3 ms·

How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a suitable photo

31 points by bblcla 8mo ago

kazinator 8mo ago
[flagged]
- dang 8mo ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- linkjuice4all 8mo ago
  I realize dang has already tagged this (and I get it) but I don’t know who is actually benefiting from this. This is deceptive as it doesn’t represent a traveler’s actual/expected experience and just adds more slop to the pile. This is a case where you should pay actual photographers to take verified pictures of the places you are recommending people visit. Why would someone cheapen their brand like this?
  - properbrew 8mo ago
    If you read the article you'll see it's not about generating AI slop images: > Take a freeform query (like ‘sfo->jfk’) and turn it into a ‘place’ > Build a database of ‘places’ -> pictures > Build a software system that can take a ‘place’, look it up in a database and spit out the right picture – even if that ‘place’ isn’t in the database
busymom0 8mo ago
Couldn't you grab the image from the Wikipedia page of that location? For example searching for "Deadvlei" from the blog post gives this which has a photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadvlei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadvlei
- presentation 8mo ago
  My experience is that many Wikipedia place photos are quite ugly.
dang 8mo ago
[stub for offtopicness] [sorry I messed up with that title! perils of not reading the articles closely]
- tehjoker 8mo ago
  I’m not sure it’s good idea to use AI for this purpose. When you’re talking about travel, you’re talking about a real place. If you show something photorealistic and AI generated, what is shown is simply an illusion. If you use a cartoon style maybe they can work because the user will immediately understand what is shown is not a photograph.
  - hayksaakian 8mo ago
    the article doesn't talk about AI generating photos. it talks about using AI to interpret user queries into photo selections from photographers
    - nluken 8mo ago
      The post title here is extremely misleading. Per HN standards, the post should use the original title, "How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a beautiful photo"
      - dang 8mo ago
        Ok, sorry! but re 'beautiful' see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802571
    - tehjoker 8mo ago
      sorry i skimmed the post and confused myself then
- MrZander 8mo ago
  The title on HN is incorrect/misleading, they are not generating AI images. They are hand curating a database of images by location and using an LLM to pick the pictures.
mips_avatar 8mo ago
The annoying thing with Unsplash is that it sounds like a really permissive license, but the moment you try and do it at scale you're no longer in compliance with their terms. Also their definition of not building a competing service is really broad. Maybe i'm being overly cautious but I get eeked out by all that.
drivingmenuts 8mo ago
This sort of thing will kill the graphic design industry.
- mips_avatar 8mo ago
  Not really it’s just a photo search engine (albeit a very small one)
jedbrooke 8mo ago
the author mentions they’re using haiku for the model, but I wonder if the travel query -> place transform could be done with a tiny local model. But that’s the bitter lesson I guess, unless there’s a reason to go fully local (extreme privacy concerns, offline use, etc) training a custom model just isn’t worth it over using some cloud api offering, even if it is orders of magnitude more compute that _somebody_ is paying for in the end
iberator 8mo ago
Photo is made, not generated!
mkmk 8mo ago
API limitations? Why not have the script run for a few days collecting images and then crank through all of them in an hour?
- bblcla 8mo ago
  great idea, actually, I just didn't think of it!

31 points by bblcla 8mo ago

kazinator 8mo ago

[flagged]

dang 8mo ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
linkjuice4all 8mo ago
I realize dang has already tagged this (and I get it) but I don’t know who is actually benefiting from this. This is deceptive as it doesn’t represent a traveler’s actual/expected experience and just adds more slop to the pile. This is a case where you should pay actual photographers to take verified pictures of the places you are recommending people visit. Why would someone cheapen their brand like this?
- properbrew 8mo ago
  If you read the article you'll see it's not about generating AI slop images: > Take a freeform query (like ‘sfo->jfk’) and turn it into a ‘place’ > Build a database of ‘places’ -> pictures > Build a software system that can take a ‘place’, look it up in a database and spit out the right picture – even if that ‘place’ isn’t in the database

busymom0 8mo ago

Couldn't you grab the image from the Wikipedia page of that location? For example searching for "Deadvlei" from the blog post gives this which has a photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadvlei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadvlei

presentation 8mo ago
My experience is that many Wikipedia place photos are quite ugly.

dang 8mo ago

[stub for offtopicness] [sorry I messed up with that title! perils of not reading the articles closely]

tehjoker 8mo ago
I’m not sure it’s good idea to use AI for this purpose. When you’re talking about travel, you’re talking about a real place. If you show something photorealistic and AI generated, what is shown is simply an illusion. If you use a cartoon style maybe they can work because the user will immediately understand what is shown is not a photograph.
- hayksaakian 8mo ago
  the article doesn't talk about AI generating photos. it talks about using AI to interpret user queries into photo selections from photographers
  - nluken 8mo ago
    The post title here is extremely misleading. Per HN standards, the post should use the original title, "How to turn 'sfo-jfk' into a beautiful photo"
    - dang 8mo ago
      Ok, sorry! but re 'beautiful' see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802571
  - tehjoker 8mo ago
    sorry i skimmed the post and confused myself then
MrZander 8mo ago
The title on HN is incorrect/misleading, they are not generating AI images. They are hand curating a database of images by location and using an LLM to pick the pictures.

mips_avatar 8mo ago

The annoying thing with Unsplash is that it sounds like a really permissive license, but the moment you try and do it at scale you're no longer in compliance with their terms. Also their definition of not building a competing service is really broad. Maybe i'm being overly cautious but I get eeked out by all that.

drivingmenuts 8mo ago

This sort of thing will kill the graphic design industry.

mips_avatar 8mo ago
Not really it’s just a photo search engine (albeit a very small one)

jedbrooke 8mo ago

the author mentions they’re using haiku for the model, but I wonder if the travel query -> place transform could be done with a tiny local model. But that’s the bitter lesson I guess, unless there’s a reason to go fully local (extreme privacy concerns, offline use, etc) training a custom model just isn’t worth it over using some cloud api offering, even if it is orders of magnitude more compute that _somebody_ is paying for in the end

iberator 8mo ago

Photo is made, not generated!

mkmk 8mo ago

API limitations? Why not have the script run for a few days collecting images and then crank through all of them in an hour?

bblcla 8mo ago
great idea, actually, I just didn't think of it!