A photographer warns against malicious AI users who are modifying professionally taken photos of wild animals to avoid copyright infringement and repost them.
While generative AI is helping to improve productivity in daily work by handling a variety of tasks, it is also becoming a source of trouble for professional photographers. Singapore-based professional photographer Nicky Bay has sounded the alarm about 'malicious AI users who modify professional photographers' photos with AI and repost them with appropriate AI-generated captions while avoiding copyright infringement.' Please note that this article contains photos of various insects, centipedes, spiders, etc., so viewer discretion is advised.
AI Abuse to Skirt Copyright Law - Macro Photography by Nicky Bay
Bay stated, 'In recent years, we have seen instances where photos of wildlife are manipulated or regenerated by AI and posted on social media with inaccurate and misleading captions (often also generated by AI). Previously, these were clear examples of copyright infringement, but there is no clear line when it comes to derivative works, especially when the changes can be easily defined in the prompts during image generation.'
One problem is that legitimate photographs taken by professional photographers are not being viewed, and the revenue goes to AI users. In addition, another problem is that 'many ordinary users are acquiring incorrect knowledge about wild animals.'
Bay points out, 'This is not only unethical and illegal, but the perpetrators have absolutely no interest in the content itself. The generated photos may contain anatomically inaccurate depictions. The accompanying text is also generated by AI, so it is almost always factually incorrect.'
To demonstrate actual cases of AI-generated images altering and reposting wildlife photos, Bay presents several side-by-side comparisons of his own photos with images and captions reposted by AI-generated images. Please be aware that the following section contains photos of various insects, centipedes, spiders, and other creatures, so viewer discretion is advised.
The image below shows the 'ORIGINAL PHOTO' taken by Mr. Bay on the right, and the 'AI-MODIFIED PHOTO' and 'AI-GENERATED CAPTION' on the left, which were created by an AI user who modified Mr. Bay's photo using AI. Clicking on the image will open the Flickr page where Mr. Bay has published the original photo. The photo is of a species of centipede called ' Thereuopoda longicornis (long-legged centipede) ,' belonging to the order Scutigera, family Scutigeridae , genus Thereuopoda. Mr. Bay said he took the photo during the short period immediately after molting when the colors were most vibrant. Comparing the images, the AI-modified version has different eye and antennae positions, and the caption incorrectly identifies it as belonging to the order Scolopendromorpha instead of Scutigeridae.
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Bay stated, 'While the advent of AI has many advantages, its value is diminished because some people are misusing it to create fake content. The internet is already riddled with fake news and misinformation. It is impossible to stop all malicious actors, and it will be very difficult for ordinary people to distinguish between truth and falsehood. AI can be used in much better ways. Please do not use it in this way. Please do not be fooled by this kind of nonsense and refrain from spreading it. Actively block pages that do this kind of thing and follow trustworthy content creators.'
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