All this hype and scares about AI in photography is missing an important point. No matter how good it is, far from taking over the world of photography, AI will always fail at a crucial moment. Our recent history tells us why.
A glimpse into the future of photography
Sitting at my desk, suffering from the latest COVID variant, I say to the smart device strapped to my chest: “Sirexa. Show a photo of the sunrise behind Coquet Island as it will look tomorrow morning. “
Not too long ago, the airline dispatched a drone to get pictures from exactly the right spot, but that’s rarely necessary these days. The computer analyzed the Bureau of Meteorology’s data and then studied the thousands of photographs already on the Internet of the island and its lighthouse. It then generates predictions about what the scene should look like.
My office wall shows one of the photos. I ask the computer to animate it. The waves hit the shore, the light flashed, the swallows dived into the sea.
“Sirexa. Add sound. “
That may have once felt like science fiction. But every day, it is getting closer to reality. We read about how this technology is the end of photography. But maybe it’s not as scary as we think. There is one important point that scaremongers forget to mention.
A visit to the unreal world
I got a surprise yesterday. I was wandering in the never-ending forest of the Internet, and I came across something that I thought was long gone. That’s the virtual reality world of Second Life. Out of curiosity, I opened an account around 2004. However, I quickly got bored with it, and replaced it with real life. Reality is far more interesting and rewarding than any artificial world inhabited by artificial people. Such worlds have become the basis of many computer games, where non-player characters, computer-generated people who are part of the game’s story, live their limited lives. . The drawback, it’s both in terms of character depth and longevity. People don’t care about those automated cars. When they are eaten by a dinosaur, shot by a laser or cut in half by an orc, the player will not grieve over them.
Second life and other virtual worlds are supposed to be the next big thing. They allow complete anonymity so the user can become a completely different person, hidden behind their avatar. They were born at a time when the Internet was still very new in most people’s lives and there were a lot of paranoid doubts about sharing one’s identity online. As internet forums began to grow, they also encouraged users not to use their real names.
There is a bad side to this. Demons are hiding behind false identities. They were delighted to have sex workers, especially women – trolls who are always misinterpreted – find out their true identities and reveal it to the world. However, from the beginning, I used my own name on the net. My reason is that it shows up in the phone book. Since I’m not called John Smith or Peter Jones, I’m easy to find. One or two trolls targeted me, but I was found by many better people than sad, vindictive people sitting in their sweaty bedrooms.
How Facebook changed everything
Then Facebook appeared. Unlike Second Life and internet forums, it requires people to use their real identities. This is a good thing in a way, as it went some way to stamping out anonymous trolling and providing some protection – albeit very little – against hidden copyright theft. name. Those who hide their faces behind fake masks with malicious intentions have been exposed and sometimes get sued for their bullying behavior. However, Facebook has control over our personal data that we have posted on various websites and that data is worth the money. Anonymity would be against their business model.
Of course, Facebook is not alone in this. When you enter a store and they ask you for an email address, or if you use a loyalty card, the stores collect your data so they can target you with ads and distribute them. trend in the market.
If these super-rich and big corporations see something that they think will improve data collection, boost their business, or enhance their reputation, they’ll buy it or clone it. . For example, Facebook bought Instagram, Donald Trump created his own social media platform, and Twitter changed the way Tweets are displayed allowing larger tweets to be edited.
It’s also how third parties monetize our photos. Every time you post an image online and people like or comment on it, that data is checked and reviewed by computers and used as part of big data to improve the company’s bottom line. . Those robots will see what time the photo was posted, what hashtags you used, and who you tagged in the post. But they will also use the data to target you with marketing. Those hashtags and location data make it easy for the robot to determine what’s in the photo, where you’ve been, and what your preferences are. As a result, they’ll adjust their algorithms to tailor the ads most likely to engage you.
Unsurprisingly, Instagram doesn’t seem to actively prevent fusion accounts from sharing your photos without your permission. They generate lots of likes and comments, all of which add to their collected data.
If you don’t like it, you can switch to another platform, such as Vero. But if that turns out to be a huge success, then you can be sure that it will also be acquired by a big business. It’s not just Facebook that will do this and it’s not just done for financial purposes. If you are registered with a political platform, you can be sure that your data will be used in a way to secure your vote.
Some people imagine that Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Tony Bezos, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and other super-rich people are all poring over a person’s personal data, and discover that you like Kellogg’s Cornflakes for breakfast. and Starbucks coffee at 11:00 am. a Wednesday. But, let’s be honest, you’re really not that interesting. Me too. It’s just a computer shuffling your data while it also compares millions of other people’s data. It doesn’t know you. You are just a small, uninteresting single particle in an ocean of data.
Computers know a lot about you and your buying habits, just like 61% of humanity is online. But the people who own them don’t care what brand of camera you own, what your inside foot measurements are, or where you were last Thursday. But those computers know more about you and your family than you think. Ten years ago, there was a much-shared story about a supermarket chain has started sending out coupons for baby products for a teenage girl based on her buying habits. This infuriated her father, who complained to the store. He later called to apologize that the store’s computer program was working properly; she was pregnant. In the past 10 years, the amount of data has exploded and the processing algorithms have now become much more complex.
Like the story of a teenage girl, we find that computer behavior scary. We were confused when we mentioned in a phone conversation the latest lens, and then it started appearing in advertisements. We feel like our personal lives have been compromised. There is something unnatural and unsettling about it. Likewise, animators know this, and in movies the characters are made to look less realistic. Artificial humans are getting better, but they still lack the human spark and, therefore, seem unreal.
Just as we created artificial intelligence, AI now creates art. But, a large part of the value of art lies in the fact that it is an interpretation of what the artist is thinking and feeling. A machine that doesn’t think or feel. AI images, however realistic, can lack humanity. They don’t sense how you feel when you hold that viewfinder in front of their eyes.
And that is why art in any form, including photography, AI will not be able to replace humans. When we look at a van Gogh painting or an Ansel Adams picture, part of the meaning is the personality, the soul behind the work. AI creations are not human. But.
