Post MA: The developments of GAN, AI and it’s implications

“Computers can now create but they are not creative.
To be creative, you need to have some awareness, some understanding of what you’ve done.
AIs know nothing whatsoever about the images and words they generate. “

Ferguson, K. (2023)

2022 and 2023 brought about quite a few evolutions in regards to Artificial Intelligence, specifically GAN products to the point where by the time I had access to one new development, another had cropped up more advanced the one previous and I got quite a bit overwhelmed when it came to writing about what I had found out, as things got out of date relatively quickly. (To the point I began writing this particular post back in March of 2022 and found that I had to keep adding and changing, so it’s been quite the wait and a lengthy one).


2022


When I first began writing this post I set about reading about how one would set up their own GAN looking at guides and research produced by individuals working in this field, and more importantly where a lot of the model training data was being gathered from, the aspect referred to as ‘datasets’. A lot of the academic papers and research articles available at the time seemed to draw upon a dataset called ‘CelebA’ (which is interesting given developments as of January 2024, which I will unpack later in this post).

Figure 1 Zhu, J. et al (2016) Generative Visual Manipulation on the Natural Image Manifold

The most in-depth on the topic, was unsurprisingly by Ian Goodfellow – one of the pioneers and inventors behind OpenAI’s GAN technology that have developed Dall-E and ChatGPT as products (which are now integrated into Bing). His NIPS 2016 Tutorial on the subject of Generative Adversarial Networks provided me with a real primer in understanding that GAN is not just a sub-category of AI, but has it’s own sub-categories like iGAN (Figure 1) and IAN (Figure 2). Sub-categories whose projects have focused not just on generating an image, but aiding the user into producing what they imagine in a controlled manner (Goodfellow suggests that these projects are aimed at creating ‘art’, which is interesting given subsequent developments – particularly talks hosted by the Royal Photographic Society on the topic of GAN and whether or not it is an approved method of Art/Photography). GAN itself can be best described as functioning as a 2-player game, with one being dubbed the ‘generator’ and the other ‘ the discriminator’. The generator is the player or perhaps more aptly a counterfeiter who creates the samples using the supplied training data (the dataset) with the aim of fooling the discriminator into thinking it is a legitimate real output that is indistinguishable from the genuine input, whilst the discriminator examines the samples and determines if they are real or fake.

Figure 2 Brock, A. et al. (2016) Neural Photo Editing with Introspective Adversarial Networks

Back when I was studying my Masters I stated that hallmarks for noticing GAN images were strange flaws like peculiar smudges and strange, peculiar ears and whilst this hasn’t totally changed it has certainly become a lot harder to distinguish between what is a genuine photograph and what is an artificial one. This is especially true after the public releases of ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney amongst others, during the latter half of 2022 that some have dubbed as being the start of the AI Spring. Due to this drastic evolution, I’ve found my interest has changed somewhat – instead of wanting to create my own GAN I’ve become more fascinated by the datasets driving both the popular options as well as those which are decidedly more niche, and just how ethical these datasets are in the imagery gathered, given just how quickly GAN generation went from a more surreal painterly approach to hyper-real almost indistinguishable from a photo in output.

Figure 3 Murray, J. & Pixray Genesis (2021) Prompt: Stairway to Heaven Outcomes 1 & 2

Back in late 2021, I came across Pixray Genesis, which was one of the first GAN text to image generators to become available to the general public without a waiting list that was also free. Much like the early outcomes produced by Nvidia’s StyleGAN, pixray had a lot of interesting distortions and produced outcomes which were considered to be more painterly and in my opinion highly surrealist. Whilst it had no issue with depicting or suggesting structural architecture like stairs (Figure 3), it really struggled when it came to human depictions, creating only very simplistic abstract suggestions, lacking facial features and distinct limbs (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Murray, J. & Pixray Genesis (2021) Prompt: Migrant Mother

Shortly after finding out about Pixray I found out about Wombo Dream (Figure 5), a phone application by a Canadian AI firm which much like Pixray offered text-to-image creations in a variety of ‘styles’ such as ukiyoe, dark fantasy, steampunk, Baroque or Synthwave to name but a few. Much like Pixray, Wombo Dream really struggled with depicting a human form, although you could tell that a fair amount of training had been taken from something similar to the CelebA dataset, in that it kept depicting albeit in Abstract ‘my name’ as a black woman (I share my name with an American Idol singer) and perhaps old film posters or promotional photos as ‘The Lovers’ prompt produced an outcome that replicated and mimicked the poses common in old school 1930s and 1940s posters for romance films (e.g. The Cuban Love Song, Anna Karenina).

Figure 5 Murray, J. & Wombo Dream (2021) Prompts: Various

The outcomes produced by Pixray and Wombo Dream were not significantly different to the outcomes I got in the Spring of 2022, when I got access to DALL-E Mini by Craiyon (Figure 6) in that it appeared to handle inanimate objects or flowers better than it did humans, producing a simplistic abstraction, albeit in a square format grid of 9 outputs, often within a minimalistic colour palette.

Figure 6 Murray, J. & DALL-E Mini (2022) Prompt: Jasmine

Now admittedly the prompts I used in both DALL-E Mini, Wombo Dream and Pixray were relatively broad, and very basic in description, yet despite this fact both generators managed to produce imagery that clearly showed that it’s datasets had been trained to associate the phrases to a very narrow definition – e.g. heaven = clouds, jasmine = flower or woman. Though it was noted that around the time of me generating the outcomes on DALL-E Mini that it did strangely seem to favour inserting abstract women in saris, which an article in Rest of World seemed to think may have been down to the fact the images may have been tagged only in a language the GAN generator did not understand. (Christopher, N. 2022).

Figure 7 Murray, J. & Stable Diffusion 1.5 (2022) Prompt: A photo-realistic image of a woman with curly brown hair, blue eyes and glasses

Shortly after DALL-E Mini (Craiyon) became available, the Summer of 2022 brought about the arrival of Stable Diffusion (Figure 7), Midjourney (Figure 8) and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 (Figure 9) in short succession. Unlike prior available to the public GAN text-to-image creators these newcomers produced outcomes that were broaching photo-realistic and had no difficulty in creating an image of a ‘human’, and this has only become easier and easier as time has gone on, to the point that some generated images have been used to manipulate the general public as a form of propaganda in regards to the ongoing wars globally (Klepper, D. 2023).

Figure 8 Murray, J. & Midjourney (2022) Prompt: Feminist breaking free from societal shackles

2023


Being used as propaganda is not the sole bad side of this rapid evolution of GAN image-to-text services, over the course of 2023, several court cases have gone ahead with both artists and Getty taking the Big 3 (Stable Diffusion, Midjourney & DALL-E) to court for using and creating datasets which have been trained on their scraped art data without permission (Mattei, S.E. 2023 & O’Brien, M. 2023).

Figure 9 Murray, J & DALL-E (2022) Prompts: Woman with a Camera


Talks


Throughout 2023, I attended several talks hosted by the RPS on the topic of AI. The first I attended was in April and was hosted in partnership with Shutterstock, whilst a lot of the talk seemed to be focused on selling Shutterstock’s promptography product, it did make me think the following – at what point does a photo become machine generated and stop being a photograph? After all the majority of photography these days is digitally made, using pixels which is often then taken into a editing suite such as Photoshop.

Figure 10 Eldagsen, B. (2023) The Electrician

The second talk in June was hosted in partnership with Adobe, and remains available to watch on the RPS’s YouTube. Much as with Shutterstock it did feel a bit like a selling pitch to me at least, but it did add further to my thoughts of where the line is drawn, given Adobe Firefly is really just a step more than some of the products found within the current Adobe Creative Cloud suite such as face detection in Lightroom. The Adobe talk did pose some interesting developments though, as it seems like they want to make GAN created works show the credentials within the metadata in the form of Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) as a means of showing provenance of the work, however given Adobe’s AI images have been used in the Gaza-Israel conflict as though they are photojournalist images without attribution it does lead a question of whether such inclusions within the metadata changes anything if people get duped? One only has to look at the 2023 Sony’s to see how even professional judges can be mislead over GAN imagery, with Eldagsen’s award-winning photo (Figure 10) being highlighted by the artist himself as being GAN created when refusing the prize.

A third talk was held in July with the RPS Digital Imaging, which was a more broad discussion with polling that asked about where do people draw the line and what impact if any Generative AI will have on photography. Much like the second talk, the third talk remains available for the general public to watch on the RPS’ Youtube. My main takeaway from this particular talk, was that as a bit of a purist when it comes to Adobe Software (I to this day use CS6, as I dislike the subscription based model of Creative Cloud) – I had become somewhat out of touch in how automated some people were when it came to editing, thinking little to nothing of using AI to aid with masking, facial retouching or generative fill to replace the sky.


Dawn Woolley #RebelSelves App


Due to needing PL Insurance for a pop-up exhibition of my work in Bedford, I joined AXIS and subsequently came across in one of their newsletters that Dawn Woolley was hosting an online workshop in July on her project Rebel Selves specifically an online application/website, a virtual rendition of an in-person selfie booth created by Woolley of the same name. Woolley states on her project specific instagram that Rebel Selves is a project that “… examines gender and other stereotypes in selfies and aims to use creative methods to queer selfies.” (Woolley, D. 2023)

Figure 11 Murray, J. & Woolley, D. #Rebelselves App (2023) Glitched Outputs

When it came to using the application (Figure 11), as someone who has become increasingly aware of how selfies can be abused for nefarious purposes such as deep fake porn, I wanted to see just how glitched and distorted I could go, that meant a semblance of myself (or my great-nan) remained within the photograph, but was equally far too distorted to be used in a nefarious manner.

It was interesting to hear Woolley’s perspectives on the topic of social media in relation to commodification specifically of the body within a restrictive boundary of societal expectations and gender ideals, as it is something I began to notice and recognise more after deep-diving into forums within the manosphere, that a lot of high-profile influencer types lean into accepted norms and stereotypes, a curated ideation that on reflection would not go that amiss in early 20th century marketing and advertorials.


Gender Norms


Figure 12 Anya, U. (2024) Twitter Post comparing marketing photos from the mid-century (left) against Tiktok influencer Nara Smith (right)

In fact in recent weeks this discourse has popped up on X (Twitter) in relation to TikTok creator Nara Smith (Figure 12), who is marketing her and her husband’s Mormon lifestyle, that appears to revolve around a lot of her videos being made in the kitchen in evening gowns. However Smith is far from alone in pushing the movement dubbed ‘tradwifes’, a term which surged in popularity around the outbreak of the pandemic and for some creators seems to link into far-right politics particularly those based in the States. This rise in content combined with the pre-existing biases within the newly developing and ever-changing world of AI, proves an interesting time for women as the ramifications of such stereotypical beliefs could set women’s right back a century, if left to brew unchecked.


Estampa


Figure 13 Estampa (2018) Cropped Still from Sherman/Fontcuberta

In October I caught The Photographers’ Gallery’s Screen Walks talk with Estampa (available here), a collective of programmers, artists and researchers that have been, since 2017, working with AI with a focus on neural networks and deep learning tools, starting with a series called ‘The Bad Pupil’. Subsequently they have amassed a significant body of work that focuses on the ideologies and uses of Artificial Intelligence technology.

A lot of their early work particularly those within ‘The Bad Pupil’ like Sherman/Fontcuberta use a ImageNet style generator to label or rather mislabel footage they run through it. In the case of Sherman/Fontcuberta, the two artist names pop up on faces and heads within a mid-century Chinese street video that clearly are neither Sherman nor Fontcuberta. Estampa are ultimately highlighting that Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer, as all AI is only as good as what they are trained upon – how large and diverse the dataset is in regards to it’s labelled classification as the computer can not actually see ‘visually’ like humans do.


Boris Eldagsen


Figure 14 Eldagsen, B. (2023) Psychoanalysis Gone Wrong

In November the RPS hosted a talk with Boris Eldagsen, the artist who won the Sony’s with The Electrician, a GAN image. In the talk he mentions realising that 1990s digitalisation has ultimately become the base, the foundations of 2020s AI boom, with the data of the former, now material for training data. This is an interesting perspective and not something I had considered as 1990s digitalisation movement and early internet happened when I was a child and for the most part I have taken for granted, as being accessible at a click of the button.

So why did Eldagsen enter the image The Electrician (Figure 10) into a photo contest despite the fact he considers promptography it’s own category? In the talk he mentioned that he realized in the Autumn of 2022 that many photo competitions had not changed guidelines or rules to take into account AI being more widely used despite the AI Spring of GAN text-to-image generators. As the talk, at this point in time, isn’t accessible to the wider public, I’ve provided a quote made by Eldagsen in an interview with Foster that isn’t dissimilar to what was stated in the RPS talk:

“AI image generators enable people without photographic training to produce photo-like images that they could never have made otherwise. Inevitably, competitions are going to be flooded with AI-generated images. In my view, these competitions should have already changed their rules before October. But they didn’t. That’s why I submitted my picture to three different competitions, to hack the system and see how far I could get. All three times I was among the finalists, and now I won…”

Eldagsen, B. [in] Foster, A.(2023)

Learning that a lot of these photo contests seemed to be woefully unprepared for the arrival of GAN images was quite a surprise, more still learning the fact that the organisations didn’t particularly twig despite Eldagsen being very transparent in the process of how he made The Electrician and the companion images, only bothering to take action after he turned down the prize in person. This knowledge has really made me question all the more the ethical stand point of AI, and where individuals or big internationally renowned companies view the line to be drawn.


2024



Ethics


The past few years have brought up a lot of topics surrounding AI & Ethics, from claims that Google’s LAMBDA is sentient (Johnson, K. 2022), outright discrimination by hiring bots (Dastin, J. 2018), to Taylor Swift (Yousif, N. 2024) becoming a victim of deep fake porn with the twist that the images were made by Dall-E. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these kind of issues with AI, keep cropping up like a whack-a-mole game on steroids, have made politicians and world leaders concerned about AI being left unchecked. This has lead to attempts at regulating AI via new specific laws, and the introduction in Autumn 2023, of the world’s first AI Safety summit. This summit lead to a declaration agreed by over 20 nations to work together to identify, evaluate and regulate the risks of using AI, but it remains to be seen if this declaration will last or change anything currently considered an issue.

Figure 15 Roser, M. & Giattino, C. (2023) Timeline of images generated by artificial intelligence

As one can observe from Figure 15 the developments of GAN images have improved in leaps and bounds since I was studying my MA, in a mere few years, with worries no longer being focused on the authenticity of a close-cropped headshot, but on photography and art as a whole. This has certainly become somewhat of an issue on Facebook in recent months with people being duped by img-to-img generated images, two big examples noticed have been ‘the dog sculptor’ and ‘my child drew this’ (Figure 16) as engagement-baits.

Figure 16 Koebler, J. (2023) Screenshots from Facebook

In the case of the dog sculptor, the sculpture was originally reality and appears to be sourced from a series of videos and photographs by chainsaw sculptor Michael Jones. Facebook isn’t the only host to have an issue with GAN images, Pinterest for example seems to have an issue with crochet, or more specifically amigurumi patterns that includes images that show the final item has been made using AI and not crocheted (Chapman, A. 2023).

Figure 17 Beau (2023) X Screenshot Ad

More concerning, is the rapid increase of ‘undressing’ apps (Figure 17), AI painter apps that claim to turn real life images into ‘works of art’ yet marketing something more akin to ‘undressing’ (Figure 18) and AI ‘companion’ apps (Figure 19) which have in recent months been allowed to advertise as promoted posts on X (Twitter), with visuals that are stereotypical pornified imagery of women that is designed for the male gaze to objectify.

Figure 18 Murray, J. (2023) Screenshots of Promoted tweets of an AI painter

However even without arguably questionable in-motive apps, nefarious users can circumvent round apps such as Microsoft Designer (the app responsible for the viral Swift images) and make explicit images or images of celebrities by changing the prompts with mis-spellings, and instead of writing explicit sexual acts describing instead objects, colours and compositions that are suggestive of sexual acts.

Figure 19 Murray, J. (2023) Screenshots of Promoted Tweets of AI Companion Apps

Other examples recreate 9/11 or jailbreak LLM models such as ChatGPT to be sexually suggestive or repeat itself to the point training data is leaked. The latest in the long line of leaks comes from a claim by ArsTechnica who have claimed that ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations it has had with other users. It does make you wonder if the leak is not so much a leak as what Shumailov, I. et al (2023) theorised as model collapse.

Figure 20 Murray, J. (2024) Screenshots of the account responsible for Taylor Swift Images

In regards to Swiftgate I managed to do a bit of digging when the images first went viral and found out a user going by the handle @xCharlotteAI (Figure 20) appeared to be the origin source for NSFW AI Images. The X accounts for this user and their website have since been removed, but they still have a presence on Youtube, and on Instagram, the latter of which they appear to have two accounts, both marketing the content they were peddling on their website, which interestingly enough appeared to only charge in GBP. Given my previous research finding a link with a deep nude generator being designed and platformed by someone based in the UK, I have to wonder if the individual behind this account is one and same. Sadly one of the blue tick users who reposted the images has simply gone private and doesn’t appear to have faced any ramifications for sharing the deep fake nudes.

Another concern is Thiel’s research for Stanford’s Internet Observatory, which uncovered that some training data for the likes of Stable Diffusion like LAION-5B had thousands of images of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) due to the nature of how the data was obtained something he had previously highlighted as being an issue with generative ML models (unlike early AI which relied on ImageNet, which was trained by humans manually uploading training material, LAION-5B simply trawled and scraped the web meaning a fair amount of it’s training data was not obtained legally).

References

Figures

Figure 1 Zhu, J. et al (2016) Generative Visual Manipulation on the Natural Image Manifold. [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4z6YsBGQ0 [Accessed 16/03/2022]

Figure 2 Brock, A. et al. (2016) Neural Photo Editing with Introspective Adversarial Networks. [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDELBFSeqQs [Accessed 18/03/2022]

Figure 3 Murray, J. & Pixray Genesis (2021) Prompt: Stairway to Heaven Outcomes 1 & 2

Figure 4 Murray, J. & Pixray Genesis (2021) Prompt: Migrant Mother

Figure 5 Murray, J. & Wombo Dream (2021) Prompts: Various

Figure 6 Murray, J. & DALL-E Mini (2022) Prompt: Jasmine

Figure 7 Murray, J. & Stable Diffusion 1.5 (2022) Prompt: A photo-realistic image of a woman with curly brown hair, blue eyes and glasses

Figure 8 Murray, J. & Midjourney (2022) Prompt: Feminist breaking free from societal shackles

Figure 9 Murray, J & DALL-E (2022) Prompts: Woman with a Camera

Figure 10 Eldagsen, B. (2023) The Electrician. [Online] Available from: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ai-generated-image-world-photography-organization-contest-artist-declines-award-1234664549/ [Accessed 28/01/2024]

Figure 11 Murray, J. & Woolley, D. #Rebelselves App (2023) Glitched Outputs

Figure 12 Anya, U. (2024) Twitter Post comparing marketing photos from the mid-century (left) against Tiktok influencer Nara Smith. [Online] Available from: https://twitter.com/UjuAnya/status/1749419531678720351 [Accessed 29/01/2024]

Figure 13 Estampa (2018) Sherman/Fontcuberta. [Online] Available from: https://tallerestampa.com/en/estampa/sherman-fontcuberta/ [Accessed 29/01/2024]

Figure 14 Eldagsen, B. (2023) Psychoanalysis Gone Wrong. [Online] Available from: https://www.eldagsen.com/pseudomnesia3/ [Accessed 29/01/2024]

Figure 15 Roser, M. & Giattino, C. (2023) Timeline of images generated by artificial intelligence. [Online] Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/brief-history-of-ai [Accessed 30/01/2024]

Figure 16 Koebler, J. (2023) Screenshots from Facebook. [Online] Available from: https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/ [Accessed 30/01/2024]

Figure 17 Beau (2023) X Screenshot Ad. [Online] Available from: https://twitter.com/beausecurity/status/1735424295638049035?s=20 [Accessed 30/01/2024]

Figure 18 Murray, J. (2023) Screenshots of Promoted tweets of an AI painter

Figure 19 Murray, J. (2023) Screenshots of Promoted Tweets of AI Companion Apps

Figure 20 Murray, J. (2024) Screenshots of the account responsible for Taylor Swift Images

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O’Brien, S. (2023) IEEE: AiArt: Why Some Artists Are Furious About AI-Produced Art. [Online] Available from: https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/trends/artists-mad-at-ai [Accessed 04/01/2024]

Oremus, W. & Verma, P. (2023) The Washington Post: These look like prizewinning photos. They’re AI fakes. [Online] Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/23/stock-photos-ai-images-controversy/ [Accessed 28/01/2024]

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Post MA: An update on Artists, Python, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Figure 1 Pipeline Gallery’s Instagram (2021) Artist Talk: Jasmine Murray

I can’t quite believe it’s been nearly 6 months since my last post. A few months after my online residency with Transient, I did an artist talk with Pipeline Gallery’s Holly Richards, which is available to watch back on their website, alongside other fantastic artist talks. Some point next month (April 2022), one of my images from the series Transhumane: The Immortality of Self (2019) is set to be exhibited in Festival Pil’Ours, France, in an exhibition curated by Shutterhub called Your Body Belongs to You.

Figure 2 Pipeline Gallery (2022-) Listening to; Jasmine Murray

Last month I caught two virtual events, one organised by Natasha Caruana’s Work Show Grow Artist Talk Salon 9 which featured artists Anna-Tia Buss and Vera Hadzhiyska. The other was organised by Hundred Heroines in collaboration with Exposure 2022 an online talk called Women in STEAM which featured Falmouth Flexible’s Wendy McMurdo and Mónica Alcázar-Duarte. Both talks were incredibly interesting and informative, though Mónica Alcázar-Duarte’s practice in particular resonated with me, as it overlapped with my own research made during the MA on digital biases.


Anna-Tia Buss


Figure 3 Buss, A. (2018) I Never Realized exhibition

Buss’ series I Never Realised draws on the question of beauty ideals in society and the impact such ideals have on our identity and the broader notion of what it means to be a woman in the eyes of society and the lasting trauma such narrow ideal boundaries can cause to those subjected to it. Her work reminds me of the following passage from Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal which states: “In an era of technological intervention, shame attaches more to the body than its clothing; shame of wrinkles, shame of bumpy noses, and shame of sagging jowls, shame, in general of the imperfect and nonconforming body.” (Widdows, H. 2018; 33), albeit a visual rendition and representation. Her pairing of traditional studio portraiture with the more personal and intimate collaborative Polaroid print of her subject’s body and written testament of the area of the body they, the sitter, deems to be their ultimate flaw provokes the viewer of the work to reflect and think of just how restrictive humanity is on what beauty is. Whilst these narrow boundaries have always existed since time immemorial, I would argue that the rise of Web 2.0 – particularly social media has accelerated a global ideal as mentioned by Widdows in her book, but also brought about the notion of the unrealistic and artificial beauty only made possible through the lens of body modification apps and extreme cosmetic procedures.


Vera Hadzhiyska


Figure 4 Hadzhiyska, V. (2017-2019) With the Name of a Flower

Hadzhiyska’s practice is quite far removed from my own, however With the Name of a Flower (2017-2019) gave me a lot to think about on the notions of identity and belonging. Her series investigates and tackles a topic I was unfamiliar with – the forced name changes of those from the Bulgarian Muslim population during the era dubbed the ‘Revival Process’ between 1912-1989. Whilst I knew Bulgaria was at one point part of the Ottoman Empire, I had never really given thought to how this historical fact meant Bulgaria was and I suppose still is, a decidedly diverse culturally rich country. The story behind the images really tugged on my heartstrings and really made me reflect on just how much of your identity can be linked to a name, and how under an unjust society lack of freedom is ultimately a form of censorship.


Dr Wendy McMurdo


“All art is produced as a mirror to the technology of its time.”

McMurdo, W. (2011)
Figure 5 McMurdo, W. (2002) Anaesthetist John Bracken and Surgeon Marjorie Ritchie at The Roslin Institute

Despite being aware of Dr Wendy McMurdo’s work prior to the talk host by Hundred Heroines (in part because she was module leader of the Final Major Project module of my MA in Photography.) I wasn’t familiar with the fact she had documented the scientists who worked on the Dolly the Sheep project (Figure 5). Hearing McMurdo’s thoughts on photography was insightful and resonated with my own views on the future of photography, in that I see photography as a medium that now entwines with other art and tech practices to the point of indistinguishability of where photography itself begins or ends within an image. For example thinking on my own practice is the use of cinemagraphs truly photography or is it instead moving image, or is it both an uncanny hybrid between the moving and the still? McMurdo’s own practice depicts the rapid evolution of technology available to society and its impact on those growing up during these times.


Mónica Alcázar-Duarte


“How is the delegation of algorithmic filters capable of extracting the majority opinion, thus automatically becoming truth?”

Alcázar-Duarte, M. (2021)
Figure 6 Alcázar-Duarte, M. (2017-2020) Here to be caught.

Mónica Alcázar-Duarte’s practice, but particularly her series Second Nature revolves around the inherent pre-existing biases being fed into machine learning algorithms that further pre-existing discrimination and negative stereotypes faced by those who have historically been oppressed. Second Nature explicitly draws on Alcázar-Duarte’s own Mexican heritage and are an fusion of algorithmic search results on the Internet and testaments from women of the discrimination they face, which she collected during her travels in Mexico. During the talk Alcázar-Duarte showed some of her work in progress which I found very insightful, as she appears to have reached the same conclusion as I had during the duration of my MA – that GAN technology works on what is fed into the input and given most current GAN libraries rely on search engine results the outcome is inevitably biased, and tends to dehumanise women into the epitome of the male gaze (if going by deep-fake and deep-nude technology and what AI did when given a cropped photo of AOC).


Learning Python, Understanding AI & Machine Learning


Figure 7 Sketchplanations (2013-) Gif diagram of Boyd’s OODA Loop

During my MA I didn’t have time to explore in-depth how GAN worked in regards to coding, so since graduation I’ve been researching and learning Python and the fundamentals to AI and Machine Learning. Recently I attended a Code First Girls MOOC: An Introduction to Python which made me realise I had indirectly learnt a lot of the basics when experimenting in Ren’py last year (like knowing when to indent, when to print, and how to add a comment within the code). I did learn some helpful tips attending however in regards to formatted strings: instead of writing .format you can just use the letter f instead. This week I attended a tech talk hosted by Dr Joni Pelham at the Friendly Nettle Café on AI, which gave a fundamental overview of the various types of Machine Learning and that ultimately AI is not just Machine Learning, but all of Machine Learning is Artificial Intelligence. Whilst Boyd’s OODA loop was originally created as a military strategy, his theory works as a general predications loop and is a fundamental basis to all coding and programming, something which has been sped up and automated by the development of Machine Learning. However as I found during my MA, AI can only be as reliable as the data it is fed or has access to and in the case of GAN a lot could be improved as it is a method of supervised machine learning. Towards the end of my MA, I did find when researching that you could use Google Colab for some python applications but wasn’t sure whether it would be powerful enough to host any kind of GAN so was pleasantly surprised to find out it should work for a simplistic GAN.

References

Figures

Figure 1 Pipeline Gallery’s Instagram (2021) Artist Talk: Jasmine Murray. [Online] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/CXIkTwEopXJ/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 2 Pipeline Gallery (2022) Listening to; Jasmine Murray. [Online] Available from: https://www.pipelinegallery.org/post/listening-to-jasmine-murray [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 3 Buss, A. (2018-) I Never Realized exhibition. [Online] Available from: https://www.flare-photoforum.com/post/183608095060/prix-photoforum-2018-part-2 [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 4 Hadzhiyska, V. (2017-2019) With the Name of a Flower. [Online] Available from: https://museemagazine.com/culture/2021/1/18/photo-journal-monday-vera-hadzhiyska [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 5 McMurdo, W. (2002) Anaesthetist John Bracken and Surgeon Marjorie Ritchie at The Roslin Institute. [Online] Available from: https://hundredheroines.org/brief-news/wendy-mcmurdo-ig-take-over/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 6 Alcázar-Duarte, M. (2017-2020) Here to be caught (from the series Second Nature). [Online] Available from: https://www.1854.photography/2021/05/monica-alcazar-duarte/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Figure 7 Sketchplanations (2013-) Gif diagram of Boyd’s OODA Loop. [Online] Available from: https://sketchplanations.com/ooda-loop [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Bibliography

Alcázar-Duarte, M. [in] Vora, B. (2021) British Journal of Photography: Mónica Alcázar-Duarte explores the dangers hidden behind the algorithm. [Online] Available from: https://www.1854.photography/2021/05/monica-alcazar-duarte/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Buss, A. (2022-) [Online] Available from: https://www.annatiabuss.com/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Buss, A. [in] International Photography Magazine (2018) Anna-Tia Buss: I Never Realized. [Online] Available from: http://internationalphotomag.com/anna-tia-buss-i-never-realized/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Code First Girls (2021-) MOOC [Online] Available from: https://codefirstgirls.com/ and https://codefirstgirls.com/courses/moocs/ [Accessed 11/03/2022]

Hadzhiyska, V. (2022-) [Online] Available from: https://www.verahadzhiyska.com/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Hao, K. (2021) MIT Technology Review: An AI saw a cropped photo of AOC. It autocompleted her wearing a bikini. [Online] Available from: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/29/1017065/ai-image-generation-is-racist-sexist/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Hundred Heroines (26th February 2022) Women in STEAM Artist Talk: Mónica Alcázar-Duarte & Wendy McMurdo. [Online] Available from: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-in-steam-photography-talk-tickets-243629260677?keep_tld=1# and https://hundredheroines.org/event/women-in-steam-photography-talk-with-monica-alcazar-duarte-wendy-mcmurdo/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

McMurdo, W. (2022-) [Online] https://wendymcmurdo.com/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

McMurdo, W. [with] Boothroyd, S. (2011) PhotoParley: Wendy McMurdo Interview. [Online] Available from: https://photoparley.wordpress.com/tag/future/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Pelham, J. (2022-) LinkedIn Events: What is AI & How do I have a go? [Online] Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/events/whatisai-howdoihaveago6904522087541616640/ [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Pipeline Gallery (2021-) Pipeline Gallery: Listening to; Jasmine Murray. [Online] Available from: https://www.pipelinegallery.org/post/listening-to-jasmine-murray or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgd6KB6pXjA [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Transient (2020-) Residency Archives: September. [Online] Available from: https://www.transienttt.co.uk/2021/september [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Widdows, H. (2018) Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal. pg 33. Oxfordshire; Princeton University Press.

Work Show Grow (23rd February 2022) Artist Talk Salon 09: Anna-Tia Buss & Vera Hadzhiyska. [Online] Available from: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/work-show-grow-artist-talk-salon-09-tickets-261294397577?keep_tld=1# [Accessed 10/03/2022]

Post MA Musings

Can’t quite believe it’s been well over a month since I completed my MA in Photography. So what have I been up to since? The past week (20th-24th September 2021) I took part in an online residency programme via Instagram called Transient (founded by artist Lydia Griffiths), which seeks to support “…creatives who explore the relationship between Art & Technology.” (Transient, 2020-). I also made the online Shutterhub Yearbook 2021, with an image from The Mirror Hack’d (2020).

Figure 1 t.ransienttt (2021) Residency introduction

I’ve yet to produce any new work, though my research has persisted since my completion, especially on the topic of AI and deep fakes. Earlier in the month the MIT Technology Review published a piece, yet again (and unsurprisingly) on how simplistic click button deep fake generators seem to focus on the genre of deep fake pornography. Unlike the website I commented on at the beginning of my Final Major Project (my blog strangely went viral this August, around the time a Huffington Post article was published which reads remarkably similar to my blog post back in January and even mentions the now deleted medium post I found).

Figure 2 Murray, J. (2021) I wondered at the time why I was receiving so many hits from the start of August for that post, but now it makes sense

The technology Hao comments about in the MIT Technology Review appears to go one step further, in that it takes the face of the victim and swaps them into pre-filmed pornographic content. From trawling the deep fake forums it appears Hao was referencing to a site known as YAPTY, which appeared to function similarly to reface, but appeared to have focused on using adult content, though this has since been disabled.

Figure 3 Murray, J. (2019) original image from Unsocial Media_ processed through deepnude.gg

So what about deepsukebe? Well since all the mainstream journalists finally noticed it’s existence some 8 months on, it appears that to deep nude you now have to pay with free options on both their original site deepsukebe and sister site deepnude.gg (Figure 4) only offering blurred outcomes. Is it a success in limiting deep nudes? Well not really, paying members can still breach the ethical and moral grounds of AI generated technology and as one giant falls, often another quickly takes it’s place, as seen from the demise of the original deepnude site and the rise of deepsukebe earlier this year. I find it interesting that the sister site informs the user (Figure 4) what images work best, and compares its output to the original deepnude website, as this information matches the majority of the information I found on the now defunct medium article written by Nolan, a personwhodoesnotexist.

Figure 4 Deepnude.gg (2021)

On the deep fake forums I have been trawling I spotted under the 18+ sub-forum, a developer ‘kolessios’, in August mentioning they have also launched a ‘service’ called SukebeZone+ using the same AI dataset, which is interesting in itself that this development appears to have occurred after the mainstream news outlets had finally come across the site I reported on back in January. It almost seems to be the deep fake equivalent to the 00s Pirate Bay saga, in that much like deepsukebe originally, it takes standard card payments, not just cryptocurrencies.

Figure 5 Screenshot of mrdeepfakes forum (2021)

So who is ‘kolessios’? He appears to also go by the handle deep-man-yy as well as under the name of Iván Bravo Bravo, claiming to be based in Mexico, and seems to be behind several deep nude websites alongside an individual only know as deeppppp. It appears the duo originally created an application called PepeNude (presumably a reference to Pepe the frog meme) which claims to be “…an application that allows you to use the power of your CPU or GPU to transform photos of people and get free entertainment.” (PepeNude 2019)

Intriguingly a 4th August BBC article that discusses the MP Maria Miller wanting this tech banned, appears to have made contact with Bravo who suggests he is aware of the ethical and moral implications of his work, yet justifies the presence of his tech escapades by saying “However, we don’t live in a perfect world and people have always been looking for ways to do this, so it was only a matter of time before such a technology came into existence.” (Bravo, I. [in] Wakefield, J. 2021)

Figure 6 Screenshots of OpenDreamNets links (2021)

At some point in the past year or so, they rebranded to DreamTime (possibly linked to the fact PepeNude got banned from Twitter) and instead of posting under the handles of deeppppp and deep-man-yy, they appear to post under the branding of OpenDreamNet, which markets itself as offering “Decentralized applications to combat censorship” (OpenDreamNet, 2021). Much like the antics of Pirate Bay, in this time they have had at least two websites and several sub-websites that offer deepnuding, some of which like xxxpaint they pretend to not have personal dealings with on the main pages accessible on their site. Yet in hidden pages found via a search engine they admit to being responsible for it and claim that development is on hold indefinitely due to ‘moral conflicts’.

Figure 7 Screenshots of DreamTimeTech & OpenDreamNet website (2021)

Interestingly this hasn’t stopped them for continuing developments on other projects including teaming up with deepsukebe, or advising their users to not share any photos generated with their technology. They claim this is because they are against it being used to carry out malicious acts or harm, but I question if that is the true reasoning or whether they merely want to stay under the radar as long as they can. Whilst most of the mainstream media haven’t been able to contact the founders of deepsukebe or find out who they are, none of the deepnuding websites outright state who they owned by on the whois registries, however I did manage to find out who the registrar’s are (Figure 8). Deepsukebe for example appears to be under the registrar TLD Registrar Solutions an organisation based in the UK.

Figure 8 Screenshots of Who.is data (2021)

References

Figures

Figure 1 t.ransienttt (2021) Residency introduction. [Online] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUCf59Po_L0/ [Accessed 25/09/2021]

Figure 2 Murray, J. (2021) I wondered at the time why I was receiving so many hits from the start of August for that post, but now it makes sense

Figure 3 Murray, J. (2019) original image from Unsocial Media_ processed through deepnude.gg

Figure 4 Deepnude.gg (2021)

Figure 5 Screenshot of mrdeepfakes forum (2021)

Figure 6 Screenshots of OpenDreamNets links (2021)

Figure 7 Screenshots of DreamTimeTech & OpenDreamNet website (2021)

Figure 8 Screenshots of Who.is data (2021)

Bibliography

Bravo, I. [in] Wakefield, J. (2021) BBC News: MP Maria Miller wants AI ‘nudifying’ tool banned. [Online] Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57996910 [Accessed 26/09/2021]

Cook, J. (2021) The Huffington Post: A Powerful New Deepfake Tool Has Digitally Undressed Thousands Of Women. [Online] Available from: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/deepfake-tool-nudify-women_us_6112d765e4b005ed49053822?ri18n=true [Accessed 24/09/2021]

Hao, K. (2021) MIT Technology Review: A horrifying new AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click. [Online] Available from: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/13/1035449/ai-deepfake-app-face-swaps-women-into-porn/ [Accessed 23/09/2021]

Murray, J. (2021) PHO 705: Week 1 Research: AI, Deep Fakes & Censorship. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphotography.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/week-1-research-ai-deep-fakes-and-censorship/ [Accessed 24/09/2021]

Pepenude (2019-) [Online] Available from: https://notabug.org/deeppppp/pepenude [Accessed 25/09/2021]