You’re in your content meeting and the company is discussing adding stock photos to each blog post. Unfortunately there’s no budget for a license, so your boss is asking if you know where to get good free stock photos. You suggest AI model Midjourney as a potential solution.

I’m wondering if AI is good enough?
Have they really come along by enough to be a replacement for stock photos?
Why don’t you check out midjourney and see what we can get to.

Searching for the perfect stock photo can be a pain. Free stock photo sites like Unsplash are great, but they may not always have the exact photo you need, or the photos might be too generic and used by everyone. But what if you could create your own stock photos with AI?

Using AI to create your own stock photos is a great way to make sure you have the perfect photo for your blog or website. With AI, you can create photos that are unique and that nobody else has. It’s also much quicker than searching for stock photos and licensing them.

To get started, you’ll need to find a photo that’s similar to what you’re looking for on a stock photo site. For example, if you’re looking for a photo of people in a business meeting, you can search for that on Unsplash. Once you’ve found the photo you like, you’ll need to write a prompt for the AI. This should include the basics of the photo you’re looking for, like the number of people, what they’re doing, and the type of camera you want to use.

Once you’ve written your prompt, you can then use an AI-driven photo editing tool to create your own stock photo. These tools allow you to change the photo’s elements, such as color, saturation, and brightness, until you get the perfect photo. You can also add effects and filters to make the photo more unique.

Another way to create your own stock photos with AI is to “scrape” a photo from a stock photo site. This means you’ll copy the photo’s URL and use it as the base image for your AI-generated photo. This can be a bit of a grey area as it’s not clear if this is allowed or not. It’s best to use your good judgment when scraping photos and make sure you modify the photo enough to make it your own.

Once you’ve created your own stock photo with AI, you can use it on your blog or website without worrying about attribution or licensing. You also don’t need to worry about using a stock photo that’s too generic or seen everywhere.

Creating your own stock photos with AI is a great way to make sure you have unique photos for your blog or website. It’s also much faster than searching for stock photos and licensing them. Just remember to use your good judgment when scraping photos and be sure to make the photos your own so you don’t infringe on someone else’s copyright. With AI, you can make stock photos that are unique and perfect for your needs.

Free Stock Photos

0:01 Okay, this is how to make your own AI stock photos. So stock photos super important because you know, we don't have time to go out and take photos of everything.
0:12 You know, some of the things that we want you know, we won't be able to go and, and capture, right?
0:16 So that's why these stock photo sites exist. And I think for most use cases, they're really good. Especially have a license, right?
0:24 So this is Unsplash. The really cool thing about Unsplash is that it's free, right? And they have a really permissive license.
0:33 But they have been bought by iStock photos and you know, now they have Unsplash Plus and they have these banner ads.
0:40 And you don't always get like, even what you want, right? Like have such for people in a business meeting. She's not in a meeting.
0:47 This isn't the business meeting I was suggesting, right? Like, this one looks good, but it's un splash. Plus she's not with other people.
0:54 Like, maybe this kind of like, that looks like really creepy and weird. This doesn't look realistic. So, I mean, it's a bit of a pain to find the right type of image.
1:06 And you know, you, you even when you do find it you find, you end up with like the same picture that everyone gets, right?
1:14 So if I search for chart I, I'm, I've seen so many blog posts with this image, right? <laugh> and you know, this image, right?
1:24 This is like really popular. And, and you just kind of recognize these from some of your favorite blogs, I bet.
1:30 Cool. So now what if you wanna make your own stock photos with ai? Well the way you would do that let's find one of the images here.
1:41 So like, this one's kind of the closest to what we wanted. And I'm gonna click in here. You can see the artist.
1:48 So it has like a lot of views, right? It's free to use under an unpled license. So this is where I would say I'm not a lawyer, right?
1:57 Like you need to kind of figure out what your own risk profile is. But from my understanding all photos can be downloaded and used for free for commercial and non-commercial purposes, no permission needed, although they do prefer attribution.
2:14 They cannot be sold without significant modification. So I would say, you know, kind of using like retraining and making a new photo that looks similar.
2:24 But using AI is a significant modification. Although I wouldn't do this, right? Like, I wouldn't create like your own competitor to Unsplash.
2:33 That probably wouldn't be cool. And I think in general, you could probably give attribution to the artist, right? Like they deserve it.
2:41 So I, I'm gonna show you how to kind of replicate the same look and, and feel but with, but you know, kind of make it look your own and and then you own the license, right?
2:52 Like, you don't have to worry about you know like attribution necessarily. If you, if, if you do, do make it considerably different and modify it with your prompt but also, you know, it looks unique.
3:06 Your blog doesn't have that same problem of like everyone using the same stock photo. Cool. So few things that I want to point out.
3:14 So one is you want to really see what the meta description of the images. So I just wrote, clicked, and go, went to inspect.
3:21 And then, so this is the image. And then just gonna click in here. Just gonna drag this across. Oh, back up.
3:35 Okay, let's drag this across. So that there's the image. Let's write, click inspect again. Okay, this is the image. And here we go.
3:45 So here's the alt tag. So we click in here, it's four people watching something on a MacBook, right? So I'm gonna put in here, imagine, and then the prompt four people watching a white MacBook on top of a glass top table.
4:03 So that's gonna generate it. You can actually just say like, what you want, right? I want a stock photo of people in a business meeting.
4:10 And it does like a pretty decent job of that anyway, although that looks a bit gloomy. So that all that is generating.
4:17 The other thing I'm gonna pull out here is the camera. So I think like, that's kind of useful. That's quite interesting.
4:25 There's other metadata sometimes. So you know, you can just press up and then you say oh in the prompt the camera.
4:37 And then you could say like yeah, you actually wanted it to be a business meeting of four people. And then you want it to be like a stock photo.
4:49 Cool. So you know, we're just kind of using this to, to get into like the baseline and kind of figure this out.
4:56 You know, not, not all these are great, right? But we're getting a little bit closer. This one looks like more interesting, but the faces are a little bit weird and this one's facing away, so that doesn't make any sense.
5:09 Cool. Here we go. This is getting better because we caught it a stock photo. It's looking a lot more interesting.
5:16 So that seems to be helpful. And we also put in the camera here, so I think it'll kind of change the style.
5:21 Like we wouldn't have some of these like, black and white things or like this. Here we go. So look at that.
5:27 That is much better. Okay, so like, this is almost there. Some of the faces are a bit messed up. This is pretty good.
5:34 You know, and they they look very happy. So maybe we'll try one more thing here, which is oh, cancel. So let's, instead, let's say I'm gonna do this prompt but then we're just gonna do a negative prompt, we're you say No unhappy.
6:00 So that's gonna make them happy. Yeah, you could also just say happy, but, but like you know I think, I think there's you know, different ways you can mess around with this.
6:11 So that's, that's well, that's generating there's also another way you can kind of do this. And I think this is like a little bit dicier but you know, I'll show you anyway because you know, it's really up for you to decide.
6:28 So I'm, I'm just gonna paste in. Lemme see. So if you copy image address, see if this works, and pacing the prompt, and then you can say, got a photo of business meeting of four people, blah, blah, blah.
6:52 Okay? And then what this is gonna do is it's going to use that image as the base image. So again, you are transforming it.
7:01 I think this is a little bit like if I was the artist, I'd be a little bit p****d off if I found someone's doing this unless like the image looked really different.
7:09 So I think that's the key is like, start with the alt text, start with the image maybe, but you know, make it look your own, right?
7:16 Like it needs to be something that's your own. You can kind of mimic the look and feel and the style.
7:20 But you can see here, I mean, this didn't work very well. That's kind of weird, <laugh>. So I guess getting rid of unhappy doesn't work as well.
7:30 Okay, here we go. So this is a lot better. This is like much more we wanted so you know, we're getting a little bit closer.
7:39 But but, you know, it doesn't take a long time to do this. Sometimes it's quicker than, you know, than all the searching through stock photos or, you know, it's definitely quicker than searching for, you know, like licensing and, and like, you, you just pay once for a mid journey
7:54 a month rather than paying a huge amount of money for licensing bunch of photos again, you know, this is a gray area.
8:02 Like this isn't, you know, there's no rules around this that anyone's figured out yet. So I would say use your good judgment.
8:10 Don't just blindly copy someone else's photo like this. You know, this isn't actually what, what I wanted anyway. I wanted something more like this, right?
8:19 Cool. Okay. Hopefully you know, use your good judgment and and if you do, then you have really unique, interesting looking stock photos that nobody else has.
8:29 And once you develop a style then you can kind of keep using that prompt again and again. So really, really helpful.

What is the goal of retraining an AI to generate stock photos?

Describe the process of using AI to generate stock photos.

What do we recommend starting with when generating an AI stock photo?

What should you be aware of with regards to copyright when using AI to generate stock photos?

What are the benefits of using AI to generate stock photos?

Getting unique, high quality stock photos without paying tonnes of license fees has always been a pain, but that problem just got solved with AI.

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