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Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines
- ttflee 1y agoTLDR: The video got VAEed, and we are the discriminators being fooled.
- ares623 1y agoSome PM in Youtube: “ yes let’s make it harder to tell real videos from AI to make people who don’t know better more susceptible and accepting of it”
- cyanydeez 1y agoThats the future. Kids arnt going to have the same mental history as older generayions.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> Some PM in Youtube: “ yes let’s make it harder to tell real videos from AI to make people who don’t know better more susceptible and accepting of it” This can backfire, perhaps making people believe that real, important news is in reality AI-generated to brainwash them, thus making people less susceptible, and more disbelieving.
- appointment 1y agoThe whole point is to make people believe in nothing. When all news is fake, no news matter.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> The whole point is to make people believe in nothing. When all news is fake, no news matter. This does not change my point that this is a dangerous game to play: if people believe in nothing, they will also not believe in what "those in power" or the government wants them to believe. People who have no trust in such entities have a lower "emotional barrier" to overcome to turn against such entities.
- ares623 1y agoIt’s why you establish a cult first.
- latexr 1y agoI have no doubt that will happen. And bad actors will definitely try to use “it was AI” to discredit real things they’ve done. Musk as already tried to pull that stunt. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/27/elon-musks-statements-could-be-deepfakes-tesla-defence-lawyers-tell-court https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/27/elon-musk...
- UncleMeat 1y agoI don't even think there is this much thought involved. There's two things happening. There are true believers who think that AI is legitimately magic and should be put into every product and then there are people who are putting AI into every product because their director or VP thinks that AI is legitimately magic and is insisting that they put it in every product. Brainstorming sessions aren't "how can we solve problem X for users" but are instead "where can AI change our product."
- happosai 1y agoNever attribute malice where bad incentives suffice. Someone's KPI was to sprinkle AI. And someone got it by shoehorning "AI enhancement" in place of the previous sharpen + Denoise filter at YouTube.
- browningstreet 1y agoExcept: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14328491?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid#:~:text=To%20help%20keep%20viewers%20informed,something%20they%20didn't%20do https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14328491?hl=en&co=...
- black_puppydog 1y agoSo... the videos showing the difference between the AI-tainted youtube version and the supposedly untainted instagram version are hosted on... youtube?
- superchink 1y agothe experimental post processing was only applied to shorts, according to the post.
- ch_sm 1y agoapparently the sharpening algorithm is only applied on youtube shorts, not on regular youtube videos.
- cobertos 1y agoWhat's the point of using videos like this if it's a risk to reputation just to use them?
- jonplackett 1y agoSaving money of course! That’s the sad truth
- hanspeter 1y agoWhat's the point of saving money if it's a risk to reputation?
- cyanydeez 1y agoWill smith punched a dude on stage, a comedian. I think you are putting a lot on a cage concept with a scatter plot of outliers. You actually need a reputation of merit for there to be risk. Hes a rapper, not a saint or Ethicist.
- hdgvhicv 1y ago“AI” editing is one thing The upscaling seems to be Google doing it without permission of the original uploader. Google however are unaccountable, you can’t complain otherwise you’ll be exiled Vote with wallet etc /s
- jonplackett 1y agoI wonder if it had the same bad effect on other content (surely they tested it first and thought it would be useful!). Maybe double AI reinforces itself somehow?
- jacquesm 1y agoThe same reason you don't feed prime vegetables and fruits to pigs.
- 14213112 1y ago
- ulrikrasmussen 1y agoI think AI-"upscaled" videos are as jarring to look at as a newly bought TV before frame smoothing has been disabled. Who seriously thinks this looks better, even if the original is a slightly grainy recording from the 90's? I was recently sent a link to this recording of a David Bowie & Nine Inch Nails concert, and I got a serious uneasy feeling as if I was on a psychedelic and couldn't quite trust my perception, especially at the 2:00 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yyx31HPgfs&list=RD7Yyx31HPgfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yyx31HPgfs&list=RD7Yyx31HPg... It turned out that the video was "AI-upscaled" from an original which is really blurry and sometimes has a low frame rate. These are artistic choices, and I think the original, despite being low resolution, captures the intended atmosphere much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6KF1IkkIc&list=RD1X6KF1IkkIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6KF1IkkIc&list=RD1X6KF1Ikk... We have pretty good cameras and lenses now. We don't need AI to "improve" the quality.
- yahoozoo 1y agoIt’s surprising how many people don’t notice when frame smoothing is on, when it looks so bad.
- rightbyte 1y agoThe closeups of the bass player are like 6 slowmotion frames in the original and look like an interpolated mess with unhuman body joints upscaled.
- kg 1y agoWow, you're not kidding. In some shots David Bowie barely looks like David Bowie because the algorithm's taken such liberties with the original image to try and make it look sharp.
- conradfr 1y agoThat's hilarious https://i.imgur.com/TVfncya.png https://i.imgur.com/TVfncya.png
- moefh 1y agoThat's insane. Here's the same-ish frame from the original: https://imgur.com/a/dWS20oP https://imgur.com/a/dWS20oP The extreme blur here was obviously a creative choice by the director/editor, the rest of the video has lower resolution but it's not nearly that bad (which is why Bowie still looks like himself in other parts of the upscaled video). The process used to upscale the video has no subtlety, it's just "make everything look crisp, even if you have to create entirely made-up faces".
- jader201 1y agoTwo root comments (so far) are focusing on YouTube, but the article claims most of the AI was done by Will’s team, using AI to convert stills to video: > The video features real performances and real audiences, but I believe they were manipulated on two levels: 1. Will Smith’s team generated several short AI image-to-video clips from professionally-shot audience photos 2. YouTube post-processed the resulting Shorts montage, making everything look so much worse You can see the side-by-side [1] of the YouTube post-processing, and, while definitely altering the original, isn’t what’s causing most of the really bad AI artifacts. Most of what YouTube appears to be doing is making it less blurry, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not. And, even with that, it is only done on Shorts. [1] https://youtu.be/Bx5GzIsmEBI https://youtu.be/Bx5GzIsmEBI
- tantalor 1y agoI don't see any differences in that video
- jader201 1y agoYeah, it’s definitely subtle, for the most part. But if you pause it and move it around frames, you can definitely see where post processing attempted to sharpen some of the out-of-focus parts. But, again, the AI artifacts are from taking still shots and using AI to generate videos, which was done separately/intentionally by Will’s team (according to the article).
- hettygreen 1y agoWhat happens when AI gets trained on AI slop? If there's code to stop AI from being trained on AI, I would like to have it from stopping me from seeing it.
- foota 1y agoI wonder if the fact that the original video was AI generated made the upscaling look worse than it would on a real video? Not that it can certainly be detected, but an actual video is likely different from an AI generated in ways that it seems like could lead astray their "computational photography" processing.
- busyant 1y agoEverthing is a copy of a copy of a copy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAQ3JuXkDkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAQ3JuXkDkU
- ojagodzinski 1y agoOpen an company that sells t-shirts with "AI glitched" text on it so people can make every foto of this kind illegitimate.
- Mistletoe 1y ago[flagged]
- wordofx 1y agoI thought Willy had disappeared into the shadows after his wife embarrassed him to the point he prob won’t step foot in public again…
- bananapub 1y agodoesn't seem very blurry - don't generate video of a crowd? seems like an easy rule?
- booleandilemma 1y agoI hate how everyone thinks we have to use AI now. I wish this trend would end already.
- petralithic 1y agoWho is this "everyone" who thinks we "have to" use AI? From my experience it's very split with people on both sides.
- aeve890 1y ago>Who is this "everyone" who thinks we "have to" use AI? Upper management. Seriously. The push to use AI in everything is very real.
- petralithic 1y agoYeah but that's not everyone, is what I mean. Upper management is even a minority among everybody.
- booleandilemma 1y agoA minority that has the control over what the majority experiences.
- gherkinnn 1y agohttps://www.theverge.com/youtube/765485/is-youtubes-shorts-experiment-using-ai-or-just-upscaling https://www.theverge.com/youtube/765485/is-youtubes-shorts-e... Today on The Verge, GenAI upscaling in YT shorts. Yes, AI is here to stay, but I do hope the icky parts go away soon.
- merelysounds 1y ago> GenAI upscaling in YT shorts I cannot watch the linked video, but its description quotes “not generative AI”; is The Verge or someone else showing something different?
- input_sh 1y agoThis is being unnecessarily pedantic. They're saying "yes we're doing post-processing, but that's not technically generative AI." Personally I couldn't care less about what they call it, I care that it makes the same video look more artifical on YouTube than they look elsewhere. > Hi! I'm a tech nerd and I try to be precise about the terminology I use > GenAI typically refers to technologies like transformers and large language models, which are relatively new > Upscaling typically refers to taking one resolution (like SD/480p) and making it look good at a higher resolution (like HD/1080p) > This isn't using GenAI or doing any upscaling > It's using the kind of machine learning you experience with computational photography on smartphones, for example, and it's not changing the resolution > And sincerely appreciate the feedback!
- cnity 1y agoI agree with The Verge here in that it is probably using a diffusion model somewhere, and that it is splitting hairs to say that it is not generative AI. The artifacts are very "diffusion".
- michaelbuckbee 1y agoThere's no strict definition of these things, the quote is from YT and they're saying something like this isn't that _bad_ generative AI that people are worried about, this is just good old fashioned wholesome machine learning techniques.
- ttehdfgggfrufe 1y ago[flagged]
- nicgrev103 1y agoIf I were a marketing person I would also make genuine images look AI generated for the free publicity. Nothing gets attention like mistakes or fakes. The fact that they aren't actually fake means there is no downside for WS and team. I once spoke to a social media manager for a large brand and he said they intentionally put typos in posts on a semi regular basis and it always results in more post engagement (people correcting the typo).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- petargyurov 1y agoOn this episode of "Trying to make AI useful"... Seriously, who's idea was this? It can't be a money saving feature; surely it costs more to upscale all these videos than to just host the HD version. And even if you argue it can be used only on low res videos to provide a "better experience", the resulting distortion of reality should be very concerning.
- tempodox 1y agoGoogle does not deal in reality. They are selling ads and want engagement.
- Rebuff5007 1y agoTheres not a single person i know in my life who will want this as a consumer. WHY does the world keep doing things that are so complicated and unnecessary.
- lifestyleguru 1y agoBecause necessary things are equally complicated but less profitable.
- nicbou 1y agoSometimes countries get involved in military conflicts so that they can test their hardware and learn important lessons for the next big war. They are building the leadership, logistics and institutional knowledge for when it's really needed. Perhaps it's Google warming up their teams for when they have a proper use of their technology and know-how.
- muppetman 1y agoBefore AI was a thing, that same sentiment was true for almost every startup, especially the ones that had "get" in their domain name. Yet here we are.
- mxschll 1y agoFrom now on, I am going to bring an unreadable AI looking sign to every concert I go.
- bertman 1y agoI find it hilarious that the Youtube spokespersons go out of their way to clarify that this is "not the bad GenAI shit that we know everyone hates but the good kind, you know, machine learning and stuff, you know, trust us"
- glenstein 1y agoThe Youtube liason statement is truly something to behold. It's not "upscaling" it's "unblurring". There's no genai, just "traditional machine learning". Oh, phew! I wouldn't want to have misidentified post-processing as unblurring when it was really upscaling. I think we may see more of this which, to be blunt, I would say are stupid equivocations that are orthogonal to the actual concern, namely that it violates a fundamental trust that images represent something that really happened. We saw this already with Samsung's headspinning justification of their post-processing a fake moon. Strap in for more JV debate team level "gosh what is reality anyway" equivocations, which I suspect will become increasingly prevalent.
- bigbacaloa 1y ago[dead]
- petralithic 1y agoI'm not sure about this specific instance, but AI generated movies will absolutely be the future, when you can create the exact shots you want with stability of the foreground, background, and characters, and edit it all together, it'll be an explosion of creativity just as with image generation currently. To be clear, I don't think it'll be telling an AI to "create me a movie with X, Y, and Z" because AI reasoning is not there yet, but for the raw video generation, it's progressing steadily, as seen in r/aivideo.
- energy123 1y agoThe line between movie and games will blur. Once you can do generative movies, you can do games, and vice versa, there's no obvious delineation, and the technical problem is heavily overlapping. Games just has some scoped control inputs, like this: https://demo.dynamicslab.ai/chaos https://demo.dynamicslab.ai/chaos
- petralithic 1y agoThere are world models such as Genie [0] which show that they can be constrained to games too. [0] https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-world-models/ https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier...
- 113 1y ago> Once you can do generative movies, you can do games No you can't, these are completely different mediums.
- jackvalentine 1y agohttps://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/microsofts-100-percent-ai-generated-quake-2-made-us-nauseous-but-john-carmack-the-games-og-coder-loves-it-what-this-is-impressive-research-work/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/microsofts-100-percent-a... ?
- thrance 1y agoIf by "game" you mean running around aimlessly in a generic fantasy world, and by "movie" you mean animated pictures, then sure. But that's not my definition of either of these things.
- ctrlp 1y agoThe most incredible part about this story is that Will Smith is still a performing (and touring???) musician with any audience at all, AI or otherwise. I thought he was an actor now. Wut happened?
- krapp 1y agoWill Smith has been both a successful musician and actor since the Fresh Prince days. People do both. I don't know why this would be confusing to you.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pelagicAustral 1y agoI think it was confusing to me as well because this guy is some sort of 90's legend, and I do not understand what kind of relevance he might still have, especially on anybody under 35. It's not like he successfully transition into some kind of cultural-relevant behemoth such as Ozzy Osborne or Snoop Dogg, he kind of plateau'd at least a decade ago, but potentially more... I used to watch and enjoy the Fresh Prince, but you couldn't offer me enough money to go to Will Smith concert, because, why the hell would I do that...
- Agentus 1y agohe did plateau, but he did achieve superstar status. people who achieve less still do “retirement” tours (to pay the bills) and book large crowds decades later.
- wmanley 1y agoPeople over 35 are the people with money. I can't imagine a bunch of 16 year olds paying £300 to go and see Oasis in the 90s, but those 16 year olds are now in their 40s and now have money and an opportunity to live their adolescent dream.
- exitb 1y ago
- codeflo 1y agoFrom a PR perspective, I wonder why YouTube is at the same time forcing unwanted AI features down people's throats[1], a move that many companies now do to drum up their perceived AI competence, but THEN at the same time, when asked, also downplaying this use of AI by splitting words. The combination of the two confuses me. If this was about shareholders, they'd hype up the use of AI, not downplay it. And if this was about users, they'd simply disable this shit. [1] I mean, they're sacrificing Google Search of all things to push their AI crap. Also, as a bilingual YouTube user, AI-translated titles and descriptions make the site almost unusable now. In addition to some moronic PM forcing this feature onto users, they somehow also seem to have implemented the worst translation model in the industry. The results are often utterly incomprehensible, and there's no way to turn this off.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThe customers are advertisers and marketers. The product is access to the userbase. This is how we arrive where we are at today, where major clients have made significant investments into AI and expect further return on that investment through proliferation of the technology, while the users could not care less or even balk at it. But we are also at a time where there is no viable alternative to the monopolied corners of the internet such as youtube any longer, so the userbase has nowhere to flee if they even wanted to.
- johnisgood 1y agoMy hardware/software or my eyes are borked because I cannot tell much of a difference between YouTube vs Instagram side-by-side. Gosh. If it is not my eyes, what are the recommendations? What is the top 1 (or 5) reasons I cannot see it if it is not my eyes? Do I need to upgrade my monitor? I have a relatively recent GPU but it is not a beast and I use a HDMI -> VGA converter. The pictures, however, look god-awful! I presume the video is filled with stuff like these.
- jetrink 1y agoThe videos are more subtle and it's not apparent in every frame. Look for things in the background snapping into and out of focus, weird textures appearing on Will's head and neck, and people's faces looking unnaturally sharp at the edges, while their skin is uncannily smooth (sort of like Max Headroom.)
- nmeofthestate 1y ago> "Conclusion - Virtually all of the commenters on YouTube, Reddit, and X" SNIP That's fine and commenters on those sites are entitled to their opinions, but it's strange they didn't mention Hacker News.
- addandsubtract 1y agoBe glad. The less mainstream HN stays, the better.
- spacecadet 1y agoIs this a dodge or a burn? lol puns likely way over everyones head.
- yapyap 1y agoat the end of the day it doesn’t really matter for music performances though as long as we all have ears his music is terrible
- ddtaylor 1y agomusic so bad people are focused on the bad upscaling lol
- jrpelkonen 1y agoI wonder if there are two people reading this and wishing that Coldplay had employed this technology earlier this summer? On a serious note, I find this trend of shoving AI everywhere pretty disturbing. For instance, I used to enjoy Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” feature to find new music, but these days it’s offering so many AI generated songs the experience is pretty jarring.
- latentsea 1y agoYeah, I can see how that would feel jarring. Music discovery is supposed to feel like serendipity—stumbling across a track you didn’t know you needed—so when AI-generated filler creeps into that space, it can cheapen the experience. Spotify hasn’t officially said they’re flooding “Discover Weekly” with AI songs, but there’s definitely been a surge of AI-produced music uploaded to streaming platforms in the past year. Since Spotify’s algorithms don’t always distinguish between human and synthetic content, it can end up mixing both in your recommendations. That’s especially noticeable in genres where production is relatively easy for AI to mimic (ambient, lo-fi, EDM, generic pop). I think the larger unease you’re feeling—AI creeping into places where you expected human curation or artistry—is being shared by a lot of listeners. There’s a debate brewing about whether platforms should label AI music clearly, or even let users opt out of algorithmic recommendations that include it. Do you want me to check what tools or tricks people are using to filter out AI-generated songs on Spotify (or elsewhere), so you can get back to the human-made discovery experience? (Sorry, I couldn't help myself with this one. I'll see myself out now.)
- Gud 1y agoYes, you are being sarcastic and making fun, but I want it.
- cnity 1y agoI've been really tempted to drop out of Spotify and start buying CDs from my local music shop instead. Then I can get a USB CD reader and start building my own little music collection. In the pursuit of keeping "up to date" and having access to "everything" we've totally lost touch with the human element of sharing music.
- j-kent 1y agoSoon you won't be able to tell the difference between AI generated and 'real' content, since the 'real' content will be all processed by AI automatically. Quality in -> Garbage out.
- jjice 1y agoNon-AI mucked content will be considered "artisanal" and "high end" instead of the base line.
- dcchambers 1y agoAlready happening. Take a photo on your phone of something at a distance at maximum zoom. The amount of digital processing going on is crazy. People didn't want blurriness so instead these highly zoomed photos now look like impressionist paintings.
- thothless 1y agoThe "upscaling" significantly changes the content of the picture, altering half of the faces, their expressions, whether eyes are closed, mouths open, etc, on top of making it actually HARDER to see details. The "upscaling" on android smartphone cameras has always been similarly trash. There is always some odd fractal-looking noise filter added. Who is actually asking for this stuff?
- Kapura 1y agoI think the biggest takeaway for people in the industry is that the reaction to perceived AI videography is overwhelmingly negative. Using AI to generate footage of real people immediately makes watchers suspect something needs to be covered up or counterfeited. People know what reality looks like, and sloppily subverting it will never be popular.
- Nexxxeh 1y agoAm I the only person here that thinks the bigger issue here is consent? These people reasonably consented to being in photos and videos, as we all do going to gigs. But they almost certainly did not give informed consent to have the artist's team fake video of them using AI? Is that even legal in the countries it was done in?
- pimlottc 1y agoI’m sure they “consented” by the fine print on the ticket checkout screen and some form of signs at the venue saying “by entering you consent to be filmed etc etc etc” Not that I think that’s valid morally but they are probably covered from a legal angle.
- Nexxxeh 1y agoPlease excuse any perceived tone in my reply. I'm furious but not at you, and I've re-drafted this several times and I can't even tell what tone it conveys any more. I appreciate your thoughtful response and you're likely right in that they've likely ticket a box or walked past a sign or whatever, as we always used to for photos and video. And you've explicitly noted you're not commenting on the morality of it. I'm certainly not saying you're wrong. Although you might be, if the specific country has laws around deepfakes that don't explicitly specify they need to be sexually explicit to be illegal. Or if you're not allowed to bury ridiculous stuff in small print. I've just checked the terms and conditions of entry for the next venue I'm going to, and you're right that buried in the T&Cs of entry is: >By entering the Venue you agree to your actual or simulated likeness being included for no fee within any film, photograph, audio and/or audio-visual recording to be exploited in any and all media for any purpose at any time throughout the world. This includes filming by the police or security staff which may be carried out for the security of customers or the prevention of crime. However, you may object to such use by specific request to privacy@livenation.co.uk . The signage for the above venue did not make this clear last time I was there. I wonder if that was the case for the venues involved? But there's no way people walking in the venue can reasonably be expected to have given informed consent to the artist producing deepfakes of them.
- tamimio 1y agoThis is due to “upscaling”, I remember before the while AI bubble craziness there was a software I used that would upscale images pretty well, except if it has little details like that it would be turned into the mushy stuff you see in the article.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoThey're not blurring the lines, they're lying. They're generating video that didn't happen and passing it off as real video of events that actually happened. That's lying. Lying a little bit is lying.