It’s five years since the Asheville Citizen-Times ran the memorable headline: “Bear trapped in car busts out window, enters kitchen, eats muffin mix, skedaddles”. Since then, residents of the North Carolina city – population 94,500 – have become ever more used to living with black bears in their midst. There are up to 6,000 bears in the western part of North Carolina and as their natural woodland habitat is encroached upon by housing, some have adopted more urban ways of life.
The photographer Corey Arnold took this picture with a fixed camera at the back of a house where the family are used to seeing young bears share their kids’ rope swing. The picture is part of Arnold’s series Cities Gone Wild, shortlisted for a Sony world photography award. The series focuses on the obverse of the usual narrative of animal habitats destroyed by human activity, looking at those species that have adapted well to city living. A recent study of Asheville’s younger bears found that they were twice as heavy and produced their first cubs two years before their rural cousins, a result of the high-calorie diet they had learned to forage from rubbish bins.
Attacks on humans are rare and Asheville citizens are mostly “bearwise”: not putting bird feeders out – bears love nuts – and cleaning up after barbecues and picnics. The notable instances of bears entering cars or kitchens in Asheville can usually be traced to a resident habitually feeding the animals, which makes them more defensive and territorial in a particular area. The headline-making Citizen-Times bear was inadvertently trapped in a van after a woman left its doors unlocked. Once released it wandered into a neighbour’s kitchen and found the muffin mix in a drawer. Some of Asheville’s bears, a conservationist inevitably noted at the time, “are smarter than the average bear”.
Corey Arnold’s Cities Gone Wild series is shortlisted in the Sony world photography awards 2023. An exhibition of the photographs is at Somerset House, London, 14 April-1 May
Jos Avery was given a camera almost four decades ago, sparking a lifelong fascination with photography.
But last September he found a new creative outlet, one that led him to deceive thousands of people: the artificial intelligence program Midjourney, which generates wild and wonderful images from brief text instructions.
“Soon after starting with Midjourney, I became obsessed with the creative possibilities,” Mr. Avery told AFP.
Midjourney and rivals like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion generate unique pictures by mashing up a vast back catalogue of images they have been “trained” on.
Also Read | ‘Can AI replace human creativity?’ Swiss artist Jonathan O’Hear says we needn’t worry
For Mr. Avery, a 48-year-old software engineer and lawyer by training from Virginia in the United States, Midjourney was liberating.
He said it allowed him to create beautiful art without needing to tackle his own social anxieties.
“Then I started to wonder if I could make AI images that could pass for photographs,” he said.
Also Read | Artists fight AI programs that copy their styles
This led to his fateful experiment: He started an Instagram account to house his Midjourney output, without being entirely upfront about the origins of the images.
“At the beginning, I don’t think many people thought the images were photographs,” he said. “The eyes and skin were unrealistic.”
He fixed these glitches with a dose of Adobe Photoshop, eventually populating his Instagram feed with stunning and stark portraits of beautiful — but unreal — people.
More users flocked to his feed, and more of them began to think the images were genuine.
“People would ask in the comments about my camera and lens equipment,” he said.
“I’d respond with the equipment I actually use for real photos or equipment I had included as part of the prompt.”
He admits his answers were “misleading” since they suggested he had used his gear to create those specific images.
Yet he just got deeper into the deception, spending hours choosing and editing images to boost the realism and deleting earlier efforts that were more obviously AI-generated.
His follower count was rising rapidly, so the experiment was a success.
But he was struggling to maintain the facade.
“It grew far beyond my expectations,” Avery said.
“The followers and my misleading answers made me feel uneasy, and I had trouble sleeping at night.”
He eventually told the specialist website Ars Technica what he had done, added a mention of AI to his Instagram biography and started to give honest answers to his followers.
“I’ve slept a lot better since then,” he said.
Although he did get some abuse – “I had to block about 30 people” – he said the reaction overall was positive, and his Instagram account, now with almost 40,000 followers, is still growing.
These days he populates it with both real photography and clearly labelled images generated from Midjourney.
He said the AI tool has been hugely beneficial, helping him discover a love for portrait photography.
But the downside is that once again he isn’t sleeping so well – he stays up all night creating images on Midjourney.
Paris: Jos Avery was given a camera almost four decades ago, sparking a lifelong fascination with photography.
But last September he found a new creative outlet, one that led him to deceive thousands of people: the artificial intelligence program Midjourney, which generates wild and wonderful images from brief text instructions.
“Soon after starting with Midjourney, I became obsessed with the creative possibilities,” Avery told AFP.
Midjourney and rivals like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion generate unique pictures by mashing up a vast back catalogue of images they have been “trained” on.
For Avery, a 48-year-old software engineer and lawyer by training from Virginia in the United States, Midjourney was liberating.
He said it allowed him to create beautiful art without needing to tackle his own social anxieties.
“Then I started to wonder if I could make AI images that could pass for photographs,” he said.
This led to his fateful experiment: He started an Instagram account to house his Midjourney output, without being entirely upfront about the origins of the images.
“At the beginning, I don’t think many people thought the images were photographs,” he said. “The eyes and skin were unrealistic.”
He fixed these glitches with a dose of Adobe Photoshop, eventually populating his Instagram feed with stunning and stark portraits of beautiful – but unreal – people.
More users flocked to his feed, and more of them began to think the images were genuine.
“People would ask in the comments about my camera and lens equipment,” he said.
“I’d respond with the equipment I actually use for real photos or equipment I had included as part of the prompt.”
He admits his answers were “misleading” since they suggested he had used his gear to create those specific images.
Yet he just got deeper into the deception, spending hours choosing and editing images to boost the realism and deleting earlier efforts that were more obviously AI-generated.
His follower count was rising rapidly, so the experiment was a success.
But he was struggling to maintain the facade.
“It grew far beyond my expectations,” Avery said.
“The followers and my misleading answers made me feel uneasy, and I had trouble sleeping at night.”
He eventually told the specialist website Ars Technica what he had done, added a mention of AI to his Instagram biography and started to give honest answers to his followers.
“I’ve slept a lot better since then,” he said.
Although he did get some abuse – “I had to block about 30 people” – he said the reaction overall was positive, and his Instagram account, now with almost 40,000 followers, is still growing.
These days he populates it with both real photography and clearly labelled images generated from Midjourney.
He said the AI tool has been hugely beneficial, helping him discover a love for portrait photography.
But the downside is that once again he isn’t sleeping so well – he stays up all night creating images on Midjourney.
An amateur photographer who goes by the name “ibreakphotos” decided to do an experiment on his Samsung phone last month to find out how a feature called “space zoom” actually works.
The feature, first released in 2020, claims a 100x zoom rate, and Samsung used sparkling clear images of the moon in its marketing.
Ibreakphotos took his own pictures of the moon — blurry and without detail — and watched as his phone added craters and other details.
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Jos Avery said the AI tool has been hugely beneficial
Paris:
Jos Avery was given a camera almost four decades ago, sparking a lifelong fascination with photography.
But last September he found a new creative outlet, one that led him to deceive thousands of people: the artificial intelligence program Midjourney, which generates wild and wonderful images from brief text instructions.
“Soon after starting with Midjourney, I became obsessed with the creative possibilities,” Avery told AFP.
Midjourney and rivals like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion generate unique pictures by mashing up a vast back catalogue of images they have been “trained” on.
For Avery, a 48-year-old software engineer and lawyer by training from Virginia in the United States, Midjourney was liberating.
He said it allowed him to create beautiful art without needing to tackle his own social anxieties.
“Then I started to wonder if I could make AI images that could pass for photographs,” he said.
This led to his fateful experiment: He started an Instagram account to house his Midjourney output, without being entirely upfront about the origins of the images.
– ‘Misleading’ –
“At the beginning, I don’t think many people thought the images were photographs,” he said. “The eyes and skin were unrealistic.”
He fixed these glitches with a dose of Adobe Photoshop, eventually populating his Instagram feed with stunning and stark portraits of beautiful — but unreal — people.
More users flocked to his feed, and more of them began to think the images were genuine.
“People would ask in the comments about my camera and lens equipment,” he said.
“I’d respond with the equipment I actually use for real photos or equipment I had included as part of the prompt.”
He admits his answers were “misleading” since they suggested he had used his gear to create those specific images.
Yet he just got deeper into the deception, spending hours choosing and editing images to boost the realism and deleting earlier efforts that were more obviously AI-generated.
His follower count was rising rapidly, so the experiment was a success.
But he was struggling to maintain the facade.
– Losing sleep –
“It grew far beyond my expectations,” Avery said.
“The followers and my misleading answers made me feel uneasy, and I had trouble sleeping at night.”
He eventually told the specialist website Ars Technica what he had done, added a mention of AI to his Instagram biography and started to give honest answers to his followers.
“I’ve slept a lot better since then,” he said.
Although he did get some abuse — “I had to block about 30 people” — he said the reaction overall was positive, and his Instagram account, now with almost 40,000 followers, is still growing.
These days he populates it with both real photography and clearly labelled images generated from Midjourney.
He said the AI tool has been hugely beneficial, helping him discover a love for portrait photography.
But the downside is that once again he isn’t sleeping so well — he stays up all night creating images on Midjourney.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
But last September he found a new creative outlet, one that led him to deceive thousands of people: the artificial intelligence program Midjourney, which generates wild and wonderful images from brief text instructions.
“Soon after starting with Midjourney, I became obsessed with the creative possibilities,” Avery told AFP.
Midjourney and rivals like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion generate unique pictures by mashing up a vast back catalogue of images they have been “trained” on.
For Avery, a 48-year-old software engineer and lawyer by training from Virginia in the United States, Midjourney was liberating. He said it allowed him to create beautiful art without needing to tackle his own social anxieties.
“Then I started to wonder if I could make AI images that could pass for photographs,” he said.
This led to his fateful experiment: He started an Instagram account to house his Midjourney output, without being entirely upfront about the origins of the images.‘Misleading’
“At the beginning, I don’t think many people thought the images were photographs,” he said. “The eyes and skin were unrealistic.”
He fixed these glitches with a dose of Adobe Photoshop, eventually populating his Instagram feed with stunning and stark portraits of beautiful – but unreal – people.
More users flocked to his feed, and more of them began to think the images were genuine. “People would ask in the comments about my camera and lens equipment,” he said.
“I’d respond with the equipment I actually use for real photos or equipment I had included as part of the prompt.”
He admits his answers were “misleading” since they suggested he had used his gear to create those specific images.
Yet he just got deeper into the deception, spending hours choosing and editing images to boost the realism and deleting earlier efforts that were more obviously AI-generated.
His follower count was rising rapidly, so the experiment was a success. But he was struggling to maintain the facade.
Losing sleep
“It grew far beyond my expectations,” Avery said. “The followers and my misleading answers made me feel uneasy, and I had trouble sleeping at night.”
He eventually told the specialist website Ars Technica what he had done, added a mention of AI to his Instagram biography and started to give honest answers to his followers.
“I’ve slept a lot better since then,” he said.
Although he did get some abuse – “I had to block about 30 people” – he said the reaction overall was positive, and his Instagram account, now with almost 40,000 followers, is still growing.
These days he populates it with both real photography and clearly labelled images generated from Midjourney. He said the AI tool has been hugely beneficial, helping him discover a love for portrait photography.
But the downside is that once again he isn’t sleeping so well – he stays up all night creating images on Midjourney.
April 08, 2023
Guest Opinion. For too many generations, citizens of tribal nations around the country, including Cherokee Nation citizens, saw their language, their culture and their artistic expression suppressed and eroded by policies of the United States. Meanwhile, many non-Indians have profited from art based on stereotypes and misrepresentations of Native Americans.
The federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act, first passed in 1990, finally put some long-needed protections in place. It is a truth in advertising law intended to protect Indian artists and consumers. Unfortunately, the law still defines “Indian” and “Indian tribe” too broadly. Instead of reserving the label of “Indian art” to members of federally recognized tribes, current law extends that protection to state-recognized tribes, which have not passed any of the important federal safeguards against falsely claiming tribal identity.
Recently, I sent a letter urging Congress to strengthen the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act by reserving its protections to members of federally recognized tribes. I called for Congress to include these changes in the proposed ARTIST Act.
The list of fake tribes and state-recognized tribes is long. At least 10 state-recognized groups across the country make a false claim to Cherokee history and culture. These groups pose as Cherokee tribes and issue membership cards, usually for a fee. Rather than earn federal recognition through a rigorous examination of history, facts and the law, they perpetuate a fraud.
Unfortunately, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act — a law intended to protect Native artists — helps these “tribes” in their quest for legitimacy. Under the law, artists with membership in these fraudulent organizations compete alongside Cherokee citizens in selling art under the federally protected “Indian art” label.
This is an offense to our ancestors, an offense to our artists and confusing to art patrons. As Chief, I will not tolerate it. So, let’s do something about it. Let’s tell Congress that our ancestors endured too much to allow fake tribes to undermine our culture and lifeways. Let’s tell Congress that our artists, and artists in all federally recognized tribes, deserve to be respected. Let’s tell Congress that if a person is going to sell their art as Indian art, they ought to at least be an Indian.
Deputy Chief Bryan Warner and I took an oath of office to preserve and defend Cherokee sovereignty and culture, which are threatened by the countless examples of people falsely claiming Cherokee Nation citizenship and ancestry. Our oath compels us to speak up to federal leaders.
We need your help, too. Genuine Native artists across the Cherokee Nation and across the country need your help. I’m asking you to join me and Deputy Chief Warner in calling on Congress to remove non-federally recognized tribes from the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. The law must be changed to protect actual Cherokees, including thousands of Cherokee artists, artisans and craftspeople who are citizens of the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians or the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
Tribes like the Cherokee Nation — which has been continuously federally recognized since the founding of the country — and other tribes and bands recognized later under federal law are the only legitimate tribes. If groups posing as tribes under state law want the unique rights and responsibilities of Indian tribes, including protections for Indian artists, these groups should go through the rigorous process of federal recognition, just like the other 574 federally recognized tribes.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is seeking comment on the proposed ARTIST Act of 2023. Now is the time to push for changes in federal law that give Indian artists the respect and protection they deserve.
You can visit the Cherokee Nation’s Citizen Action website for a template letter showing your support for the strengthening of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. Email your letter and comments to [email protected]. The deadline to let your voice be heard is Friday, April 14.
Chuck Hoskin, Jr. is the pirncial chief of the Cherokee Nation.
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