Technology

TL;DR: The new Reimage feature on the Google Pixel 9 phones is really good at AI manipulation, while being very easy to use. This is bad.

Image manipulation has always been a thing, and there are ways to counter it...

But we already know that a shocking amount of people will simply take what they see at face value, even if it does look suspicious. The volume of AI generated misinformation online is already too damn high, without it getting more new strings in it's bow.

Governments don't seem to be anywhere near on top of keeping up with these AI developments either, so by the time the law starts accounting for all of this, the damage will be long done already.

I work at a newspaper as both a writer and photographer. I deal with images all day.

Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

So, as a professional, am I worried? Not really. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘trust and verify when possible’. We generally receive our images from people who are wholly reliable. They have no reason to deceive us and know that burning that bridge will hurt their organisation and career. It’s not worth it.

If someone was to send us an image that’s ‘too interesting’, we’d obviously try to verify it through other sources. If a bunch of people photographed that same incident from different angles, clearly it’s real. If we can’t verify it, well, we either trust the source and run it, or we don’t.

We literally lived for thousands of years without photos. And we’ve lived for 30 years with Photoshop.

Awful title.

Relevant XKCD. Humans have always been able to lie. Having a single form of irrefutable proof is the historical exception, not the rule.

This is a hyperbolic article to be sure. But many in this thread are missing the point. It's not that photo manipulation is new.

It's the volume and quality of photo manipulation that's new. "Flooding the zone with bullshit," i.e. decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio, can have a demonstrable social effect.

Meh, those edited photos could have been created in Photoshop as well.

This makes editing and retouching photos easier, and that's a concern, but it's not new.

Even a few months ago it was hard for people with the knowledge to use AI on photos. I don't like the idea of this but its unavoidable. There is already so much misinformation and this will make it so much worse.

These photoshop comments are missing the point that it's just like art, a good edit that can fool everyone needs someone that practiced a lot and has lots of experience, now even the lazy asses on the right can fake it easily.

People can write things that aren't true! Oh no, now we can't trust trustworthy texts such as scientific papers that have undergone peer review!

This is only a threat to people that took random picture at face value. Which should not have been a thing for a long while, generative AI or not.

The source of an information/picture, as well as how it was checked has been the most important part of handling online content for decades. The fact that it is now easier for some people to make edits does not change that.

Photography manipulation existed almost since the invention of photography. It was only much harder see the famous photo edition https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

It's always been about context and provenance. Who took the image? Are there supporting accounts?

But also, it has always been about the knowlege that no one... Absolutely no one... Does lines of coke from a woven mat floor covering.

As if photo manipulation hasn't been around in better forms for decades...?

~~TAKING OUR JOBS~~

• AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry - Wired

• Democrats push bill to hire illegal immigrants - FOX News

~~HARASSING WOMEN AND CHILDREN~~

• Boys are taking images of female classmates and using AI to deepfake nude photos - Fortune

• Female Fox journalist harassed and chased by migrants while reporting outside shelter - Dailymail

~~A THREAT TO OUR WAY OF LIFE~~

• A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn - NYTimes

• Poll: Americans Fear their way of life is under threat - Fox News

~~THEY'RE SHITTING ON THE BEACHES~~

• ...[Coming Soon]
• Wasaga Beach reacts to reports of beachgoers defecating in sand - CTV News

REWRITING HISTORY BY DOCTORING PHOTOS WITH NEVER SEEN BEFORE PHOTO MANIPULATIONS

Sorry everyone I keep forgetting which zeitgeist that media is currently using to make us hate and fear something.

I think this is a good thing.

Pictures/video without verified provenance have not constituted legitimate evidence for anything with meaningful stakes for several years. Perfect fakes have been possible at the level of serious actors already.

Putting it in the hands of everyone brings awareness that pictures aren't evidence, lowering their impact over time. Not being possible for anyone would be great, but that isn't and hasn't been reality for a while.

The world's billionaires probably know there's lots of photographic evidence of stuff they did at Epstien island floating around out there. This is why they're trying to make ai produce art so realistic that photographs are no longer considered evidence so they can just claim its ai generated if any of that stuff ever gets out.

This reaffirms my wish to go back to monkey.

This is one of the required steps on the way to holodecks. I've been ready for it for 30 years.