“There was a very nice video by Marques Brownlee last year on the moon picture,” Chomet told us. “Everyone was like, ‘Is it fake? Is it not fake?’ There was a debate around what constitutes a real picture. And actually, there is no such thing as a real picture. As soon as you have sensors to capture something, you reproduce [what you’re seeing], and it doesn’t mean anything. There is no real picture. You can try to define a real picture by saying, ‘I took that picture’, but if you used AI to optimize the zoom, the autofocus, the scene – is it real? Or is it all filters? There is no real picture, full stop.”
If your epistemological resolution for determining the fakeness of the moon landing photos is to just assert that all photos are in a sense fake so case closed, then I feel like you aren’t even wrong about the right thing.
The moon photos they’re talking about are specifically the AI enhanced zoom moon photos of previous Samsung models that caught controversy because taking a picture of a marginally round object against a black background with their zoom enhancement would produce a moon photo even if it was in someone’s dark basement and the object was a dimly lit bottle cap.
To think about it, if a new crater gets ever created on the moon one way or the other these AI models won’t be ever updated and will show the “fake old version” forever.
if you used AI to optimize the zoom, the autofocus, the scene – is it real?
To me, using AI to optimize zoom, focus, aperture (or fake aperture effects), framing etc. That’s composition. The picture isn’t fake, but software helped compose the real image in a better way.
When you change the image (remove objects, distort parts of the image not the whole, airbrush etc) then the image isn’t based on reality any more.
That’s where I see the line drawn, at least. Yes, drawing a line also makes the image not real any more.
Beyond this, we get to philosophy. In which case, I’ll refer to my other comment on another post about this story. Our brain transforms the image our eyes receive (presumably to be able to relay it around the brain efficiently, who knows?). So we can take it to Matrix philosophy. When we don’t know if what we’re seeing is real, what is real?
I think the reality is that there is no reality, there is only perception. Composition does add to remove things from the photo. Light, both the amount and its wavelength, is a thing. Whether the lens picks up the pores on a person’s face is a thing. Whether The background seems close or far as a thing. But I agree that camera makers would tow any philosophical line to help them drive profits.
If your epistemological resolution for determining the fakeness of the moon landing photos is to just assert that all photos are in a sense fake so case closed, then I feel like you aren’t even wrong about the right thing.
The moon photos they’re talking about are specifically the AI enhanced zoom moon photos of previous Samsung models that caught controversy because taking a picture of a marginally round object against a black background with their zoom enhancement would produce a moon photo even if it was in someone’s dark basement and the object was a dimly lit bottle cap.
To think about it, if a new crater gets ever created on the moon one way or the other these AI models won’t be ever updated and will show the “fake old version” forever.
We should nuke the near side of the moon to catch AI off-guard
I’ve always wondered what it would look like from earth it the moon were nuked
Kurzgesagt - What if we nuke the moon?
Kurzgesagt has a video on the subject. Your question is answered at 5:50 - tiny blink of light for few seconds.
To me, using AI to optimize zoom, focus, aperture (or fake aperture effects), framing etc. That’s composition. The picture isn’t fake, but software helped compose the real image in a better way.
When you change the image (remove objects, distort parts of the image not the whole, airbrush etc) then the image isn’t based on reality any more.
That’s where I see the line drawn, at least. Yes, drawing a line also makes the image not real any more.
Beyond this, we get to philosophy. In which case, I’ll refer to my other comment on another post about this story. Our brain transforms the image our eyes receive (presumably to be able to relay it around the brain efficiently, who knows?). So we can take it to Matrix philosophy. When we don’t know if what we’re seeing is real, what is real?
I think the reality is that there is no reality, there is only perception. Composition does add to remove things from the photo. Light, both the amount and its wavelength, is a thing. Whether the lens picks up the pores on a person’s face is a thing. Whether The background seems close or far as a thing. But I agree that camera makers would tow any philosophical line to help them drive profits.