New Add-Ons for Luminar Neo

 

Skylum has just announced six new add-ons, or editing tools, for Luminar Neo; and I have to admit that I find the selection rather underwhelming, especially as in at least a few cases similar tools are offered in other apps, sometimes for free.  

The new features are as follows:

• Gen Erase uses AI to remove unwanted elements from photos with a single click;
• SceneExpand enlarges the dimensions of a photo by adding content to is borders;
• SceneSwap replaces skies and foreground elements (including, apparently, articles of clothing) with AI generated content;
• Studio Light adds lighting effects to photos, though in the examples shown these appear to consist of nothing more than unrealistic bands of shadows;
• Neon & Glow, as the name implies, adds neon borders and glow effects to photos, though the results are distressingly hokey in the examples shown; 
• Water Enhancer seems to do nothing more than add varying shades of blue color to whatever body of water is shown in a given photo.

For some reason the one-time sale purchase price of the above tools distinguishes between Generative AI Features (GenErase, Scene Expand, and SceneSwap), which are free of access until August 16, 2024, and Platform Features Upgrades (Studio Light, Neon & Glow, and Water Enhancer), which are free of access forever.  The $39 cost is not a particularly high price to pay, but I doubt I'll be making the purchase myself since none of these tools are of any great interest to me and would be of limited use in my current workflow.

Federal Court Rules Against Copyrighting AI Images

 

In a summary judgment ruling, which basically means the case - Thaler v. Perlmutter - never went to trial, the US District Court for Washington, DC has sided with the US Copyright Office in finding that works created by artificial intelligence are not entitled to copyright protection since they have no human author.  Though I am not an attorney and therefore am not qualified to render a legal opinion, it does seem to me that the decision is not as sweeping as it might first appear.  In the Discussion section of its opinion the Court states:

"Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works. The increased attenuation of human creativity from the actual generation of the final work will prompt challenging questions regarding how much human input is necessary to qualify the user of an AI system as an 'author' of a generated work, the scope of the protection obtained over the resultant image, how to assess the originality of AI-generated works where the systems may have been trained on unknown pre-existing works, how copyright might best be used to incentivize creative works involving AI, and more."

Here the Court seems to be leaving the door open to further discussion and different rulings.  The Plaintiff's argument, at least as I read it, was that the AI imaging app he invented should be considered the "author" of the work in question because it autonomously created said work with no human input.  Whether or not the app did manage this, it is certainly not the manner in which most AI images are generated.  Midjourney and Stable Diffusion most certainly do not autonomously spit out images without direction but rather respond to prompts input in text or image form by human users.  Beyond that, the resulting images generated by those apps are very often edited in other third-party apps such as Photoshop, thus providing further evidence of human involvement in the authoring process.

In other words, I believe the Court's decision in this case was based on very narrow grounds and that subsequent cases in which human involvement is clearly demonstrated may eventually cause the Copyright Office to grant protection in such circumstances to the human creators who directed the generation and editing of the AI images in question.

Is Stable Diffusion XL Actually a Step Back?

Perhaps it's only been my experience, but after having tried the newly released Clipdrop Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 extensively for the past several days I've found myself sorely disappointed.

One of my favorite methods of image prompting has been to simply to enter a few lines of poetry and then sit back and see what a given AI model makes of them.  As an example, I've in the past had good luck using the opening from John Keats's famous Romantic poem Ode to a Nightingale that reads as follows:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

         But being too happy in thine happiness,—

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

                        In some melodious plot

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Whether or not the poetry itself is to one's taste, it's definitely given me some truly inventive images, as can be seen in the example at the top of this post that was generated by SDXL 0.9.  And what's notable is that that older version of the app managed to maintain the same dark style through hundreds of image generations.

Unfortunately, I haven't had nearly the same luck when working with SDXL 1.0.  One need only look at the image below to see the problem.  In place of the edgy images generated by 0.9, I've instead gotten bland generic illustrations better suited to a children's storybook, even though I used the exact same prompt and style (digital art) for both the images shown here.  It's very frustrating, and I've had the same experience with a wide variety of prompts, and not only with poetry either.  It seems the 1.0 AI model is simply not as imaginative as the 0.9, strange as that must sound.

I note that one of the options available when using Clipdrop SDXL 1.0 is the choice of version.  One can opt to go back and once again use version 0.9, but only if one subscribes to the paid Pro plan.  Since the cost isn't all that great ($84 per year) I may eventually decide to go that route.  To me, it would definitely be worth the money if I could once again generate the images I find most appealing.  There are certain other benefits to the Pro plan as well, such as the elimination of watermarks and faster image generation, that make it worth considering.