I’ve had this person submitted to me many times over the years but it always seems to hit whenever I’m swamped with work or just don’t have the time to really dig into it.
I have a boatload of submissions to work on and I guess we’re starting here.
Brianna sure likes her watermark. Shame it’s on photos she didn’t create but she sure acts like she did. They are mostly stock images but as you’ll see you’d never know it if reading her post about it. Most of these are also on her Instagram but I only showed the top one there.
You know how much I love fake stories and Brianna does too! Alexa + Eli huh?? The original photographer is Russian so I’m going to guess that they didn’t hail from Seattle…
Reminder if you’ve somehow missed it but I’ve now started a Substack and have been writing a bi-weekly newsletter about Photo Stealers, industry news and copyright stuff.
All I want to do is read Iron Flame but I need to get a Substack out and I had a ton of submissions this weekend so I figure I’ll be ‘good’ and do a bit of work before my engagement session and savor Iron Flame instead of burning through it quickly.
With all that being said…
This is a whole ass mess.
I’d say the fast majority of photos in the Real Estate and Food Gallery are stock photos. I couldn’t find original photographers and I didn’t feel like dealing with the mess of trying to find the unlikely original sources. Every single one I clicked was out there on the internet though – often in dozens of places.
So what is below is what I could find the source for in the portrait galleries. All but one photo that I searched in that gallery had a source elsewhere so if it isn’t here and isn’t the one obvious photo, it’s also probably stock or stolen so often it’s hard to find an original source.
There’s more but I have 6K images to edit from two weddings this weekend soooo here you go… I’d wager that most of her boudoir ads aren’t using images she took.
Update 10/17/23 – Kelli deleted her Facebook Page and created two new ones. It appears she also deleted her Instagram page. There is an old one that seems inactive.
This post is about misrepresentation by an industry leader who claims this is her art and offers classes and assets based on AI renderings she has appeared to have created with Midjourney.
Whether or not it is hers is currently a debate in the court system but the current ruling is that artwork generated by artificial intelligence is not eligible for copyright. There is some debate if entering the prompt is enough to give the “human input” part that makes it copyrightable and basically it seems to all depend on what court you land in but the Supreme Court seems to be upholding the idea it isn’t copyrightable.
On top of the above, Meg is using a platform that had faced criticism (even has a class action lawsuit) for stealing copyrighted works of art. Note: the legalese bascially says you can use these creations as you wish *but* you do not have a copyright to them and basically anyone with an account can download them from your gallery.
I wasn’t sure if it was AI so I tried to see how easy it would be to create some of these images and sure enough, it was not hard to get close enough to be able to write the post with some confidence that she was using AI as some part of her process. Especially when you looked at the art and saw some of the obvious AI tells like additional fingers.
Meg though posted a few times throughout the day saying it was HER art and outright denying AI by the end of the day saying it was an action and everything she’s learned.
Here’s some of the rebuttals against the allegations regarding AI:
I don’t think this image is AI created and it is an action but it doesn’t look like the other styles she’s been posting and what my substack was about.
Comments on various posts including the alleged AI artwork:
Throughout the day I had been sent various things behind the scenes that were eye opening but none so much as this. NOTE: to view Meg’s profile you have to have an account with midjourney!
That’s just a small amount of Meg’s profile. Update on 9/27 in the evening – she has since made her work private and her username has changed. I downloaded everything she created though since I had a hunch she’d do this (reminder, this is legal per midjourney’s TOS).
Here’s a crash course in what the sources below that I’ll show you will look like.
At first I was curious if it was just a coincidence so I scrolled a bit and within a second or two I found this post on “megbitton’s” profile:
If you are unfamiliar with the platform what this is is showing the user “megbitton” and the artwork she got “upsized” from the grid of 4 images she got after using the prompt, “Whimsical painted watercolor illustrated posed portrait head and shoulders image of a beautiful 6 year old girl with shiny beautiful long brown hair blue eyes posed with hands against face head tilted to the side couture lace pastel pink silk dress high neck turtleneck carolina hererra meg bitton”
She chose to upsize the 4th option (U4 if you’ve done this on the app).
At the bottom of each link you can click the “parent” to get the original grid for the upsized artwork Meg used.
Note that the date it was uploaded predates my post on 9/25.
Does this look familiar to you?
When I saw that match I decided sleep is for suckers and got to work.
I don’t have time to resource every bit and bob that Meg has posted that is “NOT AI” but I think I have enough to make my case solidly now that she is using AI in part or in whole depending on the piece to create her new “medium” in photography.
She also has used many of these pieces created in midjourney to sell on her assets page. I am not a lawyer so I can’t tell you if it’s legal or not but I thought it was worth noting.
Note again that the links I’m sharing will only work if you are a member of midjourney. Since most aren’t members, I’m adding a screencapture of the image on Meg’s profile after the link.
This isn’t how I wanted to start off my Monday but here we are. Stolen images, stock images, plagiarism, “inspiration”… where my bingo card??
If you know of the source of any images I couldn’t find the original creator for let me know.
Also, in case you weren’t aware, I’ve started a substack! Each week I have one free post, one paid post talking about various things related to Photo Stealers, photography and beyond. Hit subscribe and share with anyone you’d think enjoy!
This wall of shame is dedicated to photographers that feel that it's okay to steal others' work and post it as their own. Oh I'm sorry, it's okay to let their "web designer" do it.
