Ai and the aim to deceive

I am never being a believer of AI.
I suggest watching the BBC interview to Roger Penrose (search it on youtube) and maybe reading his book The Emperor New Mind, although it seems to me that the interview is clearer and more synthetic.
Naturally I agree with him and also have own views on AI, but the interview nails one fundamental reasons not to be a believer.
BTW, didn't Musk finally say that autonomuous drive does not work and is dangerous?
 
I saw this the other day:

A popular “photographer” who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI).


Jos Avery has been posting his impressive “photos” since October last year and deceiving his audience into thinking they are genuine portraits — even describing the camera equipment he uses (a Nikon D810 with 24-70mm lens).


Avery tells Ars Technica that he set out to “fool people,” saying: “Do people who wear makeup in photos disclose that? What about cosmetic surgery? Every commercial fashion photograph has a heavy dose of Photoshopping, including celebrity body replacement on the covers of magazines.”


Avery’s Instagram followers are besotted with his work showering him with compliments that he laps up
Click to expand...

Photographer revealed as AI Fraud

Honestly, I find myself underwhelmed by the supposed art involved. That, perhaps, has more to do with stylistic choices I tend to make in my landscape photography that remain much the same in digital and film formats, sans AI.

Truly "straight photography" rarely exists yet the equivalent of burning and dodging isn't this.

Somehow I doubt the photographers I find interesting on Instagram (Peter Turnley, David Burnett, etc) will have similar issues!

Having been studying AI back during the first flowering in the 80's all I have to say is I hope another "AI Winter" comes along soon.
 
p.giannakis said:
I did something that I promised that I wouldn't do; argue online about subjective issues. To cut a long story short here is what happened.

On a Facebook group about photography, someone posted a picture that the claim that they shot. Looks like the perfect picture, the right place at the right time. 2k likes later and handrend of comments later (by the way group rules forbid heavily manipulated images) I pointed out that the picture has some "errors" in it.

First of all, light source (sun or moon, unable to say) is on one side of a foggy bridge yet there are no shadows on the other side. Parts of the image have shadows yet others don't. There are parts of the bridge that are lit by a light source coming from the top (second sun?).

I got a lot of comments suggesting alternative scenarios. I am not convinced. The author posted another picture to prove it is genuine, I post a crop of the bridge to draw your own conclusions.

I have nothing against Ai, I am very tempted to try it myself. I know my daughter's will find it fascinating. There is just something about using Ai with the aim to deceive thought.
Click to expand...

Photography was always to consume mostly by idiots. Been idiots is humans self-protecting nature. Pointing at something they don't want to see is peeing against of the wind at the bridge 🙂
Last thing I would get myself involved is trying to find anything serious about photography on FB, Twitter, Instagram and so on.
Why Instagram is most popular?
Because it is only hosting low res files, which protects us from disturbing details. 🙂
 
Before deciding if this is deceit, let me digress a bit.
Surely photography has "replaced" painting (drawing, engraving for print, and other image-making "technologies") - but "photorealistic painting" still does exist, and still puts us (me at least) in awe at times.
Video has not replaced still photography, TV has not replaced radio, movies have not replaced books.

Right now, some of the AI driven image making may imitate photography, but my wild guess would be, in the long run (and with artists exploring and extending the fringes of the combination of tool and medium) it will evolve into its own art form. Pretty much similar to how photography did, when it did not strive to only imitate painting.

The foremost question for me is not "Is AI deceit?" but "What is AI image creation trying to be?"

Would anybody have looked for the "wrong" shadows (and other details) to prove it was NOT a photography if we had been told it was AI generated? Would anybody have spent the same amount of effort if we had been told it was a "manual painting"?

Sorry for the long rant, but I just tried to share my thought process (and realized, I have not formed a "final opinion" on this).

For whatever is in those images, it still needs the "creative spark" (I think they call it "prompt") from a human. And at that point it is not any different from spaceships and Superheroes we see in movies (we do not take them for real either, or do we).
At the same time there are a lot of "fake videos" that are either manipulated or mislabeled to make us believe their content was reality (which it is not).

The tool is not what deceives us - the intent is (and always was) the human element (no matter what tools were used).
 
I'll admit that details of the bridge don't seem to make sense, but I'd want more context before arriving at a conclusion.

"AI" seems to be a pretty good mimic, and killer where there are clearly defined rules, or pattern recognition involved, but it has no actual understanding of the world: The female depicted in #17 has a 2nd eyelid like a reptile, and the cameras could never actually function.

Initial thought upon viewing the video in #12 (besides someone choosing demo material pretty much guaranteed to repel their audience) was that AI could potentially be a great animation tool, particularly for generating countless in-between frames. But maybe not for Miyazaki, who relies on his in-between animators to supply details, like how wind creates ripples in a field of grass, or how a dog might behave if fed foul-tasting medicine.
 
wlewisiii said:
I saw this the other day:



Photographer revealed as AI Fraud

Honestly, I find myself underwhelmed by the supposed art involved. That, perhaps, has more to do with stylistic choices I tend to make in my landscape photography that remain much the same in digital and film formats, sans AI.

Truly "straight photography" rarely exists yet the equivalent of burning and dodging isn't this.

Somehow I doubt the photographers I find interesting on Instagram (Peter Turnley, David Burnett, etc) will have similar issues!

Having been studying AI back during the first flowering in the 80's all I have to say is I hope another "AI Winter" comes along soon.
Click to expand...
Having been a part of that generation and community, I experienced that "winter" first hand. And, while I sympathize with your sentiment, I fear that the next AI winter will extract a much higher human cost.
 
35+ years ago I wrote code to generate "Spatially Correlated Statistical Images" (Fractals, but somebody hated that term) for a computer simulation. Delivered the simulation- the group wouldn't believe it was CGI, that I used real imagery. Too Funny.
 
I can imagine that to the portrait painters of the time the medium of photography was akin to the same thing and definitely didn't represent their ideals or concept of reality.

Social media is rife with manipulated images claiming to be real and I'm quite surprised how many people get sucked in by them! 😳
 
One of the reasons I like Polaroid and glass plate or similar images - it’s hard to modify to add or remove objects in the image, though not impossible to produce something fake.
 
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