Creating AI Images from Brain Waves

In my recent sci fi/fantasy novel And What If, I described an instrument capable of generating AI images from a subject's dreams.  Although the idea was of course speculative, I had based it on actual research done in Finland and in Japan that had succeeded in transcribing thoughts into images by measuring the flow of blood in the brain.  It seems now that exciting new research has taken the idea one step further.  According to a paper published in November entitled Seeing Beyond the Brain that is the subject of an NBC news article a team of researchers led by Zijiao Chen that includes participants from the National University of Singapore, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Stanford University "have shown they can decode human brain scans to tell what a person is picturing in their mind."  The NBC article from which this quote is taken then goes on to describe the process in detail.

Although no one yet, as far as I know, has succeeded in generating images from a subject's dreams as I hypothesized in my novel, it will obviously be only a matter of time until such a breakthrough occurs.  No doubt someone reading my novel ten years from now will find it laughably outdated.

DPReview to Close

According to an announcement on its site DPReview will cease operations as of April 10.  The site will be sorely missed, at least by me, as I found its product reviews to be among the most reliable available.  Few other sites perform the in-depth testing DPReview routinely provided.  Although I sometimes disagreed with its conclusions, they were always worth serious consideration.  The site was also a good source for industry news.

I had not realized, prior to reading the closure announcement, that DPReview had actually been wholly owned by Amazon which has been engaging recently in a wave of cost-cutting moves.  While I appreciate that Amazon needs to turn a profit, surely it could have found a better way to save a few dollars than by terminating a valuable service.  After all, it is not as if the company were in any sort of financial difficulty.

Adobe Announces Firefly

I received an email yesterday from Adobe Stock announcing the beta version of Firefly, it's new app for authoring AI-generated content.  Glancing at the images shown at the above link, I don't really see much here. other than text effects and vector recolors, that isn't already offered in other more established AI-generating apps.  In fact, the text-to-image examples shown seem a bit cartoonish, especially when compared with the lifelike renderings that can be achieved with Midjourney.  Most noticeably, there is no text-to-video option which is what I think everyone is most interested in right now after the recent announcement of Gen-2 by RunwayML (though of course for stock image purposes Adobe would naturally be more interested in stills).  Nevertheless, I requested access from Adobe and will experiment with the beta version once my request has been granted; I will then post the results here.

Warning on Adorama Camera

 

I just wanted to give everyone a warning on doing business with Adorama Camera in NYC where I've just had a very unpleasant shopping experience.

Briefly, I went into the Adorama store on West 18th Street on Monday to purchase a Rode tripod that the company's website had listed as "in stock."  When I arrived at the store the salesman told me that although the item was in stock, it was not in stock at the store and that there would be a wait to either have it delivered or picked up.  Since I was already on the premises I decided to purchase it anyway and then pick it up at the store at a later date since the salesman assured me it would be there either on Wednesday or, "at the latest," on Friday.

Today, Tuesday, out of simple curiosity, I checked my Adorama account online to see the status or my order.  To my surprise it had been canceled with no reason given.  After first chatting online with a rep who ultimately told me she couldn't help me and that I would have to call the store I wasted another half hour with a customer service rep who finally told me I would have to speak directly to the salesman with whom I'd placed the order to find out exactly why it had been canceled but that that salesman wasn't available just then because he was waiting on other customers.  When the salesman finally called me back some time later it turned out he had stupidly canceled the order in error.

The bottom line was that Adorama never contacted me to tell me that my order had been canceled.  If I hadn't bothered to check my account I would still be waiting to have my order filled.  It simply isn't fair to treat customers in such a cavalier manner and I've made up my mind never to do business with Adorama again.  I'm only posting this now to give fair warning to my readers.  Caveat emptor.

Runway Announces New Text-to-Video App

Those who've been following this blog know, I've been working intensively in recent months in authoring AI-generated imagery through the use of such apps as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Lexica.  As a photographer, my greatest interest up to the present has quite naturally been in creating still images.  Now, however, just as I've begun working seriously with video for the first time in my career, an article in The Verge has announced that a start-up company called Runway is about to make available to the public a new text-to-video app called Gen-2, a follow-up to the far more primitive Gen-1.  Given the almost rabid interest shown it the text-to-image apps named above it was probably inevitable that something like this would soon appear.  It's not likely, though, that anyone is going to be making full length motion pictures with Gen-2 in the foreseeable future.  The examples I've seen are only 4 seconds long and even at that short length are too jumpy and lacking in anything like 4K resolution to be usable.  (As The Verge article notes, "...all we have to judge Gen-2 right now is a demo reel and a handful of clips [most of which were already being advertised as part of Gen 1.]). Nevertheless, it can safely be assumed that the specs will eventually improve to the point that viewers will be unable to differentiate AI-generated videos from those created with traditional media.

Runway's pricing plans seem quite reasonable, but until the app shows greater improvement I will most likely stick with the free basic plan that should be more than sufficient to enable me to experiment with creating short AI-generated videos of my own.

Synthography

 

I've recently come across a new term in the rapidly changing world of AI-generated art.  According to the brief definition in Wikipedia, synthography is "the method of generating digital media synthetically using machine learning."  Since this pretty much describes the process I've been using in such apps as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Lexica in authoring AI-generated images through the use of text prompts, I've taken the username nyc-synthographer on Tumblr and nyc_synthographer on Instagram.  I've only joined both those sites recently and up to now have been content with posting examples of my traditional photography as I find my way around.  In the near future, however, I intend to use the two sites as forums for the publication of my AI-generated images.  Stay tuned.

US Copyright Office Issues Guidance on AI-Generated Imagery

 

The US Copyright Office today issued fresh guidance on copyrighting images derived from text prompts that have been entered into various AI imaging apps.  Since I'm not an attorney and therefore not qualified to render a legal opinion, I will let readers peruse the document for themselves and make what they can of it.  I for one find it extremely confusing.  The Office first seems to be denying the possibility of copyrighting such works ("If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it.")  That's clear enough, but the same document also holds that photographs are eligible for registration "so far as they are representative of original intellectual conceptions of the author" even though such images are obviously produced mechanically through the use of a camera.  If that were not confusing enough, the Office then appears to hedge its bets entirely by stating, "In other cases, however, a work containing AI-generated material will also contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim."  To say then that copyrighting AI imagery is a grey area is a vast understatement.  Those seeking copyright registration of AI-generated images will have to use their own judgment in making such submissions and see how the Office responds.