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Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who saw the original accusation, only a few will see the follow-up. It will forever be known that iPhones replace peo

Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who saw the original accusation, only a few will see the follow-up. It will forever be known that iPhones replace people's heads with leaves. This is how urban legends are born. This is one of the few times I'll ever feel sorry for Apple! I can only imagine the calls they're going to get from Karen's who didn't take good pictures to begin with and blame Apple for it because they saw an internet that one time that somebody's iPhone replaced a head with some leaves.

infotropy 5y ago
That or leaf people (similar to lizard people) can only be detected using iPhones.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Wouldn't need to obscure leaf people if we turned everyone into leaf people.
jpxw 5y ago
I find that people on here are _extremely_ uncharitable when it comes to anything Apple
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tshaddox 5y ago
Eh, I mean you’re right that more people will hear the accusation than the retraction, but I think everyone already knows and will continue to know that iPhones have excellent cameras. I wouldn’t be worried about the reputation of iPhone cameras.
- dagmx 5y ago
  It's less about the reputation of the cameras but there was an unhealthy level of conspiracy in the original thread with regards to trust of digital images in general. That post was already being widely used to justify the fairly ludite views on image upscaling by the judge in the Rittenhouse trial for example.
  - in3d 5y ago
    The judge was absolutely right to allow the defense to make sure no AI upscaling is used. It has nothing to do with Luddite views.
    - donarb 5y ago
      There was no AI upscaling. If you enlarge an image between two white pixels, the inserted pixel is white, you will not get an interpolated black pixel.
    - dagmx 5y ago
      The judge didn't merely ask whether any such thing was used. He continuously pressed his own uninformed opinion over the evidence rather than trying to educate himself on the matter, especially given "expert" testimony https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhouse-bruce-schroeder-screenshot-zoom-in https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhous... That's throwing his own incorrect mistrust of the technology into things. It wasn't based on precedent or founded by rational examples. He also didn't provide alternate means for video playback that he would trust. It's reductionist. At the very least, a competent prosecution should have then pulled up content in VLC and said "the source code for zooming is here and verifiable"
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Interpolation algorithms (such as bicubic) used for zooming are not “AI” anymore than a decompression algorithm is. There’s no “training” involved; it’s an entirely “pure” algorithm. Same input in gets the exact same output out.
  - usrusr 5y ago
mc32 5y ago
Looking at the original, yes, something leafy is in the foreground; however, the person’s visage and locks are made into cubist/polygonal-like leafiness in the background.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Yeah, this seems like damage control. The AI definitely made a mess of that woman's face.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Digory 5y ago
Twitter should have the ability to issue apology/retraction tweets. They know who's seen the original.
- bluecatswim 5y ago
  Their largest audience is "journalists" who wouldn't be happy with something like that.
wellthisisgreat 5y ago
This is why I don’t like Twitter. Post now, think later
dagmx 5y ago
I think it also speaks greatly to people's paranoia about technology they don't fully understand. I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that because they know just enough to know it's possible but are not perhaps familiar with a given domain (I certainly know that applies to me). It's perhaps some spin-off of the dunning-kruger observation... There must be a spot on the curve where a person knows just enough to be freaked out by what they're seeing, but not enough to explain it fully. Whereas here the Halide devs know the domain well enough to quickly diagnose it.
- corobo 5y ago
  > I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that because they know just enough to know it's possible Absolutely think this describes what happened I'd have probably been more skeptical myself had I not seen an ad earlier in the day of an Android phone removing people from the background of an image as easily as you'd crop it. Whoops!
blondin 5y ago
OMG, i was reading Quora today thinking exactly about what you wrote in the first paragraph. but in a different context. there is that false story that gathered tons of likes and comments, even though a buried comment debunked the whole thing. the worst part is that it's since been shared in many Quora spaces. where it is gathering more likes and comments. i stopped for a minute and wondered if the situation could have been prevented.
OJFord 5y ago
The (a of course, but the one originally involved) responded 'it's a very cool lesson in focal length compression' though; so it seems to me from that & still from looking at the image that the iPhone is doing something - making choices, engineering trade-offs - that makes this accidental edge case worse.
- jolux 5y ago
  No, focal length and its effects on imaging is a fundamental aspect of how lenses work. You could reproduce this with any camera. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photog...
  - jolux 5y ago
    This case actually seems even simpler though. There was a leaf in the foreground obscuring the face from the camera's perspective. Distortion doesn't quite enter into it.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      They're not talking about the obscuring itself, but the focal compression effect which makes it look a lot like the leaf is where the head should be, rather than clearly being in front of said head. Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably doesn't help.
      - jolux 5y ago
        > Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably doesn't help. I think it's mostly this. The photograph is incredibly noisy, very difficult to tell what's going on.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Oh I didn't realise that was called 'compression', makes sense though, I was just thinking too software-y! Don't modern iPhones have multiple cameras for depth of field though, it could (or intends to) do something clever to make it clearer couldn't (resp. ) it?
Veen 5y ago
It's quite amusing though that so many brain cycles were wasted trying to figure out how ML image processing was to blame. I don't recall anyone in the previous thread saying: maybe there's a leaf between the camera and the woman's head. It certainly didn't occur to me that it was something so obvious. (btw, is the "Karen" reference really necessary? It's a sexist, racist insult that detracts from an otherwise interesting comment)
- dan_pixelflow 5y ago
  Genuine Q: how is it racist?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ravar 5y ago
    Its racist against the group that you "can't" be racist against
    - philosopher1234 5y ago
      It’s racist against the group who can handle a bit of racism.
      - ratsmack 5y ago
        You didn't define which group that is... maybe you can enlighten us.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        White people, particularly white women. I'm fairly sure you knew this? Here's the definition of the pejorative "Karen" [1]: Karen is a pejorative term for a white woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal. The term is a meme depicting white women who use their privilege to demand their own way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)
paganel 5y ago
For what it's worth I did send my friends this tweet with the rebuttal, after I had sent the original tweet a few hours ago, of course.
xiphias2 5y ago
This is not just urban legends. In Hungary there's a soft dictorship where Viktor Orban is controlling the mainstream media with lots of lies. After independent organizations go to court, they usually win against Orban, and the media organizations publish corrections, but nobody reads them.
gwern 5y ago
It's also an example of selection effects: this dude mentions he's taken 44k photos. You might think that such an experienced photographer wouldn't be fooled by this - "what, it was just a leaf in the way when he was zoomed in? that's all? surely he wouldn't make such a mistake, and it's surely machine learning at fault!" - but he's only human, and that's 44k+ chances to be wrong, for just a single photographer, where social media will amplify the oddest anecdote it can find across every photographer in the world. It's not, "he took one photo and it came out wrong", it's, "humans everywhere took billions upon billions of photos and you only were told about the weirdest ones which fit a Narrative".
mdoms 5y ago
> This is one of the few times I'll ever feel sorry for Apple! They're a trillion dollar company who don't give even the slightest little fuck about you. Stop feeling sorry for them, that is an insanely unhealthy way of thinking.
lostlogin 5y ago
It’s the race stuff that now has me laughing. The machine learning had a data set that had too many white people and too few people of other colours (leaf colours?). Somehow this was relevant.
pverghese 5y ago
But the iPhone has replaced her face with leaves. If you look at the photo. The place where her face and neck would be is replace with a blurred out brownness even on the parts not directly obstructed by the leaf.

infotropy 5y ago

That or leaf people (similar to lizard people) can only be detected using iPhones.

judge2020 5y ago
Wouldn't need to obscure leaf people if we turned everyone into leaf people.

jpxw 5y ago

I find that people on here are _extremely_ uncharitable when it comes to anything Apple

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tshaddox 5y ago

Eh, I mean you’re right that more people will hear the accusation than the retraction, but I think everyone already knows and will continue to know that iPhones have excellent cameras. I wouldn’t be worried about the reputation of iPhone cameras.

dagmx 5y ago
It's less about the reputation of the cameras but there was an unhealthy level of conspiracy in the original thread with regards to trust of digital images in general. That post was already being widely used to justify the fairly ludite views on image upscaling by the judge in the Rittenhouse trial for example.
- in3d 5y ago
  The judge was absolutely right to allow the defense to make sure no AI upscaling is used. It has nothing to do with Luddite views.
  - donarb 5y ago
    There was no AI upscaling. If you enlarge an image between two white pixels, the inserted pixel is white, you will not get an interpolated black pixel.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    The judge didn't merely ask whether any such thing was used. He continuously pressed his own uninformed opinion over the evidence rather than trying to educate himself on the matter, especially given "expert" testimony https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhouse-bruce-schroeder-screenshot-zoom-in https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhous... That's throwing his own incorrect mistrust of the technology into things. It wasn't based on precedent or founded by rational examples. He also didn't provide alternate means for video playback that he would trust. It's reductionist. At the very least, a competent prosecution should have then pulled up content in VLC and said "the source code for zooming is here and verifiable"
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Interpolation algorithms (such as bicubic) used for zooming are not “AI” anymore than a decompression algorithm is. There’s no “training” involved; it’s an entirely “pure” algorithm. Same input in gets the exact same output out.
- usrusr 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

Looking at the original, yes, something leafy is in the foreground; however, the person’s visage and locks are made into cubist/polygonal-like leafiness in the background.

fartcannon 5y ago
Yeah, this seems like damage control. The AI definitely made a mess of that woman's face.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Digory 5y ago

Twitter should have the ability to issue apology/retraction tweets. They know who's seen the original.

bluecatswim 5y ago
Their largest audience is "journalists" who wouldn't be happy with something like that.

wellthisisgreat 5y ago

This is why I don’t like Twitter. Post now, think later

dagmx 5y ago

I think it also speaks greatly to people's paranoia about technology they don't fully understand. I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that because they know just enough to know it's possible but are not perhaps familiar with a given domain (I certainly know that applies to me). It's perhaps some spin-off of the dunning-kruger observation... There must be a spot on the curve where a person knows just enough to be freaked out by what they're seeing, but not enough to explain it fully. Whereas here the Halide devs know the domain well enough to quickly diagnose it.

corobo 5y ago
> I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that because they know just enough to know it's possible Absolutely think this describes what happened I'd have probably been more skeptical myself had I not seen an ad earlier in the day of an Android phone removing people from the background of an image as easily as you'd crop it. Whoops!

blondin 5y ago

OMG, i was reading Quora today thinking exactly about what you wrote in the first paragraph. but in a different context. there is that false story that gathered tons of likes and comments, even though a buried comment debunked the whole thing. the worst part is that it's since been shared in many Quora spaces. where it is gathering more likes and comments. i stopped for a minute and wondered if the situation could have been prevented.

OJFord 5y ago

The (a of course, but the one originally involved) responded 'it's a very cool lesson in focal length compression' though; so it seems to me from that & still from looking at the image that the iPhone is doing something - making choices, engineering trade-offs - that makes this accidental edge case worse.

jolux 5y ago
No, focal length and its effects on imaging is a fundamental aspect of how lenses work. You could reproduce this with any camera. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photog...
- jolux 5y ago
  This case actually seems even simpler though. There was a leaf in the foreground obscuring the face from the camera's perspective. Distortion doesn't quite enter into it.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    They're not talking about the obscuring itself, but the focal compression effect which makes it look a lot like the leaf is where the head should be, rather than clearly being in front of said head. Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably doesn't help.
    - jolux 5y ago
      > Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably doesn't help. I think it's mostly this. The photograph is incredibly noisy, very difficult to tell what's going on.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Oh I didn't realise that was called 'compression', makes sense though, I was just thinking too software-y! Don't modern iPhones have multiple cameras for depth of field though, it could (or intends to) do something clever to make it clearer couldn't (resp. ) it?

Veen 5y ago

It's quite amusing though that so many brain cycles were wasted trying to figure out how ML image processing was to blame. I don't recall anyone in the previous thread saying: maybe there's a leaf between the camera and the woman's head. It certainly didn't occur to me that it was something so obvious. (btw, is the "Karen" reference really necessary? It's a sexist, racist insult that detracts from an otherwise interesting comment)

dan_pixelflow 5y ago
Genuine Q: how is it racist?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ravar 5y ago
  Its racist against the group that you "can't" be racist against
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    It’s racist against the group who can handle a bit of racism.
    - ratsmack 5y ago
      You didn't define which group that is... maybe you can enlighten us.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        White people, particularly white women. I'm fairly sure you knew this? Here's the definition of the pejorative "Karen" [1]: Karen is a pejorative term for a white woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal. The term is a meme depicting white women who use their privilege to demand their own way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)

paganel 5y ago

For what it's worth I did send my friends this tweet with the rebuttal, after I had sent the original tweet a few hours ago, of course.

xiphias2 5y ago

This is not just urban legends. In Hungary there's a soft dictorship where Viktor Orban is controlling the mainstream media with lots of lies. After independent organizations go to court, they usually win against Orban, and the media organizations publish corrections, but nobody reads them.

gwern 5y ago

It's also an example of selection effects: this dude mentions he's taken 44k photos. You might think that such an experienced photographer wouldn't be fooled by this - "what, it was just a leaf in the way when he was zoomed in? that's all? surely he wouldn't make such a mistake, and it's surely machine learning at fault!" - but he's only human, and that's 44k+ chances to be wrong, for just a single photographer, where social media will amplify the oddest anecdote it can find across every photographer in the world. It's not, "he took one photo and it came out wrong", it's, "humans everywhere took billions upon billions of photos and you only were told about the weirdest ones which fit a Narrative".

mdoms 5y ago

> This is one of the few times I'll ever feel sorry for Apple! They're a trillion dollar company who don't give even the slightest little fuck about you. Stop feeling sorry for them, that is an insanely unhealthy way of thinking.

lostlogin 5y ago

It’s the race stuff that now has me laughing. The machine learning had a data set that had too many white people and too few people of other colours (leaf colours?). Somehow this was relevant.

pverghese 5y ago

But the iPhone has replaced her face with leaves. If you look at the photo. The place where her face and neck would be is replace with a blurred out brownness even on the parts not directly obstructed by the leaf.