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Paul Jenkin's avatar

As a UK-based amateur photographer(for the past 51 years) I'm extremely disappointed that AI is turning out to be a threat to my exclusive right of ownership of the photos I've taken and, since the advent of the digital age, posted on the internet.

I've paid for my camera equipment, my travel, accommodation, photo processing and post-processing software. I own the copyright to my photos and, therefore, I believe that I should retain exclusive rights to who sees them and how they are used. If anyone wants to use them, they should, in my opinion, have to request my permission formally and in writing. I would also expect some form of 'quid pro quo' and guaranteed limitation as to usage in return.

I get that AI needs to 'learn' from somewhere. However, that 'somewhere' should surely be stock image libraries where the image owners will be compensated for the AI algorithm scraping them from the internet - and not those of us amateurs who have spent time and not a little money honing our craft and producing things which are, and should remain, exclusively ours.

Adobe tried to pull this stunt in 2024 and was told to sod off. They had to back down. The UK government's intention might embolden them to try again, though I hope not.

There is a little hope, though. There are some software programs which seen to protect our images from just this sort of threat but acting as a 'cloaking' device against the AI bots searching out and copying our work to assimilate via machine learning. Here is one example:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html

I haven't used it, yet, and I don't know how effective it is, but I hope it works and I hope that it becomes the tip of a huge iceberg of such software that can be used to scupper the theft of our work, at least in some significant way - if not totally.

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