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One of my print brokering clients is a “fashionista.” I have written numerous PIE Blog articles about her work. Her main printed product is a 3.54” x 1.42” color swatch book on a screw-and-post assembly that looks like a small PMS swatch book. It allows her clients to select complementary clothing and makeup colors based on their complexion. Over the years my client has expanded her product line into print books, an online presence, and (soon) clothing based on her proprietary color scheme.
All of my client’s products include illustrations of women with various hair colors and skin tones. These include cover art for 28 separate “master” copies of her color swatch print books. Among other things, my client is an illustrator, but drawing all of these cover models takes time.
AI-Generated Photography in My Client’s Work
With this in mind my client recently sent me about ten or so photos generated by Artificial-Intelligence (AI)-based photo generators she had found online. She had typed in various prompts, and the software had generated breathtakingly beautiful images that looked a lot more like photos than illustrations.
My client had asked my opinion. I gave it to her, and I also did some online research into the whole process (and legality, regarding copyright infringement) of AI image generators.
First of all I will say more about why this is relevant to my client. It’s not about attractive photos. It’s about what my client is really selling.
I told my client she was really selling beauty, magic, dreams, fantasy, and glamour. Feminist literature I perused also spoke of the “male gaze” (in less than glowing terms). My client’s vehicle for selling these intangibles is her proprietary color scheme. In much the same way, as she ventures into clothing lines, her products will be less about the fabric and style and more about how the colors themselves enhance the beauty of the person wearing the clothing.
With this in mind, let’s return to the photos. I will describe some of them. All of the women are stunning. They range in age from their twenties to sixties (my guess), blondes, brunettes, redheads, women with stunning gray hair. Latinas, African Americans, Caucasians. Beauty and diversity.
What they all have in common is that they look directly at the viewer.
This has been important since the dawn of painted portraits. When the subject of a painting or photo looks directly at you, this forms a bond between the subject of the image and the observer, much more of a bond than an image of a subject looking elsewhere. If the subject looks elsewhere in the painting or photo, the person looking at the image becomes an observer rather than a participant. The relationship at that point changes from a link between the subject and the observer to the subject’s relationship to her or his environment (possessions and/or people).
So it is understandable that my client chose only images gazing at the observer, photos that will be reproduced on her print book covers, web pages, and marketing collateral.
Actually, chose is not as precise a word in this context as created. She created (or the AI algorithm created) all ten of the images my client shared with me specifically based on text prompts. In fact, when I did some research on the subject, I learned that some of the AI image generators will accept figurative language as well as literal wording. That is, you can type in an allusion, metaphor, simile, famous quotation (presumably). My client typed in specific ages for the women, and then noted that all of them should be beautiful (a subjective concept), and that all should be looking at the observer. But the AI image generators apparently can go well beyond this.
In fact, I noticed one other thing about the ten images my client shared with me. The subjects’ eyes were not only focused on the observer, as noted, but they were “in focus” (which implies the subjects of the photos are/were “present” with the observer rather than lost in thought—or bored). That said, their gaze is slightly (just barely) softer in focus to imply romantic interest in the observer.
All of these characteristics work on the viewer. Subconsciously, but powerfully. Just ask any glamour photographer who takes pictures of models for clothing ads or cosmetics ads.
Fantasy
I also mentioned fantasy as one of the things my client sells with her proprietary color scheme. One image she requested had the subject in “period” costume in front of an iron gate and with Gothic architecture in the background (akin to the Gothic novel Jane Eyre).
In our current world, where everyday life is serious and now often dangerous, images of models (which my client will have selected or created very consciously to appeal to her clients) tied to people’s fantasies will go a long way. These will be images with characteristics to which my client’s clients will aspire.
As a rule, most, if not all, advertising is about either possessing something or becoming something. And since my client’s clients are all women, the photos my client creates with AI image generation technology will be aimed at encouraging her clients to become whatever they aspire to in their dreams and fantasies. They will do this by using my client’s color system to enhance their own beauty, their sense of glamour.
In short, I think my client is going in the right direction not only by focusing the “gaze” of the models on the observer but also by including some elements of fantasy. After all, romance novels are actually increasing dramatically in their popularity for a reason.
(From BookRiot.com: “NPD BookScan, a market research group, states that romance is selling more in 2022 than at any point since 2014. Its data shows unit sales of romance novels growing 41% in 2021 and growing even more in 2022.”)
Further Thoughts
One of my first thoughts in seeing my client’s selection of AI generated images was that the quality had improved dramatically since the last time I had seen such photos. These actually look like photos, even though the people in the images do not exist. Prior iterations of such images looked (to me) more like illustrations. And therefore they had a sense of being artificial, cold, and impersonal. Beautiful but lifeless. These images my client sent me, in contrast, exuded warmth.
To go back to the technology, which I can’t even begin to understand, I did read that the computer “learns” based on the words you type into the image generator, and this is reflected in the qualities and characteristics of the photos generated. To me, that’s incredibly exciting, as I think ahead five or ten years—or even just now.
I also saw some related attributes (technical rather than emotive and artistic) that pertain to image quality. For instance, one of the image “manipulators” acts as Photoshop might but goes one step further. I saw online how it removed all noise from the background of the image as well as the subject, improved the resolution of the image significantly, and possibly even added or corrected background and foreground detail based on an analysis of the subject.
Granted, a lot of this you could do with an image editor like Photoshop, but you would still get spotty results from enlarging or upsampling an image, and you would need not only artistic talent but also a lot of time to (essentially) paint in details.
(In the 1970s I did this with India ink, a tiny brush, and a photo. In the ensuing decades starting in the early ‘90s, I did this in Photoshop with the pen and paintbrush tools. Now the computer can analyze the image and do all of this for you instantly.)
Copyright
Based on my reading, if you choose to pursue AI generated imagery, I’d encourage you to research copyright requirements. Read the legal language accompanying the online AI generation engine. It seems that AI generated imagery can’t be copyrighted since it is not created by humans.
Then again, you may want to make sure your use of such images (particularly in promotional materials that generate money for you) does not expose you to liability. I haven’t seen anything worrisome yet, but it’s worth careful study, just as you would carefully read language from a royalty-free or rights-managed online photo bank.
In my estimation, this will be transformative technology. If you are involved in any aspect of commercial art or fine art (or commercial printing), you may want to read up on the subject.
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on Monday, December 18th, 2023 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Photos.
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