendant's best line of defence will inevitably be the plausibility of never having seen or directly copied the image theirs visually bears more than passing similarity to.

There is absolutely no guarantee an AI image uploaded here on Adobe Stock doesn't infringe something, even if it isn't directly known to the contributor. The only guarantee is that the contributor will be liable in case it turns out they didn't have the rights to license the image for commerical use. The bottom line is that anyone uploading AI images could potentially find themselves in very expensive legal trouble, and they ignore the uncertain copyright status of AI images at their peril.

But, this also makes it important that Adobe Stock users have a clear and obvious way of distinguishing whether an image is AI-generated or not. All AI images being flagged as such, and a user actively having to choose whether to include them in a search with the default being "off" seems reasonable to me, for instance.

Even if liability falls on the contributor. I think everyone in the chain of events from an AI is trained to an image is generated, used, and found to be too similar to something in the training set, would rather prefer to avoid any legal difficulties that can ensue from the uncertain status that AI art currently has.

[Brodart_3.141592]

I agree, I need a filter to filter out AI generated art, it looks okay far away, but once you zoom in there is often missing fingers or distortion that is uncomfortable and definetly not good for commercial use. 

[Abambo]

Adobe has established rules for AI art, but a lot of the accepted art in the database does not yet follow the requirements. 

As moderators are more aware of the issues with AI art, they are getting better at rejecting it. But if you find bad AI art in the database, or other assets with issues, open a new thread and report the asset id with a short description of the issue. I know that this is work, but if users do not report bad assets, they will never get reviewed and eliminated. 

[Michael2631962819zv]

https://community.adobe.com/t5/stock-discussions/found-ai-generated-art-with-errors/m-p/13453342#M67...

I've started a list. It's easy - the bad ones endless. I could pull up another dozen in the next 15 minutes if you want. Please remove or separately-categorize AI generated images for this and other reasons.

[heinerd87664483]

It's not just this. There's the ethical problem of AIs being fed with art without artists' consent, plus AI images aren't copyrighted - there's not even any need to pay for it. If I put up an AI image on my website, that I paid credits for, someone else could just download it and put it up on their website without any legal issues.

Why should I waste stock credits for this?! Personally, I feel this is one big scam, and I'm going to cancel my Adobe Stock subscription because Adobe welcomes AI images. It's despicable, in my opinion.

[Nancy OShea]

If I put up an AI image on my website, that I paid credits for, someone else could just download it and put it up on their website without any legal issues.

By @heinerd87664483

============

Owing to how the Internet works, ANY image placed on your website can be lifted and used by others -- it's not limited to AI.  

If you want to protect assets, use digital barcoding (invisible watermarks) to track where your personal & licensed images are being used (additional service fees apply).  For convenience, a Photoshop plugin is available.

• https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/digimarc-copyright-protection.html
• https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/12783/digimarc-barcode-for-digital-images

AI images aren't copyrighted...

============

You might be surprised.  Read this:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/artist-receives-first-known-us-copyright-regi...

Stock has new rules for submitting AI generated artwork so that it's  differentiated from human created content in title and keyword. You don't need to cancel your Adobe Stock subscription.  You just need to be more selective about what you license from stock agencies.  😉 

Good luck & have a happy new year!