Blackline Dispatch No. 008
Byline: Dalton Barron (with a nod to Sterling Graves)
The city used to run on film and sweat. A photographer’s fingers were always stained—developer, ink, sometimes blood if you counted the hustle. But the rules were simple: If you were any good, you made work that others wanted to steal. That’s what the old timers said—back when thieves had faces, and shadows fell where you expected.
That was before the new thieves—the ones with no faces, just endless, hungry code and the ghostlight of a trillion stolen pixels. You can’t see them coming. Generative AI, they call it. Makes an image out of the bones of every shot you ever let loose on the web. You wake up one morning and the photograph you sweated over has been strip-mined, chopped up, spat out in a thousand new forms. Nobody asks. Nobody thanks. Nobody pays.
I read the article again under the guttering desk lamp, the rain ticking against the window. It’s the same story from a hundred voices: Photographers, editors, CEOs, all hands wrung and eyes on the ground. The corporations give their statements—Adobe, Capture One. They talk about “authenticity initiatives” and “standing with photographers.” It’s the kind of talk you hear in City Hall when the budget’s gone missing and nobody wants to say who took it. Platitudes dressed up like promises, but the house always wins.
Nobody has answers. The platforms say “protect your work,” but every protection’s just another broken lock. AI will break it, faster every year. Put it on your own site, they say—like it’s not already out there, already chewed up by machines that don’t sleep.
I call up a few old pros—contract killers, every one. “Put it in the contract,” one says. “Sue the bastards,” says another. But sue who, exactly? You can’t serve a subpoena to a neural net.
A few still try to fight—services like PhotoClaim, Pixsy. Some talk about Nightshade, something that poisons the well for the image thieves. But it’s trench warfare, and the enemy’s everywhere and nowhere. Maybe you print your portfolio, hide it in a drawer, only show it to clients who come in from the rain. But who has that kind of time? The world moves too fast.
And underneath it all, the quiet question: Why don’t we fight together? Musicians have unions. The movies have studios. Photographers? Too proud. Too solitary. We were always lone wolves, prowling the city with nothing but a camera and a bad idea. Maybe that’s why it’s ending like this—not with a bang, but with a shrug.
So the future? It’s out there, in the wet streets, waiting for the next shot, the next theft, the next miracle. Maybe the honest image is dying. Maybe it’s just getting harder to find. But as long as there’s a camera and a little bit of soul left, someone will try. Someone will fail. And someone—maybe, just maybe—will make something worth stealing.
Filed Under:
Photography industry, AI image theft, generative AI, copyright, digital authenticity, creative unions, photographer rights, image protection