#49 - AI Images: Shortcut or Liability?

AI-generated images are everywhere right now—and depending on who you ask, they’re either a game-changing tool or a risky shortcut.

In this episode of Over The Bull, we break down what’s actually true.

We cover the real-world pros and limitations of AI images, including where they work, where they fall apart, and why many design and sign companies are pushing back. We also get into the legal gray areas around copyright, what business owners should actually be concerned about, and how to use AI the right way without creating long-term problems.

If you’re using AI—or thinking about it—this is what you need to know before it impacts your brand, your marketing, or your bottom line.

RESOURCES:

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf

https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2023/1017.html

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/getty-images-lawsuit-against-stability-ai-explained-2023-01-18/

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/artists-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-ai-art-generators-2023-01-16/

https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use

https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service

https://creativecommons.org/2023/02/17/understanding-ai-and-copyright/

https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/laws/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-policy

https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10752

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

AI images. Is it a smart shortcut or business liability? You're going to want to stay for this episode of Over the Bull. All right, guys, so let's dive right into this. Let's talk about artificial intelligence and it generating photos, logos, and all those other things that businesses use. So AI images are one of the most overhyped and misunderstood tools in business right now. On one side, you've got people acting like it replaces designers overnight. On the other, you've got companies refusing to use it at all because of copyright fears and quality issues. And like most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. So today we're getting over the bull and breaking down what AI images actually are, where they are, where they fail, and what businesses should really be doing right now when it comes to artificial intelligence and images. Because let's face it, if you're a business owner, this isn't just a trend we're talking about here. This is something your competitors are already using, whether they understand it or not. So first of all, let's really break it down here into some simple definitions. First of all, when I say AI images, I'm talking about images created by artificial intelligence based on a text prompt. You type something like a modern logo for a plumbing company, bold, clean, blue, and gray, and the system generates an image. Think of it like this. Instead of hiring a designer to create something from scratch, you describe what you want and the computer builds it for you. Sounds pretty great, huh? I mean, what else could you want? You just talk back and forth at the computer and get the image that you need or something close to it, and you don't have to go through a uh designer, is kind of the uh the gist of what people think. Now, there are different tools out there like Mid Journey and uh I think Dolly is how you pronounce it. There's stable diffusion, but from a business standpoint, they do the same core thing. They generate images quickly, they reduce cost, and they remove the barrier of needing design skills. And that is why this is exploding right now online using artificial intelligence. So, why businesses are using artificial intelligence to generate their images? I mean, let's be honest. This is why people are jumping in. It's fast, it's cheap, and it looks good enough at first glance. If you're a small business owner, now let's face it, this is appealing. You don't have to wait, you don't have to pay thousands of dollars to get graphics, and you don't have to go back and forth with these time-consuming revisions, misconceptions, all these things that can happen when you're working with someone who is creative. You just generate it and go. And for certain use cases, this is actually okay. I mean, if we're talking social media posts, concept ideas, early stage marketing visuals, AI can absolutely help with this. There's no doubt. But here are things where we're really things are starting to break down here. Now, what looks good on the screen doesn't always work in the real world. And this is where I'm seeing a major disconnect. So let me throw out an example. Someone generates a logo with artificial intelligence. It looks sharp, it looks clean, it looks professional. Then they try to print it, scale it, put it on a sign, wrap it on a vehicle, forward it to their person who's trying to create a tangible product, and everything starts to fall apart. Now, this podcast episode is partly due to a good friend of mine who owns a sign company, and he brought me a piece of paper where sign companies are refusing to do anything with artificial intelligence-based art for these reasons. It's just cumbersome. It's a real pain to have to go through and try to replicate something that can't be replicatable in the real world. If replicatable is a real word, I don't know, but I think you get the point. So let's talk about some things here, real quick. First of all, AI images are generally what we call raster images. Now, that just means they're made up of pixels. Pixels are the smallest points that are used to make up an image. And forever, raster images are known for not being scalable without losing quality. Now, there are some factors that go into this. There are some really good tools out. Like, for example, uh, Google has a product out there called uh Topaz uh Gigapixel, and it can like basically fake the information when you try to blow it up. So if you have a raster image, if you can imagine the bigger it gets, the fuzzier it gets, because those pixels are spread further and further apart, and then the system's doing its best to try to make it where it where it comes in clear, but normally it doesn't do very good. So then you have these tools like uh Gigapixel that can kind of help fill in the gaps and kind of help with some of the clarity issues, but again, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than what we used to have to work with in the past. So here's the thing what businesses actually need, especially for signage and branding and print, is typically they want what's known as vector files. Now, vector files can be scaled literally to any size. They have really clean edges, and they're adaptable to any size or format. So when it comes to producing things, vector files are incredibly helpful. Now, vectors are usually used for things like logos and graphics and things like that, but obviously photos are all raster-based, and then they have to be manipulated to the best of uh uh technology can do in order to allow them to remain crisp. Now, AI does not give you vector-based images, at least not in a reliable production-ready way. It's just not here right now. So what happens? Well, number one, you or the person that you're hiring to use it for a project has to rebuild it. That means that if you've got your mindset on what you produce through AI, but it physically cannot be produced by a sign company or a print company or something like that, then there's going to be some tension because you provide them with what you want it to look like exactly, but that cannot be replicated 100% that way, and it has to be rebuilt. And so now you have the issue of, well, who's going to pay for that time? Or the worst problem is you're going to end up with something that looks cheap in real life. Now, what that means is blurry images, it doesn't reproduce very well. It's just not going to be a high-end product on what you see on your computer screen when it was originally generated. And see, this is where the sign companies are beginning to push back. And let's get real here, they're not wrong. If you send a complicated piece of artwork, and then they have to replicate that complicated piece of artwork, and they know they need to produce something that you're going to like, they have to put a lot of work into that. Now, it gets worse, guys. So we also have what's known as this little thing called a copyright. And so there is a copyright, and there's some legal reality. And now this is not the hype stuff, because you know, you can go to social media and people are always trying to get your attention by exaggerating things and trying to make something a lot uh worse or more uh sensationalistic than it really is. But let's talk about this elephant in the room, and this elephant's name is called copyright, because this elephant is where a lot of fear and confusion comes into the equation. Okay, so here's the reality. Right now, AI generated images are in a legal gray area. Now, in the US, if something is created entirely by artificial intelligence, it generally cannot be copyrighted. Now, what does this mean for you? It means you can use that image, but you don't fully own it in the traditional sense. Now, is that a problem? Well, it really depends on how you're going to use it. So we have our risk categories. Low risk use would be social media, blog content, ads. You're probably okay with these because they're more or less like throwaway graphics. Now, we could go onto a side road and say, does it fit your branding standards? Or is it confusing and it just looks good? Now that that's a whole other side road I'm not going to get in today, but everything you produce for your business should fit within the confines of what your branding is. So put that in a side note there, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit trail today. So some higher risk use would be logos, trademarks, or core branding. This is where things are getting pretty shaky when it comes to the copyright issue. Because now you're building your identity on something that may or may not be legally protected, may be similar to something else that exists and may not hold up long term. Okay, now there's a bigger issue. These AI systems were trained on massive amounts of existing content. So think about it. They had to go see something, or it had to it had to to to basically aggregate something. And so where did they get that information? Well, some of it includes real artist work, real photography, and real designs. And lawsuits are already happening around this. So again, you're not going to get sued tomorrow for using an AI image, to the best of my knowledge, but this space is not fully settled. So what should you do as a business? Where does it leave you? Do you use artificial intelligence? Do you completely avoid artificial intelligence when it comes to using images? Now, the answer is use it. But use it correctly. So I believe this is the smart approach. If you're going to use artificial intelligence, use AI for ideas, concepts, direction, inspiration absolutely perfectly fine. Refine it with a professional. Have it rebuilt properly, vectorize it where it needs to be vectorized, and adjust it for real world use. Now, produce it correctly. Number three is the produce it correctly step, which is basically print ready, scalable, and consistent across platforms. So AI should be the starting point, not the final product. Now, this is not fun, is it? Because now that image that you may be sending to your sign company or using for your logo, or someone's just giving prompts into an uh an AI system, now you kind of see what's going on here. You can't just run with it, and then if you do, then there's going to be those natural repercussions that could be on the horizon. Now, that's the difference between looking like a business and this is and actually operating like one, for lack of a better word. Uh, because that's what you're seeing more of. Now, if you look at the um the larger scope of this thing, you know, um when search engines and different different even you know, AI, I refer to those even as a you know, obviously a type of search engine, it's just a different style, more or less. It's not a sentient being. And um anyway, I talked about the idea of sentiency in a previous podcast, but but the idea is AI uh our search engines really want to have real human created content. Okay, so let's talk about some bigger truths here. Um here's the part nobody's really saying right now. Artificial intelligence is not replacing designers. Okay, listen to me here. It's not replacing designers, uh, it's exposing who actually understands production and all the factors that go into it that make the world go round and round. And I believe this is a big contributor also to EEAT principles ultimately. I I believe that AI uh uh that uh human authentic content and human uh created imageries, I think are are still the gold standard, and I think they feed it, and I think that's why we see success that we do online because we focus on real human-generated content. And let's face it, anyone can generate an image. Very few people understand how it scales, how it prints, how it performs across different mediums, how it's going to um meet the goals of your business, how to implement it, what factors go into it, and it's way beyond does it look good? Is this something that I like? Um, you know, the guy I was telling you about today, he he received an AI image and it generated it, but all the important stuff was at the bottom of the vehicle. You see, that's wrong because there are key spots on a vehicle when you're doing design work that are the most important to put certain things. And so if you're having someone just put in a bunch of text prompts to generate something that's not only not going to work, but also it doesn't even consider the hot spots that key information should be on on a vehicle, for example. Well, the war is lost. It doesn't matter how good it looks. And these are things that humans just know. And so this is where the value still lives. I don't see it going anywhere. I could be wrong. I mean, the evolution of the internet is insanely fast right now. And the services we're offering, as I mentioned, you know, uh a podcast a few episodes ago was uh, you know, 2025 might as well be like 1825 because of how fast things are moving. But right now, this is the real world in which we live. So if you're a business owner, here's the bottom line. AI images are not your enemy, but they're also not the shortcut people think that they are. Use them for speed, use them for ideas. But when it comes to your brand, your signage, your real world presence, make sure it's built the right way using human intelligence. I had a I went to go see a guy the other day and I kind of stole his concept. He said uh he owns a coffee shop and he goes, uh, we use um HI. And I was like, H I, what is that? And he goes, human intelligence. So uh human intelligence is still in vogue, guys. Because at the end of the day, looking good on a screen is easy. Holding up in the real world, that's what actually matters. And this is why you're seeing things where businesses are using AI not just in images, but I mean they're agencies, individuals, they think that they found the holy grail using AI to create these blog articles and all this stuff. And I'm telling you, I'm seeing these implode. I am seeing these businesses implode. And it's because they're just creating this information in a wholesale fashion, and they're not human touching it, human modifying it, because it's so much quicker, easier, and cheaper just to throw it against the wall using artificial intelligence and then moving on. So this is like a real rub here. I mean, here we have potential legal issues, we have copyright issues, we have reproduction issues, we have what could be affecting EEAT principles in the future. We have disconnects with your customers just because you think it looks good doesn't mean it's going to work good. This is a rubber meets the road issue here. Uh, in other cases, it's maybe a soft implosion in some places and a hard implosion in others. This is why I want you to, you know, keep staying tuned with us because I'm doing my best to educate um business owners as they move through this. Because remember, agencies are just like any other business. Uh, you find them where they can shortcut it and do all the things to make it look good, they're gonna do that. Uh, but the problem is it's not going to be effective. Now, I want to conclude by reading some uh some of this document that I uh received from my friend today. Now I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit of it because I don't want to uh come in here and you know take advantage of uh you know someone's content or or breach any you know situations. Uh but basically it says to maintain uh the highest quality resolution and legal safety of what they produce. Um this company does not accept files generated by artificial intelligence tools, including but not limited to mid-journey, stable diffusion, all these others. Uh all artwork submitted for print must be created, designed, or licensed by the customer. Any artwork suspected of being artificially intelligence generated will be rejected and the order will be canceled. We require original high-resolution vector or raster files, and they specify they need to be created by human beings. So if you really think about it, this sign company is going to reject work, money that comes in that they can make money off of, because one, it's going to increase their overhead for production. They're concerned about the legalities, and the lists go on and on. Now, of course, you could you could have a release, and there's other things that different sign companies can do, but you can kind of see where these lines are being drawn at when it comes to these issues and how serious it is. And uh so when it comes to you producing this content uh for your business, there's so much that goes into it that you really need to have a good professional. Of course, use it for all the uh, you know, the comps and the easy stuff and maybe the lightweight stuff, like you know, the throwaway items. You know, you could probably get away with it in a lot of those cases. But remember, this is kind of where we stand right now, according to everything that I'm seeing across the um the web right now. Now, I am not giving legal advice. Okay, I want to be clear about that. Laws around artificial intelligence and copyright are still evolving. And if you're making major decisions around branding or intellectual property, you should consult a qualified attorney. What I talked about today is practical business guidance based on what I'm seeing in the real world. And unfortunately, it's not the most fun subject in the world, but it's the reality and it's the over-the-bull version of what's going on in the world. And uh so uh anyway, hope this helps you out and hope it makes you better equipped to make better decisions for your business and always choose the path that is a little harder than the rest of them. I mean, you know it as well as I do. If you run a business, you're getting there because you work harder. Uh, you also work smarter, uh, but you know, the easy way out's often not the best way out. And the thing is, is that in the world of marketing, design, and creativity, the easy way is definitely not the best way. And that's even fully supported by the big boys in the world today. So, guys, take care of yourself. Thank you so much for tuning in to Over the Bull. Until next time, I look forward to uh seeing you. And thanks again. I want to close by by again saying thank you so much for uh for sharing our podcast out, and uh, we're just seeing some nice growth from it, and it's exciting to see that you know we can make a difference and help people out. And uh you've just been incredible about doing that. So I just want to thank you again until next time.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you by Integris Design, a full service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.