Flawless and fake... like AI

I mentioned in a comment here a while back that I've started doing something again that I haven't done in at least 4 years and the experiment has been positive so to speak. It still gives me pleasure to do it - uploading my photos to stock agencies, right now to only one.

There were many reasons why I stopped doing this, both personal and global, when the whole world changed with the start of the pandemic and I had to delete my accounts in several agencies. But this month, I don't know what prompted me, I'm trying again, not even knowing the point of this activity anymore, which is more of a hobby than a side hustle that you can use to pay a bill. I just calculated that I make about $200 a year at Adobe, which pays for my Photoshop subscription, and after writing off the still exorbitant PayPal conversion fees, there's just some pocket money left over. But like I said it's in the hobby section, I've never found a side hustle that makes money so far.

It's also a hobby because it takes a lot of time, the photos have to be processed, then they have to be accurately described. I like digging into information, looking up places on google maps, describing my photo folders, so that's not a problem. Still, hey, I'm unemployed, I've got all the time in the world, I'm trying to distract myself with things... just to keep from giving in to despair I have to be constantly busy with something.

So, I process, describe, at the same time I look from time to time to see what photos are uploaded from the same places that I show, how people have named their photos, do I make any inaccuracies...
And that's how I get to the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Nesebar. At first I made something of a slip or mistake in spelling its name in the pictures. I had originally spelled it Nessebar, but then I saw on Wikipedia that it was spelled with one s. So I ran a search engine in Adobe to see what other people had named it. Well, it turns out that wasn't a mistake. People spell it both ways. But the pictures under this name made a very special impression on me.

There are all kinds of pictures of this city, of its old historical center, which is located on a peninsula, and it is very specific. But one group of photos of this city caught my attention. Perfect performance, special atmosphere and colors, like when using a specific preset. Beaches, coast, impressive big cliffs, stone piers, ancient stone dilapidated fortress buildings in the sea, greenish clear sea water, coastal pompous and not so pompous buildings, coastal promenades with restaurant tables, boats, etc. All this presents a rather attractive place for vacationing and tourism, quite beautiful, very tidy, clean and all. But... it wasn't Nessebar.

Actually, I didn't pay that much attention to this discrepancy at first. I myself have visited this city in my conscious years only once in those two days when I took these photos, but they were enough to get an idea of ​​the city, to recall more precisely what it looks like. Also, I have walked its coast through google maps so that I can describe it, length and breadth, and I know very well that those rocks that I saw in the pictures, as well as the ruins in the water, as well as the buildings around, really do not exist. But I was busy with other things then, so after a few days I went back in there and looked at the photos again.

They were so special because they were AI generated.

And I want to clarify that the pictures I show you here are real, not generated, but taken with my old phone. So, not exactly those that I submit there, but this is the real look of the old city, not the fictional look of some Game of Thrones village.

So, I set out to browse the account that created and uploaded them, as well as other accounts that have uploaded generated photos of this city.
Generated photos, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.
I found images of other "cities in Bulgaria" as well. Again unrecognizable. The only familiar thing there was the name, nothing else.

Thanks to this account, I even found out that there is a mountain in Bulgaria called "St. Vlas".
"Did you know that there is a mountain in Bulgaria called St. Vlas", I asked my partner.
"I don't know, you should check on Google", he surprised me with his answer.
He surprises me because he has traveled much more than me in Bulgaria, visited and seen many more places. He should know for sure that there is no such mountain. That this account, while generating images with the title "Beautiful Saint Vlas Bulgaria" (referring to the seaside resort of Saint Vlas, which does exist), probably mistakenly added the word "mountain". Of course, that obviously doesn't matter because, whether that place exists as a name on the map or not, all the images are non-existent anyway.
But that doesn't matter either, since it makes even local people hesitant about places in their own country, and what's left for foreigners?

I imagine if someone, for some reason, looked for photos of this city, maybe because it is listed in UNESCO, for example. Which photos will he choose to buy? The perfect generated images that don't have a single flaw, and no one knows that they are not true, or some photo that is informative, true, but for example, the lighting is not good, the colors or something else? Because that's living life. It's not perfect, but that's what I've always valued in a photograph - the information it carries, the real information.

Have we really come to prefer the non-existent to the real? I know one always succumbs to misinformation. Disinformation in the news, for example, is so easy. When you're not there, you have no way of knowing how things are, and journalists know it, and so do those people who benefit from distorted facts. But pictures of non-existent places with real names, that seems too much to me, it's an obvious scam being sold, which is a well-packaged product, so well-packaged that it can be sold and profited from. It's like a Steemit account with a generated identity that farms upvotes, but for a longer time and practically forever, not within a week.

So it's something even worse.

I read Adobe's requirements for uploading such images and saw no prohibition against using city or place names - a big gap in their policy.

They say that images:

"May not contain artists' names whose work is still in copyright.
May not contain names of people.
May not imply the content is a depiction of an actual newsworthy event.
May not contain names of government agencies.
May not contain references to third party intellectual property."

Well, yes, down there is: "Don't: Describe or depict subjects or locations in ways that may mislead buyers."

But who cares, since these photos have already been approved, the agency employees responsible for this have not been to Nessebar, do not know what this city looks like, and clearly rely on people's conscience (is there such a thing as conscience anymore at all?). On the other hand, I remember even 4 years ago how strict the approval of real photos was. I have photos that have been rejected multiple times with various irrelevant explanations until they are finally approved. But that's what happens with real photos, not generated ones.
Now I still don't know how it is since my photos haven't been touched by their employees for a whole month now.
Probably busy approving generated fake images.

Actually, I wanted to touch on another aspect of AI falsity today too, but I'll leave that for later. Enough of my ranting for today. 😅

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|