5 ms·

"An artist's impression of the new plastic, showing the strong bonds above the water and how they break down when submerged in saltwater" No, that's an AI imag

by jerf 2y ago

"An artist's impression of the new plastic, showing the strong bonds above the water and how they break down when submerged in saltwater" No, that's an AI image. Which is not itself a problem, but it's also useless garbage because neither the AI, nor the person generating it, appear to understand what is actually happening, and consequently the image is literally worse than useless. Image has what appear to be benzene rings, although the AI is clearly crossing that concept with neurons, but sodium hexametaphosphate has a fairly different shape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hexametaphosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hexametaphosphate that I would expect an artist to pick up on... and of course the cross-contamination of the neuron concept is just wrong. And even by strictly non-scientific standards, the ocean having two distinct surfaces, one below another, is just unsightly and obviously wrong. Alternatively, this plastic really does rip holes in the ocean's surface and directly expose The Murky Depths to the surface world in a geometrically anomalous manner, in which case for C'thulu's sake we should probably never manufacture this stuff in any quantity. I won't go so far as to say AI image generation shouldn't be used here, but this is a nominally educational context. It needs to be screened by someone who can make sure it actually means something other than "you are a dummy who can't handle too much text in a single block so here's some bling to stab your dopamine receptors so you can bear the terrible drudgery of continuing to read".

6177c40f 2y ago
Looks like it comes from the original RIKEN article [1], where they call it an "artistic rendering" instead of an "artist's impression." More accurate, I suppose, but I wish people would just actually say if an image is AI generated or not, at least for the sake of clarity. [1] https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250327_1/index.html https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250327_...
- alphan0n 2y ago
  The original [0](PDF, Japanese) was published in November 2024 and features a similar but not identical rendering. I don’t think the original is AI generated at all. [0]https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400252514.pdf https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400252514.pdf
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    It looks to me like the original image from that PDF was possibly fed into an AI program to generate a similar version, probably to get rid of the text (and possibly also to change the aspect ratio and/or just make it more picturesque for a news article).
    - alphan0n 2y ago
      That makes sense.
- dylan604 2y ago
  i'm fine if the call it artist impression without calling it AI generated. i don't care if the artist's impression was created in watercolors, oil, charcoal, or AI. as long as it is identified as not an actual image is the main concern
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    The problem is that it's an AI program's impression, not an artist's impression. Edit: If you can't get past the fact that AI image generators are not equivalent as an artistic medium to different types of paint, think of it this way: if I describe something to an artist and have them paint it, is the resulting image my impression because I prompted the artist, or is it the artist's impression of what I described? Clearly it's the artist's impression. So just because an "AI artist" prompts an AI app, that wouldn't make it the prompter's impression; it's still the AI app's impression. And an AI app's not an "artist" itself by virtue of being a computer program and not a human (as you yourself admit by attempting to liken it to a tool such as paint).
    - dylan604 2y ago
      > The problem is that it's an AI program's impression, not an artist's impression. I just made a similar reply, but I disagree with this. The artist iterates with their prompts to the AI tool to get what they wanted. So when they stopped tweaking the prompt, they were satisfied with the result to be their impression
      - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
        "AI art generators enable the creation of ignorant and lazy illustrations by outsourcing understanding to an idiot robot." "Yes, but is it not the intent of the artist to be ignorant and lazy?" It is possible to repeatedly iterate AI art gen and get what you want, but that's not what happened here. And even so, it's not at all the same thing as drawing a picture: "iterating on what you want" is equivalent to curating art, not creating it. In the US you can copyright curation and that extends to curation of AI art - the US Copyright Office correctly said that tweaking prompts is the same thing as tweaking a Google Images search string for online image curation. But you can't copyright the actual AI-gen pictures, they are automatically public domain (unless they infringe someone else's copyright).
throwaway7679 2y ago
> It needs to be screened by someone The people using this stuff want plausible deniability. If there's a problem with the slop, the computer did it, not me. Screening it is contrary to that, so they won't do it.
- astrange 2y ago
  That isn't an AI image. This thread is people winning an argument in their own heads. It actually very much looks like the kind of ads for chemical companies you see in Japanese airports. (A funny contrast to the UK, which has decided it doesn't need to have an economy anymore so literally every ad in the London subway is for a musical.)
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    > That isn't an AI image. What's your source for that assertion? The image has AI-isms and is suspiciously similar to a much less AI-looking image that someone else in the thread linked to in a PDF regarding the research. You can say it looks like a human could've done it, but that's not any less "winning an argument in your own head" unless you've got evidence of what human drew that image.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - astrange 2y ago
      I don't see any AI-isms. The most common one would be that parts of the image tend to be conceptually unclear or blend together, but these are recognizable objects composited into one image. At most the bubbles could be, but I think they're just stock art.
      - jerf 2y ago
        The ocean having two distinct surfaces, one distinctly below another, is such an AI-ism that I don't think I've ever in my life seen it in human-generated art. You need to tune your detectors.
blix 2y ago
Using something similar to a benzene ring with spokes sticking out of it is absolutely a reasonable choice for depicting sodium hexametaphosphate in a schematic. This is actually a pretty common choice in scientific literature regarding this molecule.
- jerf 2y ago
  If you look at it more carefully, it isn't really a benzene ring, though. It's got multiple layers to it. And the neural net crossover is just wrong. Really, really wrong. This is nominally educational content. Any way in which it is wrong is something that people can and will pick up on and form incorrect assumptions about which they will carry forward. It's not enough that it is vaguely sort of, if we're generous, isn't entirely wrong. That's not the bar for human work either.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by jerf 2y ago

6177c40f 2y ago

Looks like it comes from the original RIKEN article [1], where they call it an "artistic rendering" instead of an "artist's impression." More accurate, I suppose, but I wish people would just actually say if an image is AI generated or not, at least for the sake of clarity. [1] https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250327_1/index.html https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250327_...

alphan0n 2y ago
The original [0](PDF, Japanese) was published in November 2024 and features a similar but not identical rendering. I don’t think the original is AI generated at all. [0]https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400252514.pdf https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400252514.pdf
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  It looks to me like the original image from that PDF was possibly fed into an AI program to generate a similar version, probably to get rid of the text (and possibly also to change the aspect ratio and/or just make it more picturesque for a news article).
  - alphan0n 2y ago
    That makes sense.
dylan604 2y ago
i'm fine if the call it artist impression without calling it AI generated. i don't care if the artist's impression was created in watercolors, oil, charcoal, or AI. as long as it is identified as not an actual image is the main concern
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  The problem is that it's an AI program's impression, not an artist's impression. Edit: If you can't get past the fact that AI image generators are not equivalent as an artistic medium to different types of paint, think of it this way: if I describe something to an artist and have them paint it, is the resulting image my impression because I prompted the artist, or is it the artist's impression of what I described? Clearly it's the artist's impression. So just because an "AI artist" prompts an AI app, that wouldn't make it the prompter's impression; it's still the AI app's impression. And an AI app's not an "artist" itself by virtue of being a computer program and not a human (as you yourself admit by attempting to liken it to a tool such as paint).
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > The problem is that it's an AI program's impression, not an artist's impression. I just made a similar reply, but I disagree with this. The artist iterates with their prompts to the AI tool to get what they wanted. So when they stopped tweaking the prompt, they were satisfied with the result to be their impression
    - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
      "AI art generators enable the creation of ignorant and lazy illustrations by outsourcing understanding to an idiot robot." "Yes, but is it not the intent of the artist to be ignorant and lazy?" It is possible to repeatedly iterate AI art gen and get what you want, but that's not what happened here. And even so, it's not at all the same thing as drawing a picture: "iterating on what you want" is equivalent to curating art, not creating it. In the US you can copyright curation and that extends to curation of AI art - the US Copyright Office correctly said that tweaking prompts is the same thing as tweaking a Google Images search string for online image curation. But you can't copyright the actual AI-gen pictures, they are automatically public domain (unless they infringe someone else's copyright).

throwaway7679 2y ago

> It needs to be screened by someone The people using this stuff want plausible deniability. If there's a problem with the slop, the computer did it, not me. Screening it is contrary to that, so they won't do it.

astrange 2y ago
That isn't an AI image. This thread is people winning an argument in their own heads. It actually very much looks like the kind of ads for chemical companies you see in Japanese airports. (A funny contrast to the UK, which has decided it doesn't need to have an economy anymore so literally every ad in the London subway is for a musical.)
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  > That isn't an AI image. What's your source for that assertion? The image has AI-isms and is suspiciously similar to a much less AI-looking image that someone else in the thread linked to in a PDF regarding the research. You can say it looks like a human could've done it, but that's not any less "winning an argument in your own head" unless you've got evidence of what human drew that image.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrange 2y ago
    I don't see any AI-isms. The most common one would be that parts of the image tend to be conceptually unclear or blend together, but these are recognizable objects composited into one image. At most the bubbles could be, but I think they're just stock art.
    - jerf 2y ago
      The ocean having two distinct surfaces, one distinctly below another, is such an AI-ism that I don't think I've ever in my life seen it in human-generated art. You need to tune your detectors.

blix 2y ago

Using something similar to a benzene ring with spokes sticking out of it is absolutely a reasonable choice for depicting sodium hexametaphosphate in a schematic. This is actually a pretty common choice in scientific literature regarding this molecule.

jerf 2y ago
If you look at it more carefully, it isn't really a benzene ring, though. It's got multiple layers to it. And the neural net crossover is just wrong. Really, really wrong. This is nominally educational content. Any way in which it is wrong is something that people can and will pick up on and form incorrect assumptions about which they will carry forward. It's not enough that it is vaguely sort of, if we're generous, isn't entirely wrong. That's not the bar for human work either.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]