“Well first off, you have to create work that you think people are going to want to steal,” that’s what the former event B&H Photo Event Space Director David Brommer had told me to say to customers when I used to deliver talks in the event space during my time employed by the company’s offices. We’ve even written about it. At the time, this worked well enough. At the time, it was a question mostly asked by amateurs with barely any sense of a portfolio. Today, photographers point to their Instagram as a portfolio without any understanding of how to curate images — and that means that they’ve just been treating their work as the c-word. That C-word is one that I hate to say and to write: content. Today, Generative AI has scoured the web and consumed it all with the intent of creating imagery that people are asking for. Now, it’s so good that it’s tough for even Americans to sometimes figure out the difference between what’s real and what’s not. We saw that happen during the US election recently — and when I asked some of the experts about the future of photography, I got the sense that they were essentially shrugging their shoulders. And in a way, it felt like they were all but saying, “We’re screwed.”
I’m not one of those prophetic naysayers who claim to know that the end of the world is coming — and I surely don’t have the intent of creating a doomsday cult for photographers. But I’m aware of just how powerful the reach of the Phoblographer is, and I’ve worked with our team to create tools such as an affordable insurance program that will protect photographers. Typically, though, companies would be very happy to offer advice to photographers on how to protect their imagery. After all, lots of the camera companies are putting content credentials into their devices. When I received responses from both Adobe and Capture One, however, things seemed really bleak.
In email communications to both Adobe and Capture One, we made them aware of a Google AI model that could remove watermarks. On the heels of that, we asked both brands about how photographers could protect their images beyond watermarking.
The Phoblographer’s PR rep at Adobe stated that they didn’t provide any comments. “I know your team is already familiar with our work around Content Authenticity Initiative,” the rep ended the email communication, which was all of a single line of text.
Capture One provided a bit more of a manicured statement to the Phoblographer.
“At Capture One we stand firmly with photographers. It is our unequivocal belief that their work belongs to its legitimate owners – the photographer or their client – and abuse or violation of ownership rights using AI or any other means is simply unacceptable. Through our partnerships with industry bodies like the ASMP in the USA and The AOP in the UK we support their campaigns to establish legislation that protects the work, rights and livelihood of photographers and creatives at large. From working with the ASMP and The AOP closely we know there’s never been a more critical time to become a member and support the work they do on behalf of tens of thousands of industry practitioners.”
Rafael Orta, CEO of Capture One
Essentially, he told you to join ASMP. It’s not a terrible idea to work with the trade organizations—ASMP has helped many photographers and even provided us with assistance at one point or another.
However, this is corporate speak at its finest: Rafael looked at his company’s strategic partners and sent us there. The quote doesn’t offer us anything else if you’re based in another part of the world.
Their quotes left us with little confidence, so we asked a bunch of photographers.
Granted, this isn’t the first time we’ve explored this story idea. In 2023, we asked several photographers about how they protect their images. Essentially, they all stated that you run a big risk when you put your images online. More importantly, you should have them on your website where you don’t release your copyright to big brands. We’ve also shared infographics on protecting your photos.
- South African-based Ingrid Irsigler told us that her contracts contain a liability clause and that she worked with a good lawyer the first time around to ensure that the problem wouldn’t happen.
- Dubai-based Daniel Cheong told us that he worked with PhotoClaim.
- American photographer Tony Gale used Pixsy.
Mr. Gale told us that he’s currently trying Nightshade, which we’ve also tested. Of course, this all gets really complex with Generative AI because it takes elements of images and composites them together.
So what have we been finding? Well, copyrights aren’t going to protect you — good luck proving that your images were used by Generative AI for their creations. You can totally keep your images offline and only in a printed portfolio, but that will surely take time and a lot of intentionality.
Content Credentials are a great way to track your work online, but they do little to protect your images. You can set up bots on your website to block Generative AI from scraping your images. But after a while, more bots will just end up coming and circumventing your protections.
Here are the absolute facts: no one seems to have an answer. And even if they did, I think that the photography world wouldn’t be able to get it together and unite into some sort of protective union the way that the music industry banded together. As it is, we don’t even have international trade organizations to protect photographers. The movie industry surely got it together.
Why haven’t photographers?
