Generative Fill : An Opinion

Hi folks. Many of the people that I engage with love generative fill. They believe that it improves their work.

I take a contrary position. Adobe products have done amazing work with fill tools for years, with content aware fill being a brilliant solution to make alterations to your work with your work. Generative Fill is not an advantage to anyone concerned with personal creativity. It’s a sham, a scam and a big lie.

Did You Get That?

Alterations made at your choice to your work with your work. That makes it your work.

Generative Fill Means Your Work Isn’t Actually Your Work

Adobe, to their credit realizes this and modifies the file to indicate that AI was used to construct the final image. The incredible teacher at PixImperfect has already explained how users can get rid of those modifications, although I would hazard a guess that any person with reasonable observation skills can smell out fakery when needed.

You may not care that the use of these tools negates your copyright to your work. Your choice. I care, and thus will not use it, despite it getting in my face every time that I open an image.

What’s The Downside?

If you cannot copyright your work, your ability to protect it and to sell it is diminished. Let’s suppose that you sell stock photography. No copyright? Whoops. Let’s suppose that you use Adobe Stock. They use your work to feed their AI engine without recognition or compensation, not even utterly pointless “exposure” which is the fourth in the lineup of great lies. Since you cannot assert that it’s your work, it has less monetary value.

“I Am Not Trying to Make Money”

Again your choice, but your portfolio will still contain work that you do not have title to. Basically a scam. You didn’t actually make the final work. You can still like the results. You can put them on social media and share them, and if you are honest say it’s not all your work, or you can pretend it is. You can make a print and hang it in your home, but if you make a print and offer it for sale, you have no title and better not sign the work as if it’s yours, or apply your watermark.

How Is This Different From Sky Replacements or Composites Using Other Images?

The sky replacement images are either licensed from the original artist and resold as stock, or offered under a Creative Commons license. They are built to be used in this manner. If you use pieces of another’s work in your composite, you cannot claim it as your own work, you are morally obligated to declare that external works were used and where they came from. Yeah, I get that most people don’t but that does not make it right.

My Alternative

Be the artist yourself. If you do not like a sky in your image, go out and build a library of skies that are your own. If you want to make composites, do so with pieces of your own work. Learn how to see and actually MAKE your own images or videos, don’t use someone or something else’s work and claim it as your own.

I saw today someone griping about something or other in Photoshop but then saying he could not really complain because Adobe gave us Generative Fill. This is horseshit. You pay for Generative Fill through your subscription and don’t have it if you do not pay for it. Moreover Adobe knows that most users are too lazy to actually do the work themselves and have come up with a poorly documented credit system where use of AI tools will consume credits at an undefined rate and when they run out, you will have to buy more, or accept that the response from Adobe’s computers will be of low priority. For those who have tried any of the unpaid options for AI image generation, you’ve already figured out that if you want any kind of acceptable response time, you have to pay for it. This is perfectly fair, there is no such thing as a free lunch, but Adobe did not give you anything. They have created a new product that you can buy that means your work is no longer your work if you use the new product.

Thanks for reading. Please post a comment or send in a question. If you shop at B&H Photo Video, please use the link on our main page as it pays us a small commission and costs you nothing. Until next time, peace.