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Perhaps you've seen that, as I read it, AI variants and alterations of astroimages will be banned from Astrobin: "Posting artistic renders of made-up galaxies/nebulae/planets etc (this include AI generated content)." I, for one, do not appreciate this restriction and its unspoken judgement that art is not welcomed. I pay for a premium subscription and have been a member for many years. But this over-bearing restriction will be the end of any participation by me in Astrobin if this restriction is as it seems. Is anyone aware of why this ban on AI art has been implemented? I have written an email to Salvatore requesting a fuller explanation and will report the outcome. Alex Woronow |
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Hi Alex, I already replied to you privately, but since you didn't wait for my reply, I will repeat myself here for the benefit of others. You misunderstand. You missed the part where I refer to made-up objects. For instance:  (not a real galaxy) A couple of lines below the part you quoted, the terms of service state: The following things are allowed: Just like you, I think that it's your images, you pay to host them here, and you will process them just as you please. As long as it's a real celestial object, that is. I hope this is sufficient clarification. If you need more, please let me know which part is not clear or not comprehensive. Thanks! |
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Thanks for the clarification. The part in parentheses seemed to amplify the restriction in the first part of the sentence. I am satisfied that Astrobin remains a place for me and other art-wise image processors. Alex |
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Yeah the key is in the difference between "AI generated content" and "AI enhanced content". AstroBin only bans content that is completely generated by AI, and not a real celestial object. Same for non AI art that depicts imaginary space objects, such as paintings of imaginary galaxies / nebulae / etc. This Reddit post shows the results of an AI trained on AstroBin images (amongst others) to generate a completely made-up nebula: https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/mge6lf/this_nebula_does_not_exist_made_with_styleganv2/ More details in the comments on Reddit. But basically what I don't want on AstroBin is the obscenely unrealistic computer renders of space objects that you see reposted on Instagrams and other places with caption like "Like this post if you like space!!!!111!!" Example:  You understand why this doesn't belong on AstroBin. |
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It's interesting to note that Starnet ++ (for star removal) would be an example of AI that a lot of use in processing astroimages. So good thing that's allowed!  |
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| Is not removing all stars from image "made up", no stars not represent reality in any part of sky I ever see. |
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Sigga: It's not made up. It's a real picture of a real object, that has been altered. And let's not get philosophical with the ship of Theseus, it's really quite basic common sense  |
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Salvatore Iovene:Sigga: I not sure your analogy stands up Salvatore. But anyway I just asking, not have agenda. |
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I see the debate, but I am more on the AI/artistic side of the discussion. Clearly you are saying that AI is OK in Starnet or Topaz to process real images... heck half of PixInsight could be considered AI... That being said I do support Alex's perspective since art for art's sake will set standards of how we process regular images in the future... why not just a separate category like Equipment is a category.... |
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That being said I do support Alex's perspective since art for art's sake will set standards of how we process regular images in the future... why not just a separate category like Equipment is a category.... Because AstroBin is a website for astrophotography, not for abstract space art. Art representing real objects (e.g. an oil painting of the Orion nebula) is still allowed. By the way, folks, these rules are not new. They are new in writing, but they've always been the rules in my mind, and in 10 years of AstroBin I never had to delete an image because of these "new" rules. |
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It's a hard topic. In fact, I think all our works from this hobby are somewhere in the middle of "astrophotography" and "abstract space art", some are closer to point A and some are closer to point B. The post-processing we are doing is actually abstracting and altering the data to make the subject more pronounced and prettier, isn't it? "Common sense" is the keyword here. |
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Closer to point B might be J.P.M's 3D animations, yeah? And I had forgotten about the AI in the Topaz stuff. There's going to be more an more AI in processing tools. |
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| No, no, it's not the sin of AI tools. Only with PixInsight or any "traditional" processing tools, the stuff could be made out of nowhere - The same thing as "It's not the camera, it's the mind behind it." |
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| I thought Salvatore's guidelines were spot on. The restrictions are effective to limit (real data-free) unfettered artistic work that would completely spam the service.Reproducible AI enhancement methods should be fine. However without knowing the training data the use of Topaz AI leads to non-reproducible processing of images. Topaz are constantly updating their models (training data). StarNet does not have this problem because there is one set of training data (*_starnet_weights.pb) that has been used for a few years now; so the result I got last year I get today if I rerun the data. So I'm hoping reproducible AI enhancing methods are implemented in PixInsight one day. |
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Alex, Clearly you misunderstood Salvatore, if anything he gave me the impression during the debate that he is too liberal, not at all too restrictive. No one during the debate talked about banning art, and most of your images are clearly artistic. The debate was not about banning, but about ethics and transparency : revealing that you used AI while processing your image. The traditional softwares we use are not AI. Conflating everything together as "AI" does not make any sense. Pretty soon people will argue that Registaxx was using AI and Topaz is not an inovation. The unfinished debate (too bad it slipped again towards the award Astrobin system) was about people artificially enhancing their image, with unreal and beyond their system details, while hiding the fact that they are the result of AI and presenting the image as any other classical astrophotography. That's gaining an advantage and deluding the viewer (and themselves), while being dishonest about what part comes from their equipement and what part is artificially produced. Especially when no one thinks their images are "artistic" in the same sense yours are. Starnet has been pointed out as a community accepted AI and as a precedent for therefore allowing liberal (and hidden?) use of all present or future AI. Starnet is simply a tool for extracting stars, with the advantage of sometimes being more performant and more complete than manual star extracting tools. Sometimes it's worse. Anyway, it does not produce any new details that increase the resolution or make the image look better. If anything it makes the image lose details, introduces artifacts where bright structures are mistaken as stars and looks grainier. No one can be fooled that a starless image (with all those grey spots) is the real product of your equipement. So no, Starnet does not bring an advantage in the same sense Topaz does. Your images and authentic artistic productions are pretty safe. We are not safe from better than reality images hidden under the umbrella "hey, it's just art". All best Bogdan |
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@Min Xie I think all our works from this hobby are somewhere in the middle of "astrophotography" and "abstract space art", some are closer to point A and some are closer to point B. @Glenn C Newell Closer to point B might be J.P.M's 3D animations, yeah? No, not at all. They are 3D animations of real celestial objects. It should be pretty clear by now that the only thing that is not admissible on AstroBin is pictures of completely fictional objects. Let me post another few examples:     Should be quite clear, no? |
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Salvatore Iovene: Thanks for sharing that example. I had never seen an AI-created DSO that used actual amateur astrophotography for it's training model. I definitely see the influence of many of the most-popular nebulae we amateur astrophotographers capture in there. |
