Survivors. They said they found several dead bodies on board, the boat and thousands more of the people who thought to be on board. Missing the red dozens of ship rex, every as people trying to traverse this route on hundreds of desks. Okay, that is seen as a gateway to the spanish canary island, spain as part of the european union. So people see this as a possible route to a better and safe a life. Malcolm web al jazeera, fast boy center go. These us military leaders have since the newly appointed Prime Minister to a neighboring chair, the tools that she is doing to maintain that its so i think the tools on solving regional disputes triggered by the co the haitian gang lead a known as barbecue is pledging to fight any International Armed forces that commits abuses. He says he supports the United Nations cool for a Foreign Force if it targets corrupt politicians and improve security. The prosecutors in the us state of georgia had proposed to march the 4th stopped for the trial against from the president on trump. Trump and 18 associates had been charged with rackets hearing and vote a fraud for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 president ial election results. Officials in hawaii now we island have names the 1st victims off the wall and posit levels for the town of the honda. At least 110 people, i consented, but that number is expected to rise in the coming days. In nicaragua and government has seized a prominence university from the catholic or to praise the jesuits. The university of Central America suspended all the tech to the days of the accord comp. This guy said its assets and funds. The government is accusing it of being a center of terrorism, a charge rejected by the jews or whats as well as the headlines. The news continues here on al jazeera after the stream, which is coming up next spacing liliana. The un fits the purpose was like many critics sites, just pump solution doesnt get anywhere near enough done to the amount of money that is put into a hard hitting in to be you think about to the minus on washington for money to go on its own and built its on a thought provoking on for centuries, people have been taken care of are. So i have every confidence that future generations will do it as well via the story on told to how does era the hello and welcome to the stream. Im heidi to castro filling in for send me ok. Today. Artificial intelligence, an artist, the latest influx of a i powered image generators has artist asking, is this technology a collaborator or a rival . Here is how to artist see it. The majority is the greatest industry crushing technology ever to be released in the creative world. It has become so powerful that at this point its dangerous for us with a i dont cute on that a more bus and the more expensive and more profound image. So i did all day in this, possibly it is. Yeah, i office to do something truly unique and you know, meet to popular images. Generators can produce seemingly endless amounts of stunning visual art in just a matter of seconds. So where does the Technology Leave professional artist or programs like mid journey and stable to fusion are trained on data sets, made up of billions of images collected online. And generally, without the knowledge or approval of the artist. Users can then prompt the trained a i to create new art work, even in the style of a specific artist. Some artist see this as a threat to their jobs and even to their very identities. While others see a i as a powerful new tool to enhance artistic expression and expand human creativity. And with us to talk about this in the us state of north dakota, we have shane bulk which an artist and photographer from ohio, katherine elkins, professor of humanities. And in a researcher at kenyon college. And from berlin, art photographer, boris l. Dodson who recently rejected this here sony world photography prize, which he won after revealing that his submitted photo was made with the help of a i. Thank you all 3 for joining us for this really interesting discussion. And of course, i feel like it is fitting to start with you because what captured my attention and many people around the world where these headlines that came out in april. When you won the sony world photography contests. We see in the garden photographer, mit prize winning image was a generated german artist for us. So docs and says entry to sony, World Photography Awards was designed to provoke debate. And of course, this is the photography that if you can call it a photo, which i know is part of the discussion, but thats what were debating at this moment for us. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell me more about this entry a while. It was a test to find out if for the competitions where that a i dont know, it could images will be handed in and they have not been ready for it. And because they have not been ready for it, they have no position on the relationship between a i generated images and photography. And ive tried to have a debate starting on this topic. If this only would photography you want, but the way to just not willing to, so i had to refuse. And what started, since its much, much bigger than i could have ever expected it to me. And im very thankful for the, for the community to make it happen. I think it is one that many artists are hoping to have and for you to be the ones that open, that can of worms so to speak. I think thats a good thing. And a shame, i know you are among the other artists who saw this happen and you may have had a different reaction. What did you think of for us as entry . Well it, it 1st came to my attention to this. Is this a i a concern is when i started seeing people post these images and calling them photographs as a photographer, as an analog photographer i, i knew immediately that these are not photographs who im in ordered. The definition of photography is rather clear. It was made about a 180 years ago, and you have to use light and photo sense of materials. And i knew that the i generated images arent using any of that. So im, that was my 1st concern with this is that i searched on instagram and i found that there was a 170000 images identifying themselves as photographs. And none of them were photographs. I see catherine, you are a researcher in this field, so were going to kind of have you the are neutral orbit or in a sense and you do come at it from academic perspective. How 1st to just tell us how to these a r g a i generate or is even work . Well, they definitely dont work the way that some of the lawsuit suggests they do. One thing to understand is theyre not storing the data in a traditional sense. Theyre not taking images that theyve scraped from the internet and recombining them. So one of the problems with the lawsuits right now is they are using incorrect definitions to describe exactly whats happening there based on a day fusion model. The best way to think about it is if you have color and you drop it into a glass of water, it di fuses into that water throughout these actually start with noise. They start with that diffused process, and then they gradually take away noise to build up an image. This makes all of the controversy very difficult because theyre obviously not working in the ways that are copyright laws assume theyre not working through plagiarism or any of those kinds of things. Thats right. So theyre not actually storing these images. Is that right . And, and i mean, were talking about like 5000000000 images that are scraped from the internet, arent we . Right . Theyre not storing it. And they are kind of some people say its like, if i went to an art gallery and i looked at art and then i went home and i painted a picture. Now some researchers say we shouldnt even with the humanizing it, it is not like a human. On the other hand, a group of researchers led by coline did find that they could recreate a very, very small percentage of images. So i think they found point 03 images that they would could recreate. People are now calling us a soft database. Its not storing all of these images, but it can very, very rarely actually recreate images. I think shane, i want to come see you next to because i know you specialize in a form of art that takes hours of laborious labor to accomplish and we actually have video of you doing this work. How long does it take you to create one images using those wet plate process . When i work on fridays in my studio, im in here about 8 to 10 hours and i will make im between 8 and 10 plates. So about, you know, maybe if im rushed or you know, i can make a plate in about a half hour. So theres a lot of time invested in composition and, and making sure everything is right. Um, so it, it is um, but were talking about a historic process that, that gets back to 1851. 00 and theres less than a 1000 of us in the world are at better actually practicing website today. That is very unique and as an experiment, this is interesting. You posted on your instagram account, you asked in a uh, image creator tool to make an image. And in that style and it took 10 seconds. You right here, after you put in the prompt to generate this, this picture what he was make of that . Yeah, well its, its, its the prompt. Its the, theres very little any very Little Information that needs to be added to the system in order for it to give you in a rather elaborate outcome. And, you know, to talk about what catherine was talking about is how it uses the fusion and so forth. My argument is, is that you couldnt get the output without the input so that that color that she was talking about, um, extracting from it relies on over 5000000000 images including so there it is and including some of you are all images from. I understand it, yes, you found some of yours in this data set where you ever credited, you know, i sent over 30 of my native american works in this database of over 5800000000 photographs. And so, so can i argue that the outputs of one of these are a i generated uh images um if you ask for a native american in the web play process and it gives you something in 5 seconds. Can i argue that some of my work is in there somewhere . All right, and lets take a moment to listen to some of the concerns from sam. Again, he is a digital artist in canada, who found that a i models had been trained on images of his work and were generating new works of art in his style. Not only is the collection of copyrighted content of legal concern, but so is this, when a like to innovations are made to look like an artist work. This has the potential for reputation damage for forgery, for fraud, for identity theft. And whats most concerning is that with these models are trained on the images of the artwork, they are unable to forget. So almost all of these models are now working with tainted data through generations. Now all involve copyrighted content which has been gathered without the knowledge or permission of the copyright owner. It is directly hurting artists with put their passion and their soul and to everything that they create totally for their work to be scrape from the internet and without their permission and used in training. A i models far as i know youve worked in the fee for over 30 years, right. And you just started experimenting with a guy in the last year or so. So how do you see this collaboration that youve developed as i love to work with a i but i also understand shane and the about this position and theyre both slight. Yeah, i could add something to this to make it more like complex. But if you ask me about the Positive Side of a i, it is liberation from restrictions that i had before because i always created out of my imagination. And now there are no restrictions left. And the beauty about it is that im using my knowledge to create the image just knowledge that i collected, instead of to use, photographing and making out. And when you use it this way, you dont need to at a certain style and to copy the style of somebody else. You can create something you, you can create a prompt that is very complex. If you have no idea of this d, i is going to fill in the empty spots and create something that looks good. So the phenomena behalf is that the lower end of the image making of people that have no skills before its now lifted to a higher level by the i pushing it up and the facial modes. Yes, you mentioned the prompts for us and i think for our viewers who may have never dabbled with a generating tools, its interesting just to, to see what you, you enter and i know you, you sent us an example of what you would tell this a i generator in these topics that i have on my screen here and how much of you is really going into this creation process. Well, um you see on the black pods and this is directly relating to my knowledge. But you could also just type in trump gets arrested. Yeah, it is the subject. And thats it. You dont even mention if it should be a photograph of painting or drawing. But if you at all the elements that ill pause to both, you are having delete and you are actually b u r creative. Its a creative act. That is certainly a of the point that many share. Kelly you. Sorry, catherine, you had mentioned the last 2. Its that that artist who disagree with boris, have filed and i want to just 1st talk about one of those artist kelly mclearnen who is a plaintive in the last 2 that is against mid journey stable to fusion and dream up. And they tweeted, a i, r is fast, isnt creative. Its literally regurgitating the work of thousands of living and working human artists like me tap the rent from the Research Perspective is whats happening just to regard of taishan of stolen art. Yeah, absolutely not. Um, it would be a lot easier if it were. I think it would be a lot more clear cut. I agree that it, it is extremely creative. Its a lot of fun. If you use it. I can tell you personally that i teach all my students how to use it and not all of them create great art its, its a little tricky. It requires skill. Its an iterative process where you revise and keep working on art. And its a lot of fun. So there is the democratizing aspect that now everybody has this at their disposal to create amazing art. But i do want to say that there are implications for all of us, and its not just artists who make a living. We have a guy that may replace writers, we have a i that may replace coders. So this is really a huge issue. As far as copyright law goes. Uh, catherine. I mean, this is kind of new territory, right . The theyre, theyre trying to, the plaintiffs in this case. The artists are trying to argue that style itself merits a copyright. How difficult would it be to prove that . I think its going to be extremely difficult. That is never been the case. If you go back in history, artist used to go to the move and paint all of the masters, and that was very, very typical. So copying other people styles has always been in part of training. Copyright wise, i dont think that this is gonna hold up, and its also the case that they just denounced in march, that theyre going to allow copyrighted a i r, if we can show that there is, in fact some Human Element involved in it. And just exactly how much of that Human Element is necessary, its going to be a question, i think. Yeah, shape or just so you want to jump on it. As of right now, the United StatesCopyright Department has, is not allowing any of these works to be copied, written, because to know that they both turned or thats right they, they have to go into this possibility. Yeah, it is a novel, were sorry, go ahead. Worse, i would like to make the copyright problem even logic. Everybody is talking about the strapping of the images from the internet and the training material. How i see its their last thoughts. Yeah, its all on the way and stay with the fusion has set up an up in up out option. So things will be solved positively next the positively by the end of this year. But i dont need a person to be in the training material to copy this style. What i can do is i can just ask to describe the style of an artist and words. And if you can do it, you dont need any training material to just describe it and you can really get close to the original. And the 2nd problem is that the training material is just 25 percent of the problem. 75 percent of the problem is that the platforms enabled and in coverage seem to use this to upload images. And that can be taken from wherever. This is the main problem. If you dont, could buy copyright. But somehow, nobody wants to, and its important to note that these platforms are making money off of users, right . Who subscribe to their services, and theyre not paying the artist with from, for the source material. Go. He, there was a case, there was a case recently we were an artist asked to have his images scrubbed from one of these databases. And instead of getting the images scrubbed, he was sent a 1000. 00 bill to do so right out just as a concern. As its a concern, i know its the thing for you that, that you know is, is personal because you have found, again, you found your own images that you worked on the be used as a source mature. And i actually wanted to show our viewers. And example, you have dedicated what i right is this is your lifes work right. To photographing a 1000 native americans using the special wet plate technique. If we can put up on our screen, one of these images was made by you shane and the other was made by ai gonna let viewers think about it for just the 2nd. Which is, which is shay now tell us which one was your recreation, which one was not . The gentleman with a feather in his hair is a very good friend of mine. And i took that portrait about 4 months ago. And this brings up another concern that i had about this technology is that um, its effect on history. Okay. It may be just cute and fun and were all excited and the weve got this new little shiny thing that allows us to create these images. But when you ask for one of these generators to create a native american web play collodion image that cant be undone, thats the say you posted on facebook, maybe it gets posted to website someone else, shares it, and its out there in the world. And i, ive got works at over 65 museums around the world. And, um, the curators are, are very concerned about this, because can you about imagine 75 over a 100 years from now . That image pops up and theyre gonna have a very difficult time. And remember these, this technology is Getting Better exponentially. Boris and i talked yesterday and we had maybe come to a determination by the end of this year. We think that even the trained photograph of guys not going to be able to determine the difference between um, one of the, the image on the left versus my image on the right. So you can imagine curators in the future. How may be thinking this image on the left is a historical image and putting in a museum where displaying that is something important. We have to understand that this person here never existed and never will exist and never has existed and um to have. So whats the point of these por