Jorgen Udvang
Subscriber Member
Viral Instagram photographer has a confession: His photos are AI-generated
Artist wants to "come clean" and highlight a new media process.
arstechnica.com
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AI: Things will be changing very fast
- Thread starter Jorgen Udvang
- Start date
arstechnica.com
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Member
There's definitely worth thinking about the need for digital content provenance.
lets hope this can pick up speed and validity.
contentauthenticity.org
lets hope this can pick up speed and validity.
Content Authenticity Initiative
Creating the standard for digital content provenance.
contentauthenticity.org
k-hawinkler
Well-known member
Oh AI and not A1. 
jotloob
Subscriber Member
Quo vadis mankind ?Viral Instagram photographer has a confession: His photos are AI-generated
Artist wants to "come clean" and highlight a new media process.
I think , the development of AI is only at its beginning .
But what I do see for mankinds future is , that we will be living in a totally unrealistic world , full of fakes and AI created images and many other untrue things , which I can not even think of right now . "alternative facts" and so on .
All knowledge , which mankind has explored and created will be subject of becoming fakes .
Will mankind be able to control that development ? I don't think so .
Therefore I say , AI is the beginning of the end of mankind . Pherhaps , that is the best of it for this wonderful earth .
MGrayson
Subscriber and Workshop Member
Lies are older than multicellular life. (I believe the JWST has detected falsified galaxies less than 100 million years after the Big Bang). The first doctored photos appeared very shortly after the first photos. Adobe has a book called "Faking It" which is a defense of Photoshop. It is a history of photographic manipulation.
For those who have the misfortune to remember Calculus, "L'Hopital's rule" was a purchased theorem. He wanted his name on something. Thomas Edison took credit for his employee's work. Demagogues, ad campaigns, speechwriters - the best efforts of talented people have gone into falsification. So we've automated the process just as we automated numerical calculation.
Ecclesiastes had it right.
For those who have the misfortune to remember Calculus, "L'Hopital's rule" was a purchased theorem. He wanted his name on something. Thomas Edison took credit for his employee's work. Demagogues, ad campaigns, speechwriters - the best efforts of talented people have gone into falsification. So we've automated the process just as we automated numerical calculation.
Ecclesiastes had it right.
jotloob
Subscriber Member
Very , very interesting thoughts . Thank you .
What I see in all above written , the existence of AI is missing . But we have it today with a very high impact and I doubt mankind will be able to control the great implications .
That scares me .
Jorgen Udvang
Subscriber Member
What is different now are scale, access and ignorance.
- Anything AI can be produced in more or less unlimited numbers and with increasing precision.
- Anybody will be able to access this, including ordinary people, smart and dumb, criminals, politicians, warlords, dictators... anybody.
- Ignorance is on the increase. Some friends try to convince me that young people are just different from what I was when I was young, but not learning the basics of history, politics, maths and propaganda is not being "different", it's being ignorant. Ignorant people will become easy pray for AI and clever people who use AI to enrich themselves. And what we call "culture" will mostly die, since synthetic culture is faster, cheaper and easier to access.
There will be exceptions of course, and people with resources will still live comfortable lives. Some will even maintain a relationship to culture. Being an "intellectual" does after all carry a flair of status. But the ignorant masses, those that have been told that education is important to make achievements and live a satisfactory life, the people that in the past have taken on challenges to improve their lives, those masses will be lost to handheld devices that will always be smarter and always know more than them. Because when we remove the intellectual challenges, there's little left of humanity. What remain will be emotions, food and sleep, and AI will probably take care of emotions as well.
jotloob
Subscriber Member
Bart , I am afraid that creativity will also be replaced by AI .On a positive note: no need anymore for cameras or lenses or bags or drones or ...
Just a powerful computing device and some creativity !
Jorgen Udvang
Subscriber Member
There's another problem to this also: Accountability
I've had a few encounters with ChatGPT lately, to test its abilities. Although it's still threading its baby shoes, it's surprisingly capably. However, there are no references, no alternative opinions. Since there are algorithms at the bottom of a chatbot and the algorithms involve human interaction, whoever created the algorithms will have immense influence over the results. One of the tests that I did was the following:
It's possible that the above is true. Berthold Brecht was after all known for taking credit for the work of other people. However, after 2 hours of Google searches I was unable to find a source that could confirm a connection between Kurt Tucholsky and/or Mischa Spoliansky and "Die Ballade vom angenehmen Leben". In the future, most people will choose to believe whatever some AI application will tell them, and if the source data is manipulated and there are no references, they will still believe. If something is written by a human, that human can be contacted to get facts verified. A bot will just double down and claim that it's right.
Again, lies and deception are nothing new. However, the efficiency and presumed exactness of AI will make most people less likely to double check, which will make it easier for dishonest actors to deceive a larger number of people. I can see the same thing happening with photos. Hackers can instruct a bot to do certain identical changes to all online photos of a particular event, like adding or removing a person or object. Many influencers can leave much of their work to a bot, generating text and photos of their recent walk to the top of Mount Everest while in reality they were sleeping safely in their beds. The future is scary, but unfortunately not many are scared.
I've had a few encounters with ChatGPT lately, to test its abilities. Although it's still threading its baby shoes, it's surprisingly capably. However, there are no references, no alternative opinions. Since there are algorithms at the bottom of a chatbot and the algorithms involve human interaction, whoever created the algorithms will have immense influence over the results. One of the tests that I did was the following:
It's possible that the above is true. Berthold Brecht was after all known for taking credit for the work of other people. However, after 2 hours of Google searches I was unable to find a source that could confirm a connection between Kurt Tucholsky and/or Mischa Spoliansky and "Die Ballade vom angenehmen Leben". In the future, most people will choose to believe whatever some AI application will tell them, and if the source data is manipulated and there are no references, they will still believe. If something is written by a human, that human can be contacted to get facts verified. A bot will just double down and claim that it's right.
Again, lies and deception are nothing new. However, the efficiency and presumed exactness of AI will make most people less likely to double check, which will make it easier for dishonest actors to deceive a larger number of people. I can see the same thing happening with photos. Hackers can instruct a bot to do certain identical changes to all online photos of a particular event, like adding or removing a person or object. Many influencers can leave much of their work to a bot, generating text and photos of their recent walk to the top of Mount Everest while in reality they were sleeping safely in their beds. The future is scary, but unfortunately not many are scared.
k-hawinkler
Well-known member
Elon Musk has an interesting view on AI in general.
Godfrey
Well-known member
Whatever "AI" might do or be, I will just keep doing what I like doing. If "AI" does something that I can benefit from, I'll use it ... but I haven't found that to be the case so far. Getting satisfaction from creating photographs sort of requires that I create them, not some algorithm. I don't see how that can change.
G
G
jotloob
Subscriber Member
Jorgen
You express exactly , what i think and am so afraid of .
And we must know , we are not talking about Ai for photography alone . AI will influence our whole life , all parts of our life .
It’s actually interesting how quickly AI users take ownership of the creativity and skill involved in making the images. Being an ‘AI artist’ is quickly becoming a thing much in the same way someone hammering their phone snaps with canned filters starts to feel like a great photographer.
I absolutely agree.
The only thing authentic about any of my photos is that I created them. An image that is purely 'truth' must have no human input at all and therefore no creativity.
Choosing where to point the lens, removing elements from the frame with composition, focussing on the beautiful, cropping out the ugly (or vice versa), choosing the time of day, perspective, depth of field, filters, lens movements, asking a subject to smile, freezing a moment in time when the mundane appears incredible or keeping the shutter open so minutes appear to pass in a moment. It's why I am a photographer, to create something that is by my choice, other than normality.
For now, AI (or more accurately machine learning) made images require human input to produce anything and the output is a sort of greatest hits remix where you can choose from the 'spray and pray' results. There appears to be great creativity because they don't work by the same universal laws and ways of seeing that we are often constrained by. As the machine learning gets more sophisticated the output will become more accurate and likely more mundane. Proper AI may change things all over again.
We live in a world of bias, selective and manufactured truth. We all have viewpoints built around our own experiences and we listen to voices that confirm them. Machine learning is likely to automate this nicely as it will take its viewpoint from the centre point of whatever dataset it is provided with. Ask for a picture of cat sniffing a lily and it will dutifully produce it in a selection of attractive styles. AI on the other hand, might understand that lilies are poisonous to cats and create an image of a vomiting animal in convulsions next to the flower. It may well challenge our perceptions and viewpoints because its knowledge and understanding will be far beyond our own. We may find the truth unacceptable.
MGrayson
Subscriber and Workshop Member
About the AI is different issue, the same arguments have been made since the invention of writing. New tools are always becoming available, but it is the same people who use them.
Actually, a good case can be made (in the US, anyway) that money is a life form that lives off of us, as it can now write its own laws. If one person doesn’t act in the interests of money, then it moves to someone who will.
Actually, a good case can be made (in the US, anyway) that money is a life form that lives off of us, as it can now write its own laws. If one person doesn’t act in the interests of money, then it moves to someone who will.
While there are certainly reasons for pessimism, there is some glimmer of hope here too: take for example, teaching. In olden days it was more full of facts and renditions of known information. Now, with that all available on line (with varying degrees of accuracy), it makes no sense to teach that - so there is a shift to more original work, making and thinking in new ways that are not copy-able, or internet found. Seems more interesting, and is an adjustment that one could (if so willing) see as a positive move. Same for making photos. Certainly the known shots are well copied and available. So one has to dig a bit deeper, as before, for creative work.
Knorp
Well-known member
That might be the ultimate step: humankind replaced by AI …Bart , I am afraid that creativity will also be replaced by AI .
Godfrey
Well-known member
It's analogous, to my thoughts, to those who buy the latest whizz bang automated camera and learn how to pick which automation mode does the right job for them in what situation, make some great photos with that, and then start considering themselves experienced and skilled photographers. However, if you ask them what f/stop they chose or why they used ISO 2950, they don't even know what the terms mean. It's a different set of skills, riding the automated mechanical horse, from what I do.
I like to know my materials, my subject matter, my equipment at the basic levels, read the light with my eyes and mind, and capture/process my photographs based on that knowledge and my intent in the taking of a particular scene ... when it all comes together into what I had visualized, I know the work is mine ... not some piece of automation's ... and feel satisfied.
I suspect it's all simply different approaches to the realization of an intent. I like what I do, and the way I do it, and I'm not afraid of the possibility that others like other ways of doing what they do. I'm not competing with anyone, and not afraid that those others are going to undercut my job or career: people who want me to make photographs for them, or value my photographs, generally do so because they like what I do and value having my signature on it.... possibly because of how I do what I do, rather than how refined my use of some automation might be.
G
No point trying to swim against the tide, but I see the whole progression of AI as a huge motivator for many to shoot film, an endeavour that leaves you with a unique, physical entity in the form of the original 'in camera' negative. I know the digital equivalent would be an entry in the blockchain / digital ledger but, qualitatively, it just doesn't feel the same - certainly not to the informed collector. Also, it doesn't solve the thorny issue of where that image came from in the first place. Was it really produced 'in camera' ?
My guess is we'll see more and more fine art photographers shooting film and ultimately reaping the financial rewards for doing so.
My guess is we'll see more and more fine art photographers shooting film and ultimately reaping the financial rewards for doing so.