Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.
The photograph is now meaningless as evidence. We are not prepared.
Photos are never a concrete representation of the reality. Photos are being pre-processed by image processor already and we also got Photoshop. One can even fake a film based photo if he knows what to do. The proliferation of image generation models and impainting models make the access easier but image manipulation tools always exist.
The thing is, faking them went from a State can do it, to a professional can do it, an experienced amateur can do it, to absolutely everyone can
I think this is the crux of the article. In the past most people have considered photographic evidence to be very convincing. Sure, you could be removed from a photo of Stalin, and later people could do photoshop (with varying realism), now it’s a few words to make changes that many people believe without hesitation. Soon it will happen to video too, very soon.
Most people are not ready for it. Even shitty AI photos on social media get huge reactions with barely a handful calling them out.
I remember in the UK show Utopia from 2013, a government frames one of the characters for a school shooting by perfectly doctoring security footage to erase the actual hired shooter and replace them with a specific kid. And they do it all in a matter of hours. I remember thinking that tech was unrealistic, probably impossible. The best Hollywood VFX experts would need a week or more to make it that believable, and even they would need a ton of reference of both the kid and the lightning. Purely fantastical tech.
And now, here we are...
...to "now it's just a background process running on your phone".
Agree. Now I will say when faced with the decision between ethical issues vs profits big tech smashed that profits button without beating an eye, but the tools were always going to be made. It's just too bad they didn't stop for 5 seconds to think about how they could be mitigated.
In the thumbnail is the Tiananmen Square Tank Man.
Are you claiming a globally televised event which lead to a complete breakdown of trade relations across the world in the 90s, didn't happen?
No, they're saying it would be really easy now to create a fake image that would have in the past had that level of impact.
Or alternatively, to alter images to minimize the impact of events that should be world-changing, by calling their authenticity into question.
I don't see how that would make a difference from pre-AI? It's just bad actors doing their best to upset the world. They will make use of all and every tool they can to help them reach their goals, no matter the consequences. That has been true since the dawn of humanity and will be true until it's fall next week.
@Gaywallet I have a couple thoughts on this:
Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality
Your assumption, not our. I thought its an old topic. Also what does reality even mean? What we see is the reality? Does this mean animals don't see the reality, because they see it differently? I see this article is about AI, but even then we had image editing even before digital and computing ages. Images were photoshopped before computer in Darkrooms. But that's not all. The entire process of capturing an image itself can't capture the "reality", only an interpretation (such as eyes do).
Every photographer knows (or should) that photography is not always about capturing reality; its art. The framing of the image, meaning only a part can be seen, is an artistic choice. The shutter speed is an artistic choice. The depth of field of the lens, the zoom of the lens are artistic choices. What part of the image will get the focus?
The cameras setting for ISO, meaning the sensitivity of light is also an artistic choice. The placement of light to get a specific effect or even a camera flash to get certain amount of light and maybe freeze a frame that would be impossible to see otherwise. And the choice of white balance affecting the coloring. Camera sensors can't capture the entire spectrum of light or the complete dynamic range we can see with our eyes. That means there is compromise at this level too.
I'm not done yet. The camera doesn't capture an image as we know, such as JPEG. The raw format of a camera is not processed yet (but it has some processing builtin, just not too much). Meaning the image is very blurry and pixelated when converted to pixel format we can see. It has to be sharpened to make photos look as we know. Either automatically when saving as JPEG or later with a software that can handle RAW image formats of the camera. That is all an artistic choice.
photoshopped before computer in Darkrooms. >
I hope you mean edited. And I hope you realise the tools used in Photoshop are named after their original darkroom processes.
Those examples are so bad. You do not need AI to do any of those. That's just cut and paste.
Hell, we have had fake reality video overlays that are better than that on our phones for over a decade.
Reality is about to get all melty and people are gonna have six fingers.
Why did that stupid girl lined up her cocaine on the carpet? :D
😂
I don't think many people would go so far as to consider photographs "the linchpin of social consensus" but even so, many of the assumptions we tend to make about them have always been false ones. I've seen things in real life that later featured on the front page of newspapers. The difference can be more stark than is often appreciated. Like any powerful medium of expression they can capture truth or they can obscure it.