Sounds familiar?

It's not the first time that the world of photography is in turmoil with new technologies forcing photographers to rethink how to move beyond being visual replicators of the physical world.

Today, generative AI forces us to do the same rethinking.

It’s my pleasure to kick off the new year by sharing the perspectives of our esteemed industry friend, Paul Melcher.

Hans Hartman

Real, not real ? Photograph or GenAI?

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Spotlight session descriptions

At the turn of the XIX century, not surprisingly, photographers and their publishers placed great emphasis on the aspect in which photography excelled: making true-to-life images. What mattered was how precisely photography was able to replicate reality.

It was not about art, only about technical achievement. A good photograph was one where every detail was similar to reality, regardless of subject. Any imperfection, blurriness, lack of focus, any visible signs that it was an imperfect impression provoked a disappointment in the craft and its executionner. The audience wanted and demanded to be fooled and no longer be able to distinguish a photograph from reality.

Shortly thereafter, others experimented with what else photography could do than just replicate reality perfectly. Painters use it as a reference tool as well as an easy way to show their work to others. Surrealists loved how they could use this replication of reality to reassemble it to their liking. And the majority settled in the comfortable realization that it could quite simply help them memorize and share moments they found significant.

Visual GenAI is in its infancy. Still trying to – and being judged on how well it – replicates the world. Once past that barrier, it will finally be used for other purposes and with greater imagination. It will no longer be this misinterpreted threat to photography, the master replicator, and evolve into its own domain of preference. It already started to.

In 2024, the debate over Visual GenAI's role – whether as art, creation, or threat – will likely subside as we transition from fear to acceptance to mass adoption.

Paul Melcher, Managing Director at Melcher System and publisher of Kaptur.

First published on LinkedIn



And a few more things...

Midjourney. A yet more photorealistic v.6 is on its way. While the adoption of hybrid AI imaging generators (those that enable AI image generation & editing alongside camera-captured photos, such as the likes of Adobe Firefly) have gained mindshare over “traditional” AI text-to-image generators, AI text-to-image trailblazer Midjourney is taking photorealistic image generation to yet a higher level in its upcoming v.6 release, according to the initial feedback from v.6 alpha version testers.

C+A Global. Photobooth for the rest of us. Any weddings, reunions, graduation celebrations, or holiday parties coming up? To the rescue: at CES C+A Global, an authorized brand licensee of HP, announced the $499 (!) HP Sprocket Photobooth. With an integrated camera and printer, this travel-friendly, 20" x 13" and eight pounds-weighing mini-photobooth produces glossy, ink-free 3.5" × 4.25" photos on sticky-backed Zink paper.

Pomvom. SPAC acquisition. Israeli experiential content provider Pomvom announces being acquired by Israel Acquisitions Corp. at a total equity value of $125M. The new entity will be listed on Nasdaq. Pomvom offers personalized photo & video solutions to the theme park and attraction operators, including Six Flags, Warner Bros., and Merlin Entertainment. Pomvom’s 2022 revenues were around $57M.

ImageQuix & Skylab. Acquisition. More acquisition news from volume photography land: PE firm-owned ImageQuix, provider of workflow and e-commerce software for the high-volume photography industry, acquires Skylab, a portrait image enhancement software provider. This acquisition follows ImageQuix’s recent acquisition of Fotomerchant. Founded in 2018, Skylab has processed 125M images to date.

Getty & Nvidia. AI-generated stock photos for the rest of us. Getty Images and Nvidia are broadening their AI partnership with the launch of Generative AI by iStock, a text-to-image platform specifically designed to make stock photos. Trained by Nvidia’s Picasso model, Generative AI by iStock only learns from Getty’s creative library and iStock’s stock photo library. (Getty & Nvidia previously announced a similar solution for Getty’s enterprise customers). Generative AI by iStock pricing: $14.99 for 100 prompts, with each prompt generating 4 images.

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Beamr & Nvidia. Video optimization partnership. Video optimization company Beamr has partnered with Nvidia to optimize video encoding by using Nvidia’s powerful GPUs. Together, the companies have created a cloud service that automates and reduces the cost of video services such as compression, storage, and transfer. According to Beamr, the real-time video optimization solution delivers a 10x performance boost, which allows businesses to enjoy significant storage and bitrate gains while maintaining high-level video quality.

vAIsual & Canva. PeopleMaker. vAIsual launches its PeopleMaker app, an app for creating custom, realistic “synthetic humans” – AI-generated human portraits with realistic traits – on the Canva App Marketplace. Powered by vAIsual’s legally clean and ethically sourced data, PeopleMaker allows users to choose the gender, age, and expression of the generated synthetic humans. The new tool takes less than 10 seconds to generate a synthetic person before inserting them as a transparent layer in the Canva design.

[Related topic: Join our Re-establishing Trust in Visuals Spotlight on April 10!]

Pixolo & photobook.ai. Partnering. Pixolo, née di-support and best known as supplier of photo accessories and kiosks for the German Rossman retail chain, will use photobook.ai’s V4 White-label app-to-print platform to replace pixolo’s own photo printing app. With the new pixolo AI app platform, pixolo is now able to sell their products in multiple markets all from a single app and dashboard.

[Related topic: join our Fostering Cross-Sector Photo Print Partnerships Spotlight on February 28!]

Google. GenAI for ecommerce. Google announces new generative AI products designed to help retailers personalize their online shopping experiences and streamline their back-office operations. The announcements include the Google Cloud Catalog and Content Enrichment toolset, which automatically generate product descriptions, metadata, categorization suggestions and more from as little as a single product photo. 

The toolset also let retailers generate new product images from existing ones, or to use product descriptions as the basis for AI-generated photos of products. Not an easy feat to do this right, as eBay painfully found out when it launched a much criticized similar AI-powered product-image-to-description solution a few months ago.

[Related topic: join our Visuals for Ecommerce Spotlight on June 12!]

Best,

Hans Hartman