dall-e 2

Shutterstock to integrate OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and launch fund for contributor artists • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in AI generated image systems, dall-e 2, OpenAI, Robotics & AI, shutterstockNo Comments

Stock image giant Shutterstock has announced a major push into AI generated imagery today in partnership with OpenAI, expanding on a strategic tie-up the pair announced last year. The partnership between Shutterstock and OpenAI will see the latter’s DALL-E 2 image-generating AI system integrating with Shutterstock content and made available to Shutterstock users worldwide — with the integration slated to launch “in the coming months”. AI generated imagery refers to machine learning technology that’s been trained on visual data so it can respond to text-based prompts with a picture reflecting the description. The quality of the results can vary wildly but these AI systems has been coming on in leaps and bounds lately — causing equal parts awe and anger; with many tech users celebrating the ‘democratization’ of art, while visual artists, whose work may have been appropriated as training fodder for these AIs, can be left feeling ripped off. Unsurprisingly, given these sensitivities, Shutterstock’s push into generative AI is being framed as an “ethical” action plan — which includes the launch of a fund to “compensate artists for their contributions”, as its press release puts it. It also says it will be focusing R&D efforts on “gathering and publishing insights related to AI-generated content” — with the goal of positioning itself “at the forefront of the emerging technology”. So, er, RIP stock photographers? Or will the work of stock photographers’ end up being largely redirected towards capturing training data for honing AI models? (‘AI doesn’t kill jobs it changes them’ is the usual mantra applied to the rise of automation — albeit, oftentimes AI replaces lots of jobs with fewer, more specialist jobs so the ratio of winners to losers isn’t necessarily equal, nor is the wealth typically equally distributed…) Shutterstock says contributors will be “compensated” for the role their content played in the development of this technology — which raises plenty of questions, such as how will contributors be identified and how much will they be paid; how will their contribution be quantified exactly; and how will they know if they’re getting fair payment for their contribution or not? Who will audit these compensation frameworks? And, er, where was the consent from artists to becoming contributors to these AI systems in the first place? “Shutterstock believes that AI-generated content is the cumulative effort of its contributing artists. In an effort to create a new industry standard and unlock new revenue streams for the Company’s artist community, Shutterstock has also created the framework to provide additional compensation for artists whose works have contributed to develop the AI models,” Shutterstock writes — dubbing its framework “ethical and equitable”; and saying it will also “aim” to compensate contributors (“in the form of royalties”) when their intellectual property is used. Commenting in a statement, Paul Hennessy, Shutterstock’s CEO, added: “The mediums to express creativity are constantly evolving and expanding. We recognize that it is our great responsibility to embrace this evolution and to ensure that the generative technology that drives innovation is grounded in ethical practices. We have a long history of integrating AI into every part of our business. This expert-level competency makes Shutterstock the ideal partner to help our creative community navigate this new technology. And we’re committed to developing best practices and experiences to deliver on our purpose, which is to empower the world to create with confidence.” “The data we licensed from Shutterstock was critical to the training of DALL-E,” confirmed Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, in another supporting statement, before adding: “We’re excited for Shutterstock to offer DALL-E images to its customers as one of the first deployments through our API, and we look forward to future collaborations as artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of artists’ creative workflows.” Shutterstock is operating a wait list for getting access to the forthcoming integration of its content with OpenAi’s DALL-E 2 image generator — the list is available on its website.

Microsoft expands Azure OpenAI Service with DALL-E 2 in preview • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in dall-e 2, Enterprise, Microsoft, Robotics & AINo Comments

When Azure OpenAI Service launched in 2021, the service — a part of Azure Cognitive Services — provided enterprise-tailored access to OpenAI’s API through the Azure platform for applications like language translation and text autocompletion. That’s not changing. But after expanding the service in May with fine-tuning features, Microsoft is today introducing invite-only access to DALL-E 2 for select Azure OpenAI Service customers. Customers can use DALL-E 2 to generate custom images using either text or images. In line with the consumer DALL-E 2 service, they can leverage inpainting and outpainting — capabilities that generate new content within a portion of an image or push an image beyond its original confines, respectively — in addition to a feature that generates variations on an existing image. Content for podcasts custom-generated by DALL-E 2, through the Azure OpenAI Service. Image Credits: Microsoft Early adopters include brands like Mattel, which used DALL-E 2 to come up with ideas for a new Hot Wheels model car. German media conglomerate RTL Deutschland, another pilot customer, is considering combining streaming content metadata with DALL-E 2 to generate visuals for podcast episodes and scenes in audiobooks. To prevent misuse, as with Designer and Image Creator, Microsoft says it’s implemented filters to reject DALL-E 2 prompts from Azure OpenAI Service customers that violate content policy. The company also claims it’s integrated techniques to prevent DALL-E 2 from creating images of religious objects and celebrities, plus objects commonly used to try to trick the system into generating sexual or violent content. And Microsoft says it’s added models that remove AI-generated images appearing to contain adult, gore and other types of “inappropriate” content. Generations from Mattel using DALL-E 2. Image Credits: Microsoft “Microsoft is making access available by invitation-only to give us the opportunity to collaborate with customers and create safeguards to prevent harmful uses and unwanted outcomes as customers bring their applications to production,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZebethMedia via email. “Collaborations with these early customers will help us make sure the responsible AI safeguards are working in practice.” Beyond DALL-E 2, Microsoft gave a general update on Azure OpenAI Service’s growth since its launch roughly a year ago. Companies using the service now span industries including financial services, insurance and healthcare, the company said, including brands like Accenture, Avanade, Autodesk, BMW Group, CarMax, EY and PwC. Some of the most common use cases include writing assistance, natural language-to-code generation and parsing data to generate insights. For example, PwC is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service to classify various news articles into environment, social and governance topics for benchmarking purposes, while CarMax is using the service to generate new marketing content based on customer reviews.

Microsoft brings DALL-E 2 to the masses with Designer and Image Creator • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Apps, Azure OpenAI Service, dall-e 2, image generation, Microsoft, Microsoft Ignite 2022, OpenAI, Robotics & AINo Comments

Microsoft is making a major investment in DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s AI-powered system that generates images from text, by bringing it to first-party apps and services. During its Ignite conference this week, Microsoft announced that it’s integrating DALL-E 2 with the newly announced Microsoft Designer app and Image Creator tool in Bing and Microsoft Edge. With the advent of DALL-E 2 and open source alternatives like Stable Diffusion in recent years, AI image generators have exploded in popularity. In September, OpenAI said that more than 1.5 million users were actively creating over 2 million images a day with DALL-E 2, including artists, creative directors and authors. Brands such as Stitch Fix, Nestlé and Heinz have piloted DALL-E 2 for ad campaigns and other commercial use cases, while certain architectural firms have used DALL-E 2 and tools akin to it to conceptualize new buildings. “Microsoft and OpenAI have partnered closely since 2019 to accelerate breakthroughs in AI. We have teamed up with OpenAI to develop, test and responsibly scale the latest AI technologies,” Microsoft CVP of modern life, search and devices Liat Ben-Zur told ZebethMedia via email. “Microsoft is the exclusive provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI and is OpenAI’s preferred partner for commercializing new AI technologies. We’ve started to do this through programs like the Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot, and we’ll continue to explore solutions that harness the power of AI and advanced natural language generation.” Seeking to bring OpenAI’s tech to an even wider audience, Microsoft is launching Designer, a Canva-like web app that can generate designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, invitations, graphics and more to share on social media and other channels. Designer — whose announcement leaked repeatedly this spring and summer — leverages user-created content and DALL-E 2 to ideate designs, with drop-downs and text boxes for further customization and personalization. Within Designer, users can choose from various templates to get started on specific, defined-dimensions designs for platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn Facebook ads and Instagram Stories. Prebuilt templates are available from the web, as are shapes, photos, icons and headings that can be added to projects. Image Creator in Microsoft Edge and Bing. “Microsoft Designer is powered by AI technology, including DALL-E 2, which means the ability to instantly generate a variety of designs,” Ben-Zur continued. “[It] helps you bring your ideas to life. Designer will remain free during a limited preview period, Microsoft says — users can sign up starting today. Once the Designer app is generally available, it’ll be included in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions and have “some” functionality free to use for non-subscribers, though Microsoft didn’t elaborate. Another new Microsoft-developed app underpinned by DALL-E 2 is Image Creator, heading to Bing and Edge in the coming weeks. As the name implies, Image Creator — accessed via the Bing Images tab or bing.com/create, or through the Image Creator icon in the sidebar within Edge — generates art given a text prompt by funneling requests to DALL-E 2, acting like a frontend client for OpenAI’s still-in-beta DALL-E 2 service. Typing in a description of something, any additional context, like location or activity, and an art style will yield an image from Image Creator. “Image Creator will soon create images that don’t yet exist, limited only by your imagination,” Ben-Zur added. Unlike Designer, Image Creator in Bing and Edge will be completely free to use, but Microsoft — wary of potential abuse and misuse — says it’ll take a “measured approach” to rolling out the app. Image Creator will initially only be available in preview for select geographies, which Microsoft says will allow it to gather feedback before expanding the app further. Microsoft Designer. Some image-generating systems have been used to create objectionable content, like graphic violence and pornographic, nonconsensual celebrity deepfakes. The organization funding the development of Stable Diffusion, Stability AI, was even the subject of a critical recent letter from U.S. House Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) to the National Security Advisor (NSA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in which she urged the NSA and OSTP to address the release of “unsafe AI models” that “do not moderate content made on their platforms.” Image-generating AI can also pick up on the biases and toxicities embedded in the millions of images from the web used to train them. OpenAI itself noted in an academic paper that an open source implementation of DALL-E could be trained to make stereotypical associations like generating images of white-passing men in business suits for terms like “CEO,” for example. In response to questions about mitigation measures in Designer and Image Creator, Microsoft noted that OpenAI removed explicit sexual and violent content from the dataset used to train DALL-E 2. But Microsoft also said that it took steps of its own, including deploying filters to limit the generation of images that violate content policy, additional query blocking on sensitive topics and technology to deliver “more diverse” images to results. Users will have to agree to terms of use and the aforementioned content policy to start using Designer and Image Creator with their Microsoft account. If a user requests an image deemed inappropriate by Microsoft’s automated filters, they’ll get a warning. If they repeatedly violate the content policy, they’ll be banned, but have a chance to appeal. “It’s important, with early technologies like DALL-E 2, to acknowledge that this is new, and we expect it to continue to evolve and improve,” Ben-Zur said. “We take our commitment to responsible AI seriously … We will not allow users to generate violent content, we may distort people’s faces and won’t show text strings used as input.” Addressing some of the legal questions that’ve sprung up recently around AI-powered image generation systems, Microsoft says that users will have “full” usage rights to commercialize the images they create with Designer and Image Creator. (Among other hosts, Getty Images has banned the upload and sale of illustrations generated using DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and similar tools, citing fair use concerns about training