AI Images v Microstock

Yesterday I bought 115 credits from DALL-E on OpenAI for $15. This openAI project will create an image from a simple prompt. The prompt I used was "bees bringing coins from a HIVE."

I will list all of the images I create on my personal site. It will be interesting to see if the posts I write can make more money than the money I spent on the images.

Creating a page that tracks third party images serves three purposes. It provides a structure to keep track of images and posts. IT allows me to properly credit the image creator and it has has a few SEO benefits as the tracking program has links going back and forth between my different sites.

I tried this same experiment with Microstock Images images. The term "microstock" refers to large image libraries that sell the right to use pictures at a low price.

I bought some microstock credits. My average reward for my SteemIt posts is around $0.02 per post. So, the experiment was a bust.

There are free microstock sources.

I actually prefer the paid services as the paid services pay the photographers and image creators for their work.

AI as and Alternative to Microstock

As I understand, the AI art projects work as follows: The site has a library of several million labeled photographs that were published with the "creative commons" license.

The AI system uses the ChatGPT system to analyze the input phrase for a request it then creates new images using its library as a reference.

Since AI images do not involve a human creative element, the Copyright Office appears to be holding that the images are in the public domain.

IP problems can arise. AI uses images from sites like flickr as reference images. These sites use the creative commons license.

The people who use these sites are often casual about copyright. If a person published an image they did not own as creative commons, the copyright holder could sue everyone who used the image as a reference. A more common problem arises with model release forms. Few people on Flickr get model release forms.

The professional Microstock companies do a good job demanding that photographers submit model release forms for all images.

AI can create images on the cheap, but I think professional writers should still use microstock.

AI Might Reduce the Earnings of Content Creators

There is a fear that AI will reduce the income of human content creators.

Of course, no one gets paid for images from free microstock sources.

The economic impact of AI will be interesting. I am curious to see if the rewards on my posts will tally up to more than the $15 I spent on the DALL-E image credits.

Final Image

I created the second image (below) for a burn post on Foodies Unite. It shows a "chef looking at a roast in the oven that is in flames." Foodies is a derivative site of SteemIt.