In January I was in Las Vegas for the annual CES convention when the term “AI” was thrown about like a dog with a chew toy. Unlike other CES conventions of recent past – where 3D TVs and VR headsets were promised as the future – this time round AI seems to be causing a bit of a stir!
No longer are the gadgets the star of the show, it’s now a service or process where a machine learns from things you feed it. You, or someone else. Either information or text with context added, images, or even video and so on. You heard all this before.
Fast forward to now. Adobe now seems to be asserting, in their terms and conditions, (that are well hidden to most customers) that they can use your images stored in the cloud for many purposes, using the kind of magic legal wording which is at once very woolly but yet still kinda pointed statement (for more read the What the hell is going on at Adobe? story).
Many of these big companies need to feed their massive AI monster machines. We know Facebook has been doing it for ages, and let us not forget the dumb apps where people create their Avatar in exchange for facial recognition, their firstborn child and their entire address book / phone book. Ever wonder where spam comes from? There is your answer! Stop using dumb apps, people!
Google likely uses AI machine feeding from their photos app via Android, and it seems reasonable (to me) to conclude that Apple are too – although that data stays behind its walled garden a bit better.
At the time of going to press, Apple just had their AI-themed WWDC press event which included an OpenAI collab – one which seems to put a bit of a hole in that famous called garden. Apple's stock price dipped 2%. Weird? I think not (and nor did investors.com.
Regardless of Apple's strategic naivete, the un-regulation (for want of a better word) of AI is already a huge issue. For creatives, regardless of platform, that issue is already at critical mass. I have already seen other photographers' work appear as partly AI "generated" work, and to see if I could get something out of AI on one of the “free” online AI generators I got some kinda laughable results.
While the AI image is highly amusing, it’s made up of actual people, albeit in a frankenphoto way to cover their identities. While this AI generation isn't very sophisticated we have seen many that are.
So regulation would be the only way to fix the haves from the have-nots, and I propose a seal, like a membership club, which assures customers that a business does not feed an AI machine with any of the user's material.
This would make it easier for me to figure out where to spend my money. This could apply to email clients, browsers, cloud storage, operative systems and, most importantly right now, editing software.
Alternatives to Adobe should be looked at but I think as a collective we need to push back, and remove ourselves from certain tools that are only there to feed their AI machine and use our work to do so, all while we pay for the privilege in the first place.
Time to install Linux and go edit like the good ole days.
