[HN Gopher] AI camera with no lens
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AI camera with no lens
Author : anitakirkovska
Score : 247 points
Date : 2023-05-31 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theprompt.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theprompt.io)
| boo-ga-ga wrote:
| Really love the concept. There also was a project with instant
| camera that draws cartoons based on what is captured:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181003104348/https://danmacnis...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I see no reason to consider this a camera. Its just an image
| generator.
| capableweb wrote:
| It's a camera in the general sense of "result is a image" but
| not a camera in the sense of capturing physical properties of
| our world and convert it into bytes/pixels/analog film.
|
| I guess it's a "camera" as much as 3D software has "cameras"
| for controlling what the viewport is pointing towards.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Sigh. Thanks for your observation, I guess? Party-pooper! ;p
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Think its more interesting as an art piece when we take into
| account the amount of AI and processing phone cameras do that
| crosses at times into the areas of "just an image generator"
| belugacat wrote:
| I can't find it now, but there was a prototype someone made in
| the 2000s of a camera that, when you pressed the shutter, would
| fetch an image on Flickr that most closely matched your GPS
| coordinates + time of day, acting in a similar way as a
| "crowdsourced camera with no lens".
|
| Fun to the see a modern reincarnation of that idea.
|
| (While digging around to find the above, I did find yet another
| camera project that does the opposite: _" Matt Richardson's
| "Descriptive Camera" sends your pictures to Amazon's Mechanical
| Turk and jobs out the task of writing a brief description of each
| image, then outputs the text on a thermal printer. It's a camera
| that captures descriptions, not pictures."_
| (https://boingboing.net/2012/04/25/descriptive-camera-prints-...)
| spython wrote:
| In 2013 a friend and I made a similar photo app (called
| parallelogram.me) but based on visual similarity instead of GPS
| coordinates: https://rybakov.com/parallelogram/
| rgovostes wrote:
| The Camera Restricta from ~2014 prevents the user from taking
| pictures of over-photographed scenes:
|
| https://philippschmitt.com/archive/2018/work/camera-restrict...
|
| Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10221405
| dmd wrote:
| Don't forget https://confluence.org/
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| +1 Great time, we claimed "first" on three confluence points
| on the site. I find hilarious pictures of me on that site :-)
| icepat wrote:
| Interesting, but (to me at least) the point of photography will
| always be the technical process behind it, and capturing a
| _specific_ aspect of the environment. This will turn out fine
| generic images, but if you want to capture more, that's not
| something you can just synthesise.
|
| This isn't really a camera, it's a GPS hooked up to Stable
| Diffusion.
| teacpde wrote:
| source site getting HN hug?
| manx wrote:
| There was also a camera in 2012, which sent its picture to
| mechanical turk to ask for a description:
| https://hackaday.com/2012/04/25/a-camera-that-describes-a-pi...
| dmbche wrote:
| And it prints the description on thermal paper, and the cost of
| the picture is about 1.25$ - it's so close to a polaroid! It's
| so cool.
| dan-g wrote:
| Original source:
| https://twitter.com/BjoernKarmann/status/1663496103998750721
| andrevoget wrote:
| The actual source is
| https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/13ui4xe/celebri...
| dan-g wrote:
| Nope, that is "Celebrity What-Ifs" on the Midjourney
| Reddit...
|
| The source linked from the tweet is
| https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/paragraphica, but it seems
| to be not responding.
| PinkMilkshake wrote:
| Very cool idea. I wonder if the design is a reference to the
| star-nosed mole. Appropriate for a blind camera!
| thecosas wrote:
| Correct! From the site
| https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/paragraphica
|
| " The star-nosed mole, which lives and hunts underground, finds
| light useless. Consequently, it has evolved to perceive the
| world through its finger-like antennae, granting it an unusual
| and intelligent way of "seeing." This amazing animal became the
| perfect metaphor and inspiration for how empathizing with other
| intelligences and the way they perceive the world can be nearly
| impossible to imagine from a human perspective."
| ayoreis wrote:
| I thought this was going to be a more advanced version of this:
| https://petapixel.com/2022/05/04/newly-developed-camera-can-...
| amelius wrote:
| I guess you can take photos of the world and turn everything into
| a giant NeRF.
|
| https://www.plainconcepts.com/nerf-3d/
| dmbche wrote:
| If anything, this is a neat art piece asking "Why do people take
| pictures?".
|
| I've found often that the gut feel that makes you take the shot
| doesn't necessarily know when you have the right composition or
| what the subject of the shot actually is, you just hit he
| shutter, you know that this was the shot.
|
| Then, when looking at the shots, you have all the time and the
| world to analyse and find meaning and beauty in this sliver of an
| instant.
|
| By replacing this by a random seed, a 20 word prompt and gps
| localisation, I doubt that anyone would have a personal
| connection to the image, or to the instant it was taken. It
| become a "clean", "sanitized" image, that's only esthetic (or
| arguably memetic depending on your prompt), and is wholly
| separate from the person that took it.
|
| You also lose all of the information that you can not consciously
| perceive while taking the shot/writing the prompt, since you
| filter what you see through the lens of language, and then back
| into visual.
|
| It's neat !
| jfengel wrote:
| I am a lousy photographer. I never get that "this was the shot"
| feeling.
|
| I assume I could develop it with practice. I just never did. I
| rarely had a camera growing up, and now that I have one with me
| all of the time, I treat it like the Instamatics I used to
| have. The pictures are terrible.
|
| At best, they're a kind of bookmark that I was at that place
| and saw that thing. It won't have an emotional resonance for
| anybody but me, and for me it's just bringing up the much
| better picture in my head. If they want a good picture of the
| thing, I'll go find one that somebody else took.
|
| All of which is to say... I really admire good photographers. I
| respect their work, and the diligence it took to develop their
| eye.
|
| This is, as you note, an interesting art piece on that same
| subject. I'm afraid I'm better with words, so this is mine.
| aspyct wrote:
| It's really hard, maybe impossible to come up to a new place
| and instantly take a good shot.
|
| You need to stay there, move around, explore the space, the
| light, the interaction with the living.
|
| Eventually you find a good way to tell the story of the
| place. You get lucky. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it
| isn't.
| ajuc wrote:
| Fun exercise if you're new to photography is taking photos and
| cropping them to let's say 1/4th the size. You often get photos
| giving you a completely new perspective on things you've seen
| many times.
|
| For example it's easy to make a photo look like it was taken
| from a non-existing tower if you crop the upper part of a
| regular photo. Or you can focus on details that you always skip
| over because there's something more eye-grabbing nearby.
|
| This is also why I love to see photos made by people who
| visited my city for the first time. They don't know which parts
| are pretty so they capture stuff I wouldn't think to
| photograph.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| exhibit a of how prompt engineering wont be a valued salaried
| skill, it is a valuable skill to create a revenue stream from
| sgok wrote:
| it's like magic. incredible.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Even if you bring that back to the 80s they'd think you are doing
| witch craft if you showed this to anyone
| mk_stjames wrote:
| This comment reminded me of some thoughts...
|
| When Stable Diffusion was released, and I saw the whole model
| was ~4 GB.. I instantly thought how insane it would be if it
| somehow was possible to take the model and a compiled binary of
| the inference code for x86_64 (without any modern extensions)
| on a DVD back in time, say around 2005-2006ish, and the
| implications that would have, psychologically, on the world.
|
| You could load that model on a moderate desktop with a 64 bit
| Core 2 Duo and 8GB of ram and let it chug .. without GPU
| acceleration, on CPU only it would take ~2 hours to make an
| image. But it would do it without an internet connection,
| without any inspectable code or heuristics... just... numbers,
| spitting out an image from text of whatever_people_want.
|
| It would be called a hoax. (In fact, I came across people on
| reddit when Dalle2 came out claiming it was somehow a trick or
| a hoax, and that all the images it produced must be existing
| beforehand somehow and prerendered).
|
| Scientists who dissected the weights file and the machine code
| for the inference engine would eventually figure out it was a
| neural net, but how such a net was trained would be a complete
| mystery. Theories involving aliens would likely appear.
|
| I wonder if it would be allowed to be made public, just the
| knowledge that such a thing was working. It would scare people,
| I think. Having it make these images without anyone knowing
| how.
|
| Hell, it is kinda scary now, ever knowing how it all works.
| bafe wrote:
| [dead]
| leononame wrote:
| Cute and fun idea, but it'd be nice if it could take better
| indoor photos.
|
| Jokes aside, I think this demonstrates that AI generation isn't
| too great if you have something very specific in mind, at least
| it looks like the generated picture deviates from the real one,
| though it's impressive that it's still so extremely similar.
|
| The virtual one doesn't load for me unfortunately
| anitakirkovska wrote:
| their servers are overloaded, I had to wait ~15 minutes for the
| page to load
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, the camera already has decent long exposure
| capabilities.
| peddamat wrote:
| So it's basically a Samsung.
| Solvency wrote:
| Idea: AI police sketch artist.
|
| 3D printed case. Resting on a table. Witness describes the
| suspect. 10 seconds later it prints out an AI generated ink
| sketch.
|
| I mean why not? Sell it through to every police station in your
| state. You can even put a cute little police badge emblem on the
| case.
| anitakirkovska wrote:
| hahaha that's not a bad idea at all
| radarsat1 wrote:
| It's intriguing, because I wonder how this would affect
| police work. I'm imagining things here, but I assume that
| when a profile sketch is developed, all officers using that
| image know that it's "just a sketch" because, it looks like a
| drawing, because it is one.
|
| So what happens if you now generate a photorealistic "sketch"
| based on a description? Are officers going to be sufficiently
| aware to know that's not a actual photo of the guy they are
| looking for, and act accordingly? Or is it going to heavily
| bias a manhunt effort? moreover, what happens when the photo
| randomly ends up close to someone present in the dataset?
| lalopalota wrote:
| make the system output a sketch. boom - problem solved.
| Solvency wrote:
| Prints "<eye witness description of suspect> in <${art
| style}>"
|
| Driven by a little knob selector.
|
| Featuring 3 art styles: 1. Police sketch classic 2.
| Realistic photo 3. Manga character
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The police already know those sketches are super fake lol.
| The point of those isn't to arrest the right person it's to
| have an excuse to hassle arrest or maybe kill a minority.
| discordianfish wrote:
| These ideas are what we should be worried about, not the
| paperclip thing.
| yyyk wrote:
| How is that idea any more concerning than a regular human-
| drawn police sketch?
| jkestner wrote:
| Lack of accountability.
| ygjb wrote:
| Police in your jurisdiction are held accountable?
| [deleted]
| yyyk wrote:
| Accountability for what? I recall Procedure already
| requires approval of the final sketch by the witness.
| Witnesses could always make mistakes, but that's true
| even in the current process. Or is your argument sketches
| should never be used?
|
| In fairness, with the ubiquity of cameras, sketches are
| much less required...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Didn't see the comments yesterday where HN achieved
| consensus that racist AI might be real but isn't that bad
| if it is?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Not really sure you can say AI is "racist".
|
| It can't think, or form opinions. It's not "intelligent"
| in any real sense.
|
| It's just Eliza with a really, *really* big array of
| canned responses to interpolate between.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _It 's just Eliza with a really, _really* big array of
| canned responses to interpolate between.*
|
| So, just like people, then.
| digging wrote:
| > Not really sure you can say AI is "racist".
|
| > It can't think, or form opinions. It's not
| "intelligent" in any real sense.
|
| Honest question, what is the purpose of this comment?
| What is the change you want to see coming out of this
| semantic argument?
| cthalupa wrote:
| No one is arguing that the AI has some sort of
| intentional racism and inherent real intelligence - they
| aren't trying to anthropomorphize it.
|
| The argument is that the output is racially
| discriminatory for a variety of reasons and it's easier
| to just say "it's racist" than "Many of the datasets that
| AI is trained on under- or over-represent many ethnic
| groups" and then dive into the details there.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| In the racism-as-individual-intentional-malice framework
| sure. But I'm a consequentialist on this one. If it
| causes disparate & unjust outcomes mediated by perceived
| race then describing it as racist makes sense. No intent
| necessary.
| yyyk wrote:
| Our hypothetical AI won't make any decisions. It just
| makes sketches as described and approved by witnesses.
| The relevant racism here is the one any witnesses may
| have, that's true even with a human police sketch artist.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "as described" according to what? There is simply no way
| to create image from words without something closely
| resembling decisions. Maybe "it" won't "make" those
| decisions, but they will be made somewhere.
| yyyk wrote:
| Yea, somebody will have to evaluate whether the image
| matches the word, and that is currently done by the
| witnesses themselves. How is it worse than the current
| state?
| st00 wrote:
| Since you opened with passive-aggressive hints of racism,
| it's possible that you're not following the thread, or
| actually reading the replies.
|
| Please draw your attention to the discussion about the
| witness in the process of image generation. For example:
|
| Officer: "Could you describe the man who attacked you,
| miss."
|
| Witness: "Well, he had ...eyes, a ... forehead, and ..."
|
| <here's the impotent part for you, _lady>
|
| Officer grabs the first rendering from the machine and
| shows it to the witness: "Did he look like this?"
|
| Witness: "No, his eyes were set further apart."
|
| Whir, whir, the machine prints another image.
|
| Officer: "More like this, then?"
|
| And so on...
|
| In the scenario I described, I'm not sure where a new
| source of racism is introduced.
|
| Help me see this differently.
| ladberg wrote:
| It might output a much more detailed image than a human-
| drawn sketch which could be less useful or more damaging
| than the vague sketch.
|
| Imagine that a police officer is looking for someone
| matching the image but doesn't know that it's hallucinated
| from a vague description, they could let the real suspect
| go or incorrectly arrest someone who happens to look like
| the AI generated image but otherwise doesn't have any
| reason to be a suspect.
|
| Police are already greatly overestimating the accuracy of
| their own facial recognition tools because they don't
| realize the limits of the technology, and this would just
| be worse.
| ruined wrote:
| businesses, states, markets, any organization or other system
| that incorporates super-human agency is already AI, so far
| performed manually
|
| the progression of technological "AI" has just been the
| automation and acceleration of their logic and operations
|
| what paperclips are the police maximizing?
|
| everything the alarmists are afraid of has already happened
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| arrests
| mcbuilder wrote:
| Well, maybe it will be a plus then for minorities that all of
| the training data is of white people. I only joke, as this is a
| horrible idea all around, but I appreciate your creativity.
| ge96 wrote:
| yeah something I thought about before, all of a sudden you're
| the most wanted person and police just complies because that's
| what the system says
|
| would be crazy, probably a movie plot somewhere
| dmbche wrote:
| Not too far from Minority Report
| ScottEvtuch wrote:
| This is basically the plot of "The Net" starring Sandra
| Bullock. A group of hackers steals her identity and creates a
| new one for her in various systems to cause the police to
| believe she is a wanted felon.
| foolproofplan wrote:
| i love the idea! personally, i'd cast tom cruise in it cause
| he's just such a great actor.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I doubt it would change anything from what they do currently
| with police sketches; it would just be a faster, more
| accurate version. It's still just one piece of data they have
| to work from. The victim could describe the person to an AI,
| and it would update the 3D model on the fly.
|
| "White Male, Curly hair, mole on face"
|
| Generate.
|
| "Good, but he had a larger nose, and blue eyes."
|
| Generate.
|
| "He was a bit more gaunt, and had some stubble."
|
| Generate.
|
| "Nearly there. More pronounced check bones, and make the jaw
| a bit softer"
|
| Generate.
|
| In 5 minutes or less, you could get a near exact picture of
| the potential criminal; something that might take up to an
| hour or more normally with a professional police sketch
| artist, and it could easily be in 3D too. There's tremendous
| value in that.
| code_runner wrote:
| I think having the feedback throughout the process would
| probably taint the whole thing
| themoonisachees wrote:
| This implies there is such a thing as a reliable
| eyewitness.
|
| Even victims themselves are famously bad at identifying
| criminals.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| There is probably some "wisdom in crowds" for identifying
| a suspect. For example one person usually can't estimate
| the number of gumballs in a jar, but some studies have
| shown that if you survey 100 people you get a very
| accurate number. Maybe you need far less than that.. 2-3
| people + AI perhaps comes up with a reasonably accurate
| estimation of reality.
| dmbche wrote:
| Sadly, events are far more complex than counting items.
| For example, during the Columbine shooting, many students
| thought there were 4 shooters (while there were only 2),
| because at some point one of them remove their hoodie and
| the other turned their baseball cap backwards. The police
| thought there were shooters on the second floor because
| of an optical illusion.
|
| These types of problems are very widespread - it's not
| rare that people misremember details because of the
| stress and trauma, and it's also well known that the
| process of describing/asking questions can cause bias
| into the victim, as seen in the many cases of people
| admitting crimes they didn't commit after long
| interogations.
|
| I've also heard that the quality of police sketches was
| highly related to the person making the sketch, some have
| high correlation rate but that is not the norm i.e.: the
| average sketch artist might not be reliable on average.
|
| JCS Psychology on Youtube is a great channel showing the
| processes happening during interrogations, if you're
| interested.
| digging wrote:
| So, this is pretty much backwards from how police sketches
| actually work and it would likely obliterate any
| reliability from the system (which, as I understand, is
| very low already - and even worse for computer-generated
| imagery).
|
| People have _bad_ memories and bad perception in stressful
| situations. They don 't actually know what the person
| looked like; they don't have a strong model in their
| brains. Police sketchers use clever questioning techniques
| to get details about features that people wouldn't
| otherwise think to describe or even realize they have
| knowledge about. The truth is that there is an absolute
| limitation to the effectiveness of any facial image
| reconstruction, which is the limits of human memory. Adding
| AI to the mix can't change that, but it's extremely likely
| to influence the witness to describing a _less accurate_
| face with _higher confidence_. In other words, a disaster.
| itronitron wrote:
| That opens up a whole new set of job opportunities for "prompt
| engineering"
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| As I understand it most police departments already use some
| kind of computer aided facial composite software instead of a
| traditional sketch artist. I can think of several dystopian
| reasons throwing AI into the mix might not be great, but tbe
| larger problem with this is why does it need to be sketched in
| pen and why does it need to be cute.
|
| Might make a neat like coin op charicature thing though.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Oh dear, see through cameras are about to become a thing.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| At first, I thought, "Cool, a sensor but no lens." Nope, no
| sensor.
| random3 wrote:
| use-case, use with AR glasses to live enhance current location
| m463 wrote:
| this kind of technology is just what we need. It will always take
| a photo of the past, with more youthful self, hallucinated.
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