drstreit

Affinity needs to act here. Exactly how, they need to decide, but they need to do something.
Whether it's partner with Midjourney, or support Stable Diffusion on a local machine, or an API or SDK, or some service of their own, they need to act and give users a good experience and a functional AI workflow that is better than just 'using Affinity' to fix your AI images.
Photoshop is already there. Firefly is already a thing. The plugin is already working. Affinity is playing catch-up.
If they don't catch up fast, they'll be left with a tiny niche market.

Fun fact: The current generation of generative AI models is what the older of us remember being the first handys: 3kg with battery, sound worse than a walkie talkie and expensive like a car.
You all argue like this AI generation is the end result, but its not even a full start, b3cause they are ONLY ONE YEAR OLD. 
Computer WILL beat experts and artists in terms of creativity, inventions and - always - price. 
 

Hmm - the name of the forum is "Feedback for Affinity Photo on Desktop " - so let us hope they at least read it. 
At the end, we are trying to help - and just plainly ignoring customers is rarely the way to success from my experience...

Have a look here to understand how photo editors will use AI generated images in the future. Just released, its already heavily impacting the industry. But Affinity Photo is lacking an SDK, so no plugin for us - while GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, ... already have working versions!
If Affinity sleeps through it, it can damage their whole future quite fast - PLEASE react and either finally provide an SDK (WHY IS THERE NONE???) or integrate e.g. Stable Diffusion into your products...
 
to und 

Great post, PaulMc!
I wholehearty agree - I also do not see AI as replacement, but as an important part of a pipeline of the future (even soon for vector grafics: That is due to the early stage of the software, but seperating the results into vectors should actually be quite easy, shouldnt it?). 
Still the question is open: What are Serif's plans for the future here? And sidenote: Not really answering the communitys question about SDK access for months (beside: "Not planned") is not really something I do understand... 

Last entry here from me on this topic - it really was a pleasure to discuss this with you all!!
Microsoft just announced that they will integrate the leading model (OpenAI's DALL-E) into their Designer app - and will invest a lot to make the integration as smooth as possible!
 
It has started.

I entirely agree with you, drstreit... especially about 'dinosaurs'. When I worked for BT many years ago taking telegrams down over the phone, typing them up, sending the off abroad...
Telex was coming...
Fear! Worry! I could see the death of telegrams. I could see the future... and it was Telex.
And then computers came out. Wow! What are those? I experimented, learnt how to use them...
And then Word, WordPerfect and Multimate (?) came out in DOS not long after and I saw the future again: Word Processing! I leapt on the bandwagon, taught myself those...
Then there came... CorelDraw. Wow! Colour! Being able to draw on the computer... with a (what is that thing? A mouse?) So I purchased CorelDraw and taught myself. Although having learnt Word and (the hated) WordImperfect (with all its codes), when I opened CorelDraw, I just used to stare at the blank page for about 6 weeks wondering how to use it. But I read the manual, found the Help files and taught myself.
Then, when Telex did die (Oh, what a death!), I attended the funeral and was proficient in CorelDraw and other design software that I went to work in the Presentations industry in London (where I lived then) and instantly they dropped all the CorelDraw trainers' work onto my desk and I was promoted - to CorelDraw trainer for the whole team in Deutsche Bank.
It was mad, but I did well, and when a Graphic Designer post came up, I got the job - over other 'trained' graphic designers (outsiders). Again. I was stunned, but the management really were great and encouraged me. The information Memorandums were where I excelled...  because of my imagination, I guess, and my technical skills (self-taught) cos I now knew how to use Photoshop. Painter. Illustrator and Corel Ventura.
And then along came... InDesign. So I purchased that and again taught myself... because I saw the future there of layout for printing brochures, posters, et al immediately. Goodbye, Corel Ventura...
I used to create information memorandum covers, internet and intranet banners (animated in Flash and After Effects by me), but the Information Memorandums I created from scratch. The bankers came up with wild iseas. Then said 'Can you do it?' I said 'Yes' (even though I had no idea how I was going to create it.
Ha-ha! What a challenge....
They call it 'photo-bashing' now, but then I don't think it had a name. It was just my style.
Also I have always written my dreams down since I was a teenager and I swear that dreams are an untapped resource of inspiration and creativity. My imagination aided me. I write too, and I have taken situations, places, and conversations and 'snippets' remembered and used them in my pen and ink illustrations and my writing.
And suddenly, a few weeks ago, I was awakened (like you) to AI generated text-to-image creation. And again, I just saw the future. Big, big change. Wake up, everyone! Or you'll join the zombies...
AI images remind me very much of my dreams and nightmares that. Because I wrote many of them down. I can recall them just by reading a few in one of my dream books...
The newcomers will have to work hard in this new, fastly evolving world of design, gaming, video, film industry etc. Adapt to change, recognise it as the future evolving swiftly before your eyes and embrace it. Or they will, like many of the people I met along the way, join the bones in the Natural History museum in South Kensington... as dinosaur bones.
Affinity Photo and Designer are SO COOL! Affordable too (unlike Adobe software). I know Serif are watching the coming of AI art... and they're smart. I don't think they will ignore it. I know they won't.
Watch what happens... I know you are. Your eyes are open, observing its growth. Its influence on the industry. Its potential.
it's so exciting... What's gonna happen, as you say above, in the next 10 years? Serif will be there, I am sure of it...

Let me try to be very specific - I got scolded to be too general here - and rightly so: Hi @Serif - here is my user story for your backlog!
"I as a grafic designer want to be able to train a Serif integrated AI model with my own grafical style at a maximum of 10 training pictures. With that locally modified model, I want to be able to go to a customer and create/modify any number of pictures in this newly trained style on the fly according to specifications, examples:
Recreate the upper left corner of a given picture but put a stylished car into it seamlessly Draw out (extend the image content) of that image another 30% seamlessly Generate brainstormed images with the topic "future cars" in the newly trained styles ...  

Nah - I am just lazy and I only dabble in the arts as a hobby and thus need easy tools 
But my professional life very much has focus on AI, I lead building global projects using AI models for the life science industry - and I see a frightening change of the people coming from university: They simply DO NOT ACCEPT that there is a long, manual way that gives you 100% of the desired result in many hours of time. Instead there should be an app like way to get your pareto 80% with two clicks: Good enough is the way to go agile.
And with that approach, this huge oecosystem of grafic design tools were created on the various mobile devices - with functionality that is astonishing good nowadays with only seconds of effort.
The easiness how these kids ("kids", in my eyes, I am over 50 now) accept wonders of software such as AI models deliver today - only to request more of it and and faster - led to the disrupting push of AI into every industry.
Mark my words: Either all the software giants (and mini-giants like Serif) adapt - or they will die out with only us dinosaurs doing things "the right" way.
I myself am very impressed creative minds such as Kevin Hess who shows us that an author with self proclaimed small grafical capabilities can produce a full grafical novel by his own with the new AI tools: https://beincrypto.com/ai-art-worlds-first-bot-generated-graphic-novel-hits-the-market/
And sure one can complain about the style and limitations - but Midjourney (the AI he used) has been released mid of July this year: Just imagine what these tools will do in 2, 5 - 10 years from now given that AI complexity has been exponentiell the last decade.
I would dream of Serif trying to spearhead that development with a maximum aggressive move: In my professional opinion (admittingly one with only experience from other industries), Serif does not have the time to wait another year to move forward.
 

No, I dont validate anything with the simple fact that tasks will be replaced by AI. That is a nobrainer, or do you still use paper maps driving around - or do you rely on a navigation system?
Things will simply change: With AI being integrated great tools - such as Serif's - you can work fast, produce more, automate simple tasks.
Just imagine to train your unique style to an AI and produce your own grafical story within days.
The whole point of this forum post is that I believe AI will greatly help designers - and I dont want Serif to miss that train, because simply people will leave.

Here the link to the training set of pictures currently used - you can check there if anything from your portfolio was used - and you can exclude it: https://laion-aesthetic.datasette.io/laion-aesthetic-6pls/images?_sort=rowid
 

Here a nice example what people start doing with AI generators (beside cretaing more cude cats 🐈):
https://beincrypto.com/ai-art-worlds-first-bot-generated-graphic-novel-hits-the-market/
And it also gives a vision how a tool suite like Affinity could deeply integrate it into the workflow for production, optimization, publishing.

No, that is plain wrong: AI models work a bit like our brain, building billions of weighted connections based on learning.
With this, they are capable to deduct new solutions to problems that they initially were not trained on. As they are missing context, its the task of the data science engineers to steer them, the constantly improving models are the result.
Say I train a model on 90 different species of dogs, it will be able to identify all 300 or so of them, deducting the characteristics.
It gets better: Reinforced learning models constantly create new ways to solve a problem or draw a picture, rate the result and learn from it.
The alpha models from OpenAI beat every chess and every Go player on the planet: But they never actually were fed any strategy books, they derived their strategy themselves from billion of matches against themselves…
Better believe that well trained AI models are creative in the everyday meaning of that, we are there to give them context.
 
 

I appreciate that AI extends beyond the boundaries of Affinity & photo editing, but please try to keep this thread on-topic to Affinity & AI implementation within our apps, many thanks

Here's a question for the AI afficionados: Whose images did you access and use? Did you use or access any of my images for your AI creation? If you did, did you get copyright permission?

Great text - and I fully agree!
Hence this post actually - I would really hate to see Serif fall because an industry trend was slept through (not only talking about AI, SDKs in general are must-have nowadays to be successful).
Unfortunately, this seems to be the case now: Without plugin interface, we cannot be active as community - with one, the number of plugins and tools would explode.
Its not even on the roadmap, so I fear its at minimum a year ahead of us: I just hope that is not too late.

I adore Affinity. I think they are to be applauded to take on such a tyrannical 'wicked queen' as Adobe, who have over the years purchased many iconic and wonderful graphics software from other companies only to strategically 'discontinue' them later, retiring such excellent software as Macromedia Freehand, Fireworks and Flash among others (Microsoft did the same with Creature House Expression).
Adobe are mercenery in their attitude to their users. It's their strategy. We do not matter to them. Their desire to rule, to be the the 'all-powerful, the big 'I am' in the industry, is well known and well documented. And they are. That's why, when they made the avaricious and unscrupulous decision to put their software in 'the cloud' and forced - yes, forced - their users to RENT their software, we 'lesser mortals' were ignored. We were insignificant, we did not matter to the great Adobe. We were not wealthy. We could not afford to rent our software. Some of us were victims of the economic downturn, had lost our jobs, others were struggling young designers just out of design school (but not yet in employment), others were simply enthusiasts with an interest in design. Pah! I am Adobe! (pounds chest with fists) You do not matter to me!
The individuals and small companies who broke their backs trying to afford (and thereby support) the expensive Adobe software, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign for years were simply forgotten, kicked out into the street, left lying in the dust. 'You are poor, you have no money, therefore you have no worth; you don't interest me. I seek to court the big guys, the ones with money...'
But Affinity DO care about their users - rich or poor. That is why they keep the cost of their software Photo, Designer and Publisher at an affordable price. And their users are loyal and have a serf's hatred of tyranny. No empire lasts forever.  Even Rome fell. Adobe's ruthless strategy will be it's downfall.
So have faith. Affinity are clever, it's troops are loyal. They will see what the new AI-generated text to image software can do, will be watching it's rise with great interest, I imagine, investigating it's potential, quietly confident. We have brought it to their attention. Their finances are not limitless like the grasping, avaricious old queen, Adobe, who sits astride her throne like a whore on a war horse, snapping her gnarled fingers and screaming orders at her expendable minion. Her troops are not loyal. She rules by fear. She knows we are there, but she may not see us coming...
Affinity is Strength.
 

I agree, a full fledged API would snowball all kind of plugins, AI included.
Even Adobe cannot create all content by themselves, so the rely on the community. I teceived the same feedback from Serif as you mention: „Long term  idea to have a SDK, no roadmap yet“.
I struggle to understand how one can release ANY software product nowadays without automation API… Seems like shooting your own foot a bit…

Great example here, DeIN!
I honestly struggle how anyone fails to see the upcoming impact: These models are only released some weeks ago, looking at the speed they evolve, we are seeing a freshly hatched 🐣 here that will turn into a man-eating ostrich within years…
Lucky the one to have tamed it then… And everybody: Give them a try, they are honestly just great fun to experiment around!

A couple of facts remain. (1) The staff at Serif is limited, and they must set priorities as to what, if any, additional features need to be included; and (2) the lure of AI will entice a bunch of people, but many (perhaps the majority) will have no use for it. I would rather see Serif avoid wasting time on niche projects and spend more time on a more universally-needed project like creating an API for more advanced plug-in availability. If and when Serif opens up an API for others to create, for example, additional studio-like panels then someone will create an AI plug-in for Affinity Photo. Probably a whole bunch of someones.
Serif has already said that they are at work putting Javascript and an API into the Affinity suite, but that it will take time. "Be patient" was their advice, and I am sure they mean it. That having been said, though, opening up the application to outside coders will create a much more fertile environment for plug-ins and other add-ons. These may only satisfy a small number of users, but they might be considered deal-breakers for those users who feel they need them. The availability of AI artwork within Photo is, I believe, one such niche market.

Come on guys, you remind me of the stories of the first steam train passengers, who fainted from the neckbreaking speed of 20 km/h and were convinced that humanity would never strive to move that fast…
So the pigs dont drink? Just take them as PhotoShop 1.0, Microsoft Windows 3.1 or a Assembler Compiler against C#… These tools are incredible powerful today, weeks after their release. But they are already good enough to generate new images to again train them to get better, allowing Reinforcement Learning with billions of new connections per day.
And they show only percentages of what already exists, as the full models are not public, with especially Google not releasing because its „ too powerful“…
 

Because these things are only weeks old and are only starting to develop. New features will be outdrawing existing pictures while copying style and extending content, adding content aware parts into images etc. 
A very close workflow will define how efficient that is: With your argument, every use of filters would be useless, as you can always use a standalone software. But we use  integrated filters as that workflow is more effective.
Back to the topic opening: Serif does not have to do anything, beside giving us an SDK. Not doing it will hurt the tool suite the long run.
Nobody forces anybody to embrace or not AI in imaging - I just brought my daughter to her horse riding lesson, so enough people still seem to preferring horses to cars… 

I totally agree with you, drstreit. This new AI-word to text and video technology is HUGE! HUGE!!!
There hasn't been anything in the creative industry since... the first computer.
Its a global 'pandemic' of creativity and is infinitely more exciting than anything I've ever seen. The buzz online is... electric.
Are people blind to it? To the possibilities? Don't fear it - embrace it. Its not going to destroy your jobs. It's going to make them more exciting, more creative again after years of the one true (but boring) image on brochures, books, leaflets and flyers, Internet banners, information memorandum covers from the investment banks (in which I worked for 20 years) to sell a product or tell a story, now we can have rich, juicy, imaginative and dreamlike (or nightmarish) imagery again like we did before when a designer had to creatively composite imagery to sell a product. Now the creative teams can work in conjunction with AI text to word art generators like Stable Diffusion, Disco Diffusion, DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Stability AI/Stable Diffusion, Craiyon,
Openart.ai etc.
Its so exciting! I'm excited... by the prospects, by the creativity it will bring to the industry, to book cover, video games, the film industry.
Surely, this is only the beginning!
If you can't see how this new technology will benefit you then... Wake up! Open your eyes to it. See how vast and how exciting this new AI-word to text and video technology will be for you as designers, as newcomers to the industry. There is going to be a flood of jobs for creative minds who embrace it NOW while it is fresh. While it is young. Young designers, it is another tool in your toolbox, another colour in your palette and aided with Affinity Photo and Designer and this new AI generated text to image technology you will be there amid the new 60s explosion of colourful art and design.
All I can say is... Wow! To witness and be a part of the union of Affinity Photo and AI generated imagery generators like Stable Diffusion or Midjourney...
Bravo! You're so right, drstreit. You can see the future while ohers can't. 'To sleep, perchance to dream'...
Look at all those sad Victorians who feared the motor car and the railway....
I posted this on the Affinity forum a few days ago:
 

I guess as always with progress its about effectivity: Sure you can draw everything on a piece of paper, its just more efficient to use readily available brushes and the many tools a software offers you instead. Here in this case, the workflow will be a close mixture of AI and manuell edits to take the best of both worlds - but for that you need seamless integration.
And with that type of software, the job of a grafic designer will change drastically: Have a look at https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/midjourney/?hl=de : These are all pictures created by "amateurs" with the help of AI - why would I pay a designer for that if AI can do it better, faster? These AI models were released only 4 weeks ago and already have huge impact - just imagine 1 year of improvements and integration into workflows...
 
AI grafic design is there, it will be HEAVILY used to create/modify pictures, and without an plugin interface, Affinity Photo will totally miss that train.