For community awareness

[Jabberwocky]

Since I don't frequent social media, this was the first I'd heard of this and thought others here might be interested in this reporting:

Disney Pin Trading App Uses AI to Alter Woman’s Appearance Without Permission for Ad, Constantly Stealing Photos & Stories from Others - WDWNT

Allegations of AI misuse and unauthorized content have mounted against the third-party Pin Trading App following a Disney influencer’s discovery of an advertisement featuring her AI-altered likeness.

wdwnt.com

I'm guessing if litigation and/or mediation is involved, the parties may not be able to comment here on these allegations on either side. But we've seen issues before similar to this of database scraping and content use with or without permission. To me, the big issue is monetization. If profit is involved, creator permission from all parties is a necessity, not optional.

This use of content without permission is why I stopped contributing to any public database, which is sad, as I see things like duplicate listings or missing or wrong information I would have liked to correct for the benefit of the community. But the downstream results is someday someone may use my content in a way I did not give them permission for - like PinPics did in monetizing my content even when I told them to remove it and they refused to do so - so I had to stop, even though I was a regular contributor of content for many years.

 

[DisneyOlivia]

Appreciate the share as someone also not on social media! I wasn’t a fan of the app advertising when it first came out and looks like I did well not to go down that road.

 

[Shelterkat]

It's important to read the statements from both sides.

 

[Ach West]

Ew, what a gross thing to do.

 

[geedee74]

It's important to read the statements from both sides.

YES!!! This exactly!

 

[ViciousLady]

The real enemy is AI

 

[Jabberwocky]

Follow up reporting:

Third-Party Pin Trading App Blames Meta for AI Ad Altering Creator's Likeness Following $85,000 Legal Demand - WDWNT

The third-party Pin Trading App has responded to allegations of AI misuse claiming the ad in question was created by a Meta feature.

wdwnt.com

 

[Oskib]

Since I don't frequent social media, this was the first I'd heard of this and thought others here might be interested in this reporting:

Disney Pin Trading App Uses AI to Alter Woman’s Appearance Without Permission for Ad, Constantly Stealing Photos & Stories from Others - WDWNT

Allegations of AI misuse and unauthorized content have mounted against the third-party Pin Trading App following a Disney influencer’s discovery of an advertisement featuring her AI-altered likeness.

wdwnt.com

I'm guessing if litigation and/or mediation is involved, the parties may not be able to comment here on these allegations on either side. But we've seen issues before similar to this of database scraping and content use with or without permission. To me, the big issue is monetization. If profit is involved, creator permission from all parties is a necessity, not optional.

This use of content without permission is why I stopped contributing to any public database, which is sad, as I see things like duplicate listings or missing or wrong information I would have liked to correct for the benefit of the community. But the downstream results is someday someone may use my content in a way I did not give them permission for - like PinPics did in monetizing my content even when I told them to remove it and they refused to do so - so I had to stop, even though I was a regular contributor of content for many years.

Super curious about pinpics as I know they have been very protective of “their photos” yet people have said this, that they have used others’ photos without permission. I notice they use a watermark now. Did they put their watermark on your photos?

 

[firechief18]

So people added their photos to PinPics. The new owners purchased PinPics as is. They have revamped and updated the legacy back end server for better security. The old system had been hacked a few times.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Super curious about pinpics as I know they have been very protective of “their photos” yet people have said this, that they have used others’ photos without permission. I notice they use a watermark now. Did they put their watermark on your photos?

PinPics was the original community database started back when pin trading began. Under the original ownership, the community directly added pins with text and photos and kept the information updated in the entries. All content added, while watermarked to acknowledge the database location, was for forever free public community use on this non-profit site and each entry was credited to its contributor. I contributed a LOT for many years both adding pin entries - photos and text - and editing to keep information correct and notifying the mods when duplicate listings were added to quickly clear them out.

Many years later, the original owners sold the site to someone who decided to profit from the content. I repeatedly asked for my entries to be removed as the content was not provided for someone else's profit or attempted to delete them as we'd been able to do previously as a publicly-policed site. They banned me, kept my content and made profit off of it. And they stopped people from being able to contribute or edit content directly, instead forcing contributions to go through a moderator. And the new mods, not having a clue of the history of pins nor the database, allowed duplicate listings and inaccurate information to populate the site. They also removed all credits of those who had originally provided the content.

After several more years, the second owners sold the site to the current owners who have now hidden the information behind a membership/subscription wall so it is no longer visible to the public as originally intended. Instead, they get to collect your personal contact information if you want to see the free content that others provided to the original site.

it all sucks and ruined the site that was the gold standard for pin information and now is just sad and rusty and mostly useless.

All of which is why I strongly recommend using Pin & Pop instead. While not as user-friendly as the original PinPics site, the owners seem responsive and responsible. That said, I will not contribute to their site either, having been burned before when original ownership was sold off, and not needing to repeat the experience of someone else profiting off of my content.