[HN Gopher] Artist refuses prize after his AI image wins at top ...
___________________________________________________________________
Artist refuses prize after his AI image wins at top photo contest
Author : kyleyeats
Score : 145 points
Date : 2023-04-15 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| dalbasal wrote:
| There's an important point to consider. Our ability to detect
| "real" dialogue, images and whatnot will develop as we go. What
| fools us now will not fool us as easily in the near future.
|
| That doesn't mean technology won't outrun our ability to detect
| it, just that this images will probably seem like an obvious AI
| image in a few years.
|
| For now, we need to manually count knuckles.
| tulio_ribeiro wrote:
| His submission might have won the competition because of his
| name, if he didn't use a pseudonym. His name would make them
| think that the submission was human-made, not AI-generated.
| stavros wrote:
| > PSEUDOMNESIA is the Latin term for pseudo memory
|
| That sentence infuriates me way more than it should. Are you sure
| it's Latin? Are you sure it's not Swahili? Also, don't define a
| term with itself.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It reminded me of the pained actors in the series Berlin, where
| they are making a movie and and all being overly artistic.
| Slightly fitting too, though that was set in the '20s from
| memory.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| lostlogin wrote:
| That sounds like something that would get people fired up.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Surely the grotesquely malformed hands was a clue.
|
| For some reason image AI have a terrible time with hands. Some
| platforms produce the wrong number of fingers for instance,
| sometimes wildly wrong - 12, 15, 20 fingers.
| dkarras wrote:
| maybe it is because I spent a lot of time with AI generated
| imagery but I would figure notice that this is an AI image
| right away - even ignoring the hands (the days of us being able
| to do this by eye is numbered though). Surprised that the
| jurors in a prestigious photography contest did not figure it
| out or even suspected.
| brk wrote:
| Hands are notoriously hard to draw/create realistically. This
| is why so many animated characters only have 3 fingers instead
| of 4.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| There are plenty of models and workflows now for getting the
| hands right now and there has been for a few months.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Hands are really weird if you look at them closely
| porbelm wrote:
| What he did was awesome, and the complete silence from the
| organizers is such a laff, I think they are so effing embarrassed
| lol
| porbelm wrote:
| Just to clarify; I don't think AI-generated images have
| anything to do in a traditional photography contest. Prompt-
| creators can create their own festival.
|
| With blackjack. And hookers.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think it has some conceptual value - if many artists are
| saying that the ML models can't create real art and only get
| a mediocre rehash of existing ideas (which by definition
| can't be better than those ideas), then having the same
| artists judge whether some piece ML art actually is better
| than anything the traditional artists submitted kind of
| brings the theoretical argument down to reality.
|
| Sure, they should be treated as separate categories of art,
| just as we don't include photographs in painting contests,
| however, that was solved by the artist promptly refusing the
| prize and disclosing the origin; but until this automatically
| dismissive attitude persists, triggering this discussion is a
| good thing - and I'd rather condemn the actions of the
| organizers, attempting to silently erase this event and
| pretending it didn't happen. Their jury did decide that at
| least in some cases an AI generated image can be better art
| than a "manually" taken photo, and they need to own that
| decision.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with just automatically dismissing AI
| created art in the context of a contest. We don't allow
| horses to enter marathons, because even though they're fast
| it's not for them. We don't even allow people to use
| performance enhancing drugs, which might be a closer
| comparison.
|
| Should we "condemn" the judges of chess tournaments for not
| allowing live coaching and chess AIs?
| eternalban wrote:
| > What he did was awesome
|
| His work is quite strong.
|
| https://www.eldagsen.com/pseudomnesia/
|
| _" Just as photography replaced painting in the reproduction
| of reality, AI will replace photography. Don't be afraid of the
| future. It will just be more obvious that our mind always
| created the world that makes it suffer."_
| coldcode wrote:
| Sorry, this image should not have won any prize. The hands
| are terrible, there are odd things around the back person's
| nose, and the highlights in the eyes are wrong, there is a
| reddish blob on the front person's head, and these are
| especially obvious when you look at it blown up a little.
| Whoever judged this contest is pretty clueless about the
| current quality of AI art generation and was easily fooled. I
| make digital art, not photography, but these jumped out at
| me.
|
| The subject matter is probably what "won" the contest, it's
| pretty well composed.
| eternalban wrote:
| I think it may have been obvious to most. I didn't really
| read up on the story ..
|
| https://www.eldagsen.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/04/preview_...
|
| .. I was impressed with composition(s) as well.
| LegitShady wrote:
| ai and photography do not have the same purposes, so its
| unlikely AI will replace photography. Photography is used to
| record the world as it is, AI art creates depictions of what
| its asked for that have no relation to reality.
|
| Rather what people were using photography for in the past may
| be replaced by AI. Before people went to stock photo sites
| for cheap images to put on their website or whatever, and
| tomorrow they'll find out it can be cheaper on midjourney or
| stable diffusion and it will do that.
|
| But AI won't replace photography for what photography does,
| rather it will replace photography as the cheapest
| satisfactory image to use on your website that doesn't need a
| depiction of reality.
| hgsgm wrote:
| > Photography is used to record the world as it is
|
| That's one use of photography. OP is about an art contest,
| not a photojournalism contest.
|
| But as far as "reproduction of reality", obviously AI
| productions unreality won't replace photography. It might
| replace reproduction of reality, though.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > OP is about an art contest, not a photojournalism
| contest.
|
| No, OP is about a photo contest, not an art contest.
|
| >World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography
| Awards
| eternalban wrote:
| I read it differently: the artist is saying (per my
| reading) that we humans have been making 'expressions of
| reality' first with paint and then with photographs. And
| now we will be using "AI", and what is good about this is
| how this latest mechanism of expression is laying bare the
| actual cause of suffering in human existence: our own minds
| and imagination.
| LegitShady wrote:
| photographs didn't destroy paint, because they don't do
| the same thing. People trying to represent the world as
| it is use photography (for the most part) and people
| wanting to express something about the world use paint.
|
| AI is even less than that - people who want a computer to
| make their artistic decisions for them have a neural net
| author an image or other work for them. generally the
| humans having no more artistic input than someone who
| commissions a piece from an artist by explaining what
| they want.
|
| A person painting makes a trillion times more artistic
| decision making than someone 'painting' with a neural
| net. They aren't the author of the work, and can't enter
| it into art competitions on their own behalf (unless the
| rules are stupid), and can't register it for copyright as
| there is no human authorship.
|
| It is the complete dissolution of human art making - its
| humans deciding to have a non human thing - that cannot
| feel emotions or understand the emotions in an image -
| make 'art' for them. Most because they are incapable of
| doing it themselves so having something is better than
| having nothing, some because they do art primarily for
| money and the neural net works faster than them and they
| haven't figured out the bit about no copyright yet, or
| will misrepresent it to illegally get a copyright on an
| image they didn't author.
| eternalban wrote:
| I'm not necessarily in disagreement with the general
| thrust of your comment.
|
| That last point about feelings and emotions however is
| not clear cut, imo. Typically the process is itertive, so
| it's a loop and there is a feeling agent in that loop.
| Also if you yourself make art, you _must_ have noticed
| how sometimes even the simplest of tools (say a brush or
| nib) create ~accidental features of the work that one
| finds entirely pleasing. This happens a lot to me with
| ink and brush :) The general input is distincly my _line_
| , it is my _hand_ w /o a question, but I have a few works
| which feature engaging aspects that were partly
| accidental, and part of the delight is precisely that:
| me, the supposed author, is surprised.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| To me, this just seems like a publicity stunt by the artist.
| Looking at the other images in the category [0], at least three
| of them are heavily edited. I see no reason why editing his image
| with AI-assisted tools should automatically disqualify the
| artist, unless the contest terms prohibit that, of which I see no
| mention in the article.
|
| What's left is an artist who sets up the contest organizers by
|
| * happily accepting the selection of his work on his website a
| month before the event (without a mention of intending to refuse
| the prize),
|
| * then literally the night the before the event, publishing an
| "open letter" about refusing the prize on the website,
|
| * and finally, showing up uninvited on stage to make his speech
| about refusing the prize.
|
| This is a clever way of increasing his name awareness by riding
| the AI art controversy wave, for sure.
|
| [0] https://archive.is/pH3Jb
| klodolph wrote:
| That's kind of a "tu quoque" analysis of what's going on here.
|
| Anyway. People who use AI editing tools are at least starting
| with a photograph, or a collection of photographs, presumably.
| It is now impossible to tell, by simple visual inspection, if
| something is a photograph or was created from image generation
| tools. That's historic.
| ratg13 wrote:
| This is all addressed in the article.
|
| (1) He says specifically that he intended it as a stunt
|
| (2) He didn't edit any image with AI, he generated it from
| nothing with text.
|
| As it was intended to be a photo competition, he felt that AI
| images don't deserve to win "photography" competitions.
|
| ----
|
| Often the only way to secure anything is to try and break it.
| This is what we do with penetration testing in technology
| systems.
|
| The problem is that the organizers aren't being proactive, so
| sometimes the only next step is some grey-hat stepping in to
| wave a big flag and saying, "hey, you might want to fix this"
| yallpendantools wrote:
| > I see no reason why editing his image with AI-assisted tools
| should automatically disqualify the artist, unless the contest
| terms prohibit that, of which I see no mention in the article.
|
| He didn't _edit_ an image so much as _generate_ it. His work is
| closer to a digital painting (from a Wacom tablet, say), than a
| color-corrected, cropped, then filtered photograph. Everyone
| else started their process with capturing light from a camera.
| tedivm wrote:
| > Just as photography replaced painting in the reproduction of
| reality, AI will replace photography. Don't be afraid of the
| future. It will just be more obvious that our mind always created
| the world that makes it suffer.
|
| That is a pretty amazing quote.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Unless I'm misinterpreting the intent, it doesn't make sense to
| me. Painting wasn't replaced?
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| As the main "reproduction of reality" it was. No one would
| take a painted portrait of their dad out and say "this is my
| dad" anymore
| nbzso wrote:
| It is mind-boggling how the "trends" and the non-stop race for
| validation make all lose their minds. How on earth a photo
| contest cannot see the false anatomy of the hands and person
| behind? Did someone in this concourse is actual photographer?
| Maybe not.
|
| So, on AI generators. I am an artist, I have painted and
| photographed all my life. The average prompter has no chance to
| win against a professional. I know which artist is presented in
| the data set, how to use the light and composition. So basically
| speaking, this is the new Photoshop. The interesting question is
| what will hold long term more value in the future? The generated
| content or analogue product.
| simplotek wrote:
| > It is mind-boggling how the "trends" and the non-stop race
| for validation make all lose their minds. How on earth a photo
| contest cannot see the false anatomy of the hands and person
| behind? Did someone in this concourse is actual photographer?
| Maybe not.
|
| I think you're trying very hard to poke holes at a very run-of-
| the-mill process. It's easy to pick apart stuff post-facto when
| you have the benefit of context and hindsight, and you are
| certain of what you're looking at.
|
| If instead you're judging artwork, it would be unthinkable to
| reason "this work is pretty good but the model's fingers might
| look a bit off, and that is a good enough reason to reject the
| prize".
|
| Throwing blanket accusations of incompetence at the jury also
| says more about yourself than the contest.
|
| The truth of the matter is that AI -generated images are
| becoming quite impressive and can be a challenge to tell apart.
| This is not a problem with a jury in a context. We had deep
| fakes in the recent past, and they are improving rapidly.
|
| It's easy to try to elevate yourself by putting down others,
| but while you're there making claims like it's obvious that the
| streaming audio of Biden and Obama and Trump and Hillary
| hanging out playing Minecraft is bullshit, multiple high-
| ranking officials already fell for calls from people using
| similar tech to impersonate world leaders.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Hard disagree, it's _exceptionally_ obvious - the hands aren
| 't just a little off, they're anatomically incorrect. And
| this is specifically a competition so one would assume that
| the judges would have at least minimal aesthetic training.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >Throwing blanket accusations of incompetence at the jury
|
| Clearly you haven't spent much time in the art world. The
| idea of competence is fundamentally opposed with the reigning
| ideology in fine art (as opposed to commercial art).
| nbzso wrote:
| I am sorry, didn't want to offend anybody. But this is
| obvious for a trained eye, which a professional must have.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Trained eye for what? I'd assume that everyone judging that
| photo contest _was_ a professional with a trained eye for
| photography; but that apparently doesn 't imply having a
| trained eye for ML-generated images, and doesn't
| necessarily even involve having looked at ML-generated
| images, much less knowing which are the common "tells" for
| detecting them.
| broast wrote:
| The person who generated the image seems to have decades of
| award winning experience in actual photography, so I wonder
| if that trained eye passes your test?
| nbzso wrote:
| Seriously?
| simplotek wrote:
| > I am sorry, didn't want to offend anybody.
|
| Calling out your need to put down others with petty,
| frivolous details to feel better about youself and your
| insecurities/frustrations is not an issue of offense.
| You're contributing to shut down an otherwise interesting
| discussion just because you feel the need to elevate
| yourself at the expense of others.
|
| > But this is obvious for a trained eye, which a
| professional must have.
|
| The fact is that you're clearly wrong, as demonstrated by
| this contest and the fact that the AI generated image was
| awarded the top prize by its jury.
|
| Your only counterclaim is that you portray yourself as
| better than others without reason or substance, and in the
| process tried to make it about you and elevate yourself at
| the expense of others by spreading baseless accusations of
| incompetence.
|
| Again, this says more about you than AI generated content
| and those who evaluate it, and this discussion is really
| not about you.
| iepathos wrote:
| The jury https://www.worldphoto.org/2023-judges each member
| more than qualifies as a professional with a trained eye
| which means your assumption that it is obvious to a
| professional trained eye is provably false. I deal with AI
| generated images a lot and have seen a lot of these kinds
| of finger distortions in AI generated images as well, but
| with this creative category and the distorted william hope-
| esque style it's easy to attribute the distortions to other
| effects if you don't already know or assume it's AI
| generated.
| eimrine wrote:
| Can you describe what is wrong with the person behind? I can
| clearly see the hands issue and even I can see a strange hair
| on another person near her left ear. But the person behind
| seems correct to me.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Look at the dark eye, an artifact on nose, the lighting on
| the cheek behind shoulder. Fingers of her hand have abnormal
| thickness, index finger has very long nail, meaning they are
| not equal in length.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The woman in the foreground seems strangely 2D, like the
| background woman is holding a cardboard cutout. The
| background woman is somehow too close.
|
| The pupils aren't quite right on the front woman's eyes.
| Her right eye has a sort of lump and her left iris isn't
| quite round.
|
| The fabric over chest looks more like carved stone.
|
| 100% I'd not have said 'AI' on first look though, and if
| someone did a reverse-switcheroo and said 'actually it's
| real' I could be convinced.
| eimrine wrote:
| Thank you, now I see it all. This artifacts use to
| rhyme/mimicre with old-photo style and big artifacts on
| top-left quarter of image so they are not easy to see but
| now I see a usual stable diffusion style with noticeable
| disrespect to 3D objects everywhere.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| This may not be photography and it's certainly controversial
| given the context, but it's still interesting, meaningful and
| "good" art produced by an artist... using AI.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I wonder if we'll start to see more things where AI is banned in
| the same way that steroids are banned in sport.
|
| Where and how the line would be drawn and you'd enforce it would
| be interesting discussions though.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| How will they enforce it though. Will they require you to send
| a video of creating the work? What will happen when people can
| fake that too? Pixel forensics?
|
| There may be ways to check the first output of an AI algorithm
| but there are a lot of filters and simple techniques that can
| disguise the source of an image.
| enriquto wrote:
| Both photography and image generation by computers are techniques
| that you can use in the ancient discipline of painting, aka
| "putting colors on a surface to produce a visual effect". Since
| its invention, photography has been a staple tecnhique for many
| painters. I don't see why "AI" should be any different.
|
| Leonardo used the camera obscura as part of the creation of some
| of his paintings. Rockwell worked from photographs to produce
| most of his illustrations. Many serious artists in the future
| will certainly spend time crafting prompts.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| AI images are not photos, obviously. We've conflated these words
| for a long time because the only way to create an image was by
| digitizing light. These AI images have more in common with a
| collage than a photo.
| circuit10 wrote:
| I don't think a collage is the right way to describe it,
| because it implies that it's literally parts of the training
| data copied together which a lot of people think but it's a lot
| more indirect than that, but I agree that it's not a photo
| because a photo is of a real thing
|
| It's more like the training data is used to score the generated
| images against to guide it into producing something that looks
| similar to a real image
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Not surprising. Decent AI generated images tend to be better then
| those created by your typical artist, and AI image generators in
| the hands of a good artist can create some incredible work that
| most human artists will struggle to compete with.
|
| Reminds me of those stories of people on horseback trying to race
| locomotives.
| flandish wrote:
| AI art is still 100% art. If any of us ever consider coding
| artistic and inventive, then AI art is also art.
|
| I code. I am also an oil painter. I suck at composition. If I ask
| an AI to layout a scene, is my meatspace painting less art? ( i
| have not done that just got the idea..)
|
| AI is a tool in the toolbox.
|
| Is someone who buys paint in tubes cheating because they did not
| grind lapis and mix it with rapeseed oil?
| robocat wrote:
| Ironically photography was historically seen as "not art" by
| many traditionalists. That background is possibly why a new
| form of art using different tools triggers them - photographic
| competitions (anthropomorphically) are maybe just a tad
| sensitive on the topic?
|
| And the artists "performance" at the ceremony is top quality
| art (humour, satire, insight, and a reflection on our society).
| neom wrote:
| I've told the story a few times on HN about the "cheating" in my
| 2007 Digital Imaging college photography contest for the Digital
| Imaging program[1]. In our instance, we're a totally (brand new)
| digital program, and someone combined some framed and created a
| scene that didn't exist, they shot the scenes separately and
| combined them. Our prof told folks to f'off when they complained
| as it was well within the lines. I agreed. That said...
|
| This, seems outside the lines. Entering a photography contest
| with work that isn't based in photography, that you didn't shoot,
| isn't in the spirit of the contest. A photograph is an image
| created by light falling on a photosensitive surface - Edit all
| you want, hell edit till it's not even the same thing anymore,
| but if you're entering a photography content, at least trigger a
| shutter. The Sony photography awards are very clearly based
| around photography as the fundamental starting point. There are
| lots of pure digital art contests to enter, so enter them.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020010
| hgsgm wrote:
| That's entirely the point of the OP. To promote AI segregation
| on art contests, and not let AI secretly win every photo
| contest.
| filoleg wrote:
| Agreed. For something like a photography contest, I am
| surprised they didn't have explicitly defined rules around it,
| like requiring contestants to provide the original RAW image
| (as a proof of work), having an explicit list of what is
| allowed to be tweaked (and nothing else would be allowed) like
| brightness/color grading/etc.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| There are steps in solutions like this (I would imagine a first
| being all images are hashed / signed by a key stored on the
| camera itself, so the orignal raw image can be audited later -
| this is something that will help more jounralistically than
| artists but it's relevant)
|
| But ultimately photography becomes a sport - yes it's possible to
| run faster / lift more if you take the drugs. But we ban that
| because of reasons, much like I suspect competitions will ban AI
| content and possibly so will newspapers.
|
| (which is why the above signing of images might be a huge step
| forward)
| visarga wrote:
| I somehow feel there are technical reasons why this won't work.
| redder23 wrote:
| Sorry if I am to lazy to look this up but was this competition
| specifically for "PHOTOGRAPHS" as the capitalized in his
| statement? If others were heavily modified ... than this seems to
| point out that this is a flawed competition rule. So they want AI
| and Photoshop stuff compete with photographs?
|
| I have a publicity stunt feel but I have to agree at the same
| time. What is even the point, this leads to photographers being
| pressured using AI and Photoshop to be "creative" if this is
| allowed, they should not talk about photographs if that case and
| make different categories.
|
| Issue is, you can not verify if some slight filters and stuff is
| used on photos. Not know much about the topic but I guess they
| all use some kind of filters. But that is still very different
| than just telling an AI to generate picture for you, even if you
| feed it your own originals.
| wslh wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't understand and I am confused.
|
| Did he submit his work in the contest and then refuse the prize
| ala Sokal [1] because it was generated using AI?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
| DangitBobby wrote:
| In the article, he explains his goal was to accelerate the
| conversation around AI in photography that the field isn't
| ready to have yet, and didn't want his submission to win.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Of course he wanted his submission to win. If his submission
| lost, it wouldn't accelerate the conversation as he hoped.
|
| What he didn't want was the prize for a photo contest.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Where is the line gonna be drawn? How much of a difference is
| there between low strength img2img and a "smart" Photoshop
| filter.
|
| Maybe "photography" contests should be more strict, with only
| specific processing filters allowed.
| dahfizz wrote:
| At a minimum, a photography contest should only allow photos -
| the output of a physical camera.
|
| There is a big distance between filters which tweak an existing
| image and generating an image from nothing.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Not at all... Stable Diffusion can do extremely subtle
| alterations. Simple things like hiding ISO noise in an image,
| or in a single spot.
|
| And its literally a continuum from "leave the image 99.9%
| unchanged" to "change 99.9% of the image"
| Pelayu wrote:
| I've entered photography contests before, and the ones I
| entered requested the raw file from the camera as well as your
| final .jpg/.png as a way of proving it was you at that took the
| image.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Generating camera raws is only going to be a few papers away.
| Pelayu wrote:
| In regards to research I'm struggling to imagine useful
| applications of being able to create such raw files. Also,
| as it's a general term for a file containing raw sensor
| data, it would be different across sensors.
|
| In any case, perhaps some kind of hardware-signed
| cryptography scheme on the files from the camera could be
| used in lieu of this development in the future.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Synthetic dataset creation for training data?
|
| "Editable" artificial images?
|
| I'll admit those are stretches. Anyway, in addition to a
| digital signing scheme, these competitions are gonna need
| more editing restrictions if they want to exclude the use
| of diffusion models.
| tecleandor wrote:
| The most obvious application would be faking criminal
| exhibits. Fake photos prrofing something
|
| RAW files generated "backwards" do already exist. For
| this, police and forensics have been using special
| cameras with hardware signatures for raw files for around
| 15 years, but Canon's and Nikon's system was broken by
| Elcomsoft like 12 years ago. Sony is trying something
| similar in their A7 IV, but I don't know how serious it
| is, and I think it's not as oriented to forensics as
| Canon and Nikon was.
|
| https://www.elcomsoft.com/news/428.html
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elcomsoft-
| claims-to...
|
| https://m.dpreview.com/news/5658217744/sony-a7-iv-gets-
| anti-...
| chasil wrote:
| The article goes on to state that the Sony competition
| refused to acknowledge the withdrawal.
|
| The author traveled to the ceremony at his own expense, found
| that he was not allocated time to speak, then went onstage
| unannounced to explain his refusal, at which point all
| physical evidence of his work was removed from the facility,
| again without comment.
|
| I agree that Sony could have saved itself trouble by
| requiring the raw camera footage with verifiable exif data.
| cobertos wrote:
| Almost sounds like the collective decision making process
| of the awards organization were in denial that the industry
| at large is changing.
|
| Feels dystopian that they would just, scrub the winning
| work from the website and physical location without
| comment, pretending as if it didn't happen.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I feel like the guy behaved pretty indecently, and to
| reward him with more attention would encourage others to
| behave similarly in the future, and detract from the
| other winners who participated in the contest in good
| faith.
| hgsgm wrote:
| What is verifiable EXIF data? The submission was simulating
| a 100 year old photo. There could never be verifiable EXIF
| data for that. Sony didn't care; they liked the creativity.
|
| Sony problem was in not catching someone who wanted to
| embarrass them. There's not a good way to detect that in
| advance.
| chasil wrote:
| The image was submitted digitally, so if it was
| originally antique, there would be a digitization stage,
| scanner or camera.
|
| Sony makes cameras; signing the image in the exif with a
| public key would establish authenticity.
|
| This event isn't likely to spur that change, but it may
| well come.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| That doesn't exclude the use of Stable Diffusion as an
| editing tool.
| Pelayu wrote:
| What sort of editing did you have in mind? If you are using
| SD to add things to the photo for example, you would see
| the difference between the raw file and the .jpg you
| submitted?
| hartator wrote:
| It's already the case to add textures and patterns. Like
| sharpening images of the moon and its craters with AI.
| It's hard to draw the line. Some phone does these AI work
| live now!
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Some examples:
|
| - Changing the style of the whole photo to (for instance)
| make it look old and analog.
|
| - "Enhancing" it with HDR, depth of field, focus
| everywhere or something like that.
|
| - Altering exposure beyond what you could get out of a
| underexposed/overexposed RAW file.
|
| - Stylizing the human subjects to make them look more
| attractive, more grimey or whatever
|
| All these things could arguably be done in photoshop, but
| its just very labor intensive and more hit-or-miss. Hence
| the contest rules would have to exclude most photoshop
| work if they want to exclude diffusion.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of this predates generative AI. I know someone who used
| to be really into photography competitions and the like and he
| basically got discouraged because the photos he really worked
| on to get perfect right out of the camera were suddenly
| starting to lose to digital photos that had been enhanced in
| Photoshop in various ways.
|
| Photos used for editorial purposes in newspapers and magazines
| at least historically had pretty strict rules about
| manipulation generally--including the removal of distracting
| elements that had nothing really to do with the core "truth" of
| the photo. I suppose the thinking was that manipulation can
| quickly become a slippery slope.
| Kye wrote:
| What wins photography competitions breaks assumptions:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcxcGBbLIwk
|
| You're basically putting photos in front of people who've
| seen it all. They're not impressed by technical perfection or
| what gets 90+ on 500px.
|
| edit: It's more likely your friend was losing out to people
| who could take more photos and be more experimental due to
| not being limited by the the cost of film or delay of
| development. Film can't touch digital's feedback loop.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably true of a lot of things. Food, theatre, art
| generally... Well-executed versions of something they've
| seen a million times before just isn't all that
| interesting.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Maybe contests should ask themselves if they need to change.
| Handing out prices for creations at the event.
|
| It is now like you had contests for nail smiths, and suddenly you
| could buy the nicest nails at home depot.
|
| Edit: Also you wouldn't hand out prices for a reprint of an oil
| painting.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The contest sponsor sells cameras. So... maybe the whole
| business needs to change, if reality is obsolete.
| yborg wrote:
| It's more like having a contest that issues a prize to the
| person that hired the best artist to create a work. I guess
| it's as valid as any other arbitrary competition; we issue
| prizes to the owner of the fastest horse in a race regardless
| of who rides it.
| eimrine wrote:
| Just look at the most left hand, it is so crooked. But at least 2
| of 3 hands are correct which is more than lucky based on my
| experience with stable diffusion. Usually the result is something
| like this image hosted on twitter:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32875215
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| You can get them looking pretty good with inpainting (just cut
| out the hands area), a hands LORA, and a couple of generation
| attempts.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Honestly this speaks more about their so-called competition for
| this to have taken first prize, because that "photograph" has
| some pretty big AI generation red flags in it, including the
| terribly smudged and distorted hands.
| nstart wrote:
| Absolutely. This was the case even when the artist won that art
| competition using midjourney. The overall mood of the picture
| was nice but the moment you looked at it a little more closely,
| everything that wasn't the immediate subjects kind of warped
| into nonsense. Would love to hear from the judges of these
| competitions on how they select winning entries
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "prompt whispering" sounds like something a tech priest would do.
| danso wrote:
| A renowned documentary photographer (e.g. worked for Magnum) I've
| greatly respected recently announced a NFT project consisting of
| AI-generated photos on the topic of Cuban refugees [0]
|
| > _IMAGERY IS NOT REAL_
|
| > _90 Miles is a post-photography AI reporting illustration
| experiment exploring historical events and realities of Cuban
| life that have, since 1961, motivated Cubans to cross the 90
| miles of ocean separating Havana from Florida._
|
| > _For over 25 years, I kept a list of subjects to document but
| was unable to, mainly due to access or that access was
| impossible. While working in Cuba from 2014-2016, more subjects
| were added to the list with the assumption they would likely
| never be created..._
|
| > _...The Cubans who attempt the crossing are incredibly
| resourceful, as necessary to the journey and as reflected in
| rafts often assembled from inner tubes, pieces of wood and
| plastic, household supplies, etc._
|
| Of all the AI-art controversies so far, this one really rankled
| me. This guy has had an immensely successful career in
| documentary photography, he's gained fame and prestige based on
| the veneer of truth and reality that journalism confers to his
| line of work. And now he's going to torch the integrity of the
| profession for some NFT profit?
|
| Ironically, he's done a bunch of work documenting Cuban life. So
| the photos he generates will probably bear some resemblance to
| reality he's observed. But why not amplify the work of
| young/undiscovered photographers who do have the chance to
| document the plight of refugees? Just shocked at how little he
| cares about trivializing refugees and future aspiring
| documentarians.
|
| [0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CqniSVjrj0h/?hl=en
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > And now he's going to torch the integrity of the profession
| for some NFT profit?
|
| I think you are missing the point.
|
| There is no "integrity" in photography outside of the
| photographer one. Images are and always have been fabrication.
| Choice of subject, framing, setting, careful curation, the
| photo is a medium of expression which is not that different
| from writing something.
|
| The message Christopher Brown is conveying is very clear. It's
| not that meaningfully different to create the point of view he
| wants to share using machines or using a camera.
| danso wrote:
| > _the photo is a medium of expression which is not that
| different from writing something._
|
| Yes, of course photography is an expression for the reasons
| you mention. When I see a documentary photograph, I know it's
| not the "whole picture" but just a moment lasting 1/200s and
| maybe 1 out of 500 photos that a photographer picked out. But
| I do assume that the moment I'm seeing did actually exist
| from that perspective, and that there are real limits to how
| the photographer can control the image. That claim to reality
| is all that documentary photography has to elevate it from
| artistic and illustrative photography.
|
| Here's an example (from the NFT AI Cuban project) of what
| gets lost when we treat realistic AI-generations on the same
| epistemic level of a traditional documentary photo
|
| https://twitter.com/SaabGT750/status/1643651637033017345
|
| Knowing that this photo is AI generated, what are we supposed
| to make from it? Of course the human pictured doesn't exist,
| but does this helmet actually exist as part of the Cuban
| refugee life, or is it purely an artifact of the AI's
| hallucination? Documentary work has been great at showing how
| fact is stranger than fiction -- e.g. how during in war,
| people can have moments of laughter and goofiness. Treating
| AI photos and documentary work on equal footing ultimately
| erodes our understanding of how expansive and weird reality
| can be.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-15 23:01 UTC)