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Likewise. There’s this older woman who is trying to add some historical color to our local beach town FB group by using some terrible AI tool to colorize pictur
by mikeyouse 6mo ago
Likewise. There’s this older woman who is trying to add some historical color to our local beach town FB group by using some terrible AI tool to colorize pictures from the early 1900s. She doesn’t accept any feedback that it’s problematic to share what are essentially fake pics in that way.. they often just randomly remove people, or add new ones. Buildings are changed, cars are remodeled, it’s crazy how different the before/after are. The comments are usually split as well, but I absolutely loathe how AI is used there. She means well, but the tools are so bad for this and so poorly explained.
One random example of a before/after: https://imgur.com/a/WIAYLHm https://imgur.com/a/WIAYLHm
- Morromist 6mo agoI was looking for photos of NYC in the 1990s a few weeks ago. I eventually found some, but my search was greatly obstructed by AI photos of NYC in the 1990s. The experiance made me certain that AI is going to to much more harm than good to the buisness of archiving historical photos. As for the lady who is distorting photos to colorize them - I don't even understand why you would want to do that. There are other ways!
- ok123456 6mo agoMaybe she just thinks it's cool? It's hardly the worst use of AI on Facebook.
- Morromist 6mo agoyeah, you're right. That's why she's doing it. But its a weird idea: I like this historical photo, so I'm going to distort in order to add color, which makes it not a historical photo anymore. I guess to her the distortion is so minimal it loses nothing, but to me it loses everything. Its like saying "I love Da Vinci's art so I'm going to draw a moustache on everyone in the last supper" which you probably wouldn't do if you really loved Da Vinci's art.
- rexpop 6mo ago> If you really loved Da Vinci's art. Meh, so what if I only love Da Vinci's art to the degree that it's amusing to adulterate with mustaches?
- tux1968 6mo agoThere are some pretty obvious distortions when you closely look at the difference between the historical and AI-corrupted images. But I have to admit, the colorized one has a nice vibe to it, if you don't look too closely it gives a really nice feel for what the moment was actually like, more than the accurate black-and-white. Which is to say, I think it comes down to what you value most out of historical photos; a forensic record of truth, or general idea of what it was like to live at the time, compared to today.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoNo no, those are color photographs. The world was black and white back then.
- butlike 6mo agoThe photo is oversaturated and psychedelic. It seriously looks like what the world looks like on a dose of drugs. I much prefer the black and white one. They're both unreal in their "same same, but different" ways
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- flir 6mo agoYou could always one-up her by animating them.... maybe add Godzilla in the distance occasionally. (Provenance is so important. The infinitely-recopied local history photos were never a great source anyway).
- tux1968 6mo agoIn the same way, so many current cameras (mostly phones) that do automatic post-processing of images, up to and including AI, is going to lessen their future archeological value.
- z3c0 6mo agoI'm reminded of Samsung's "AI moon" debacle and how divided people were over it. At the end of the day, any photos with so many unknown variables wouldn't suffice for scientific purposes.
- userbinator 6mo agoNor should they be admissible as evidence in court.
- tux1968 6mo agoIt would be nice if every upsampled image (done with AI or otherwise) contained a copy of the source image in its metadata.
- renewiltord 6mo agoOkay that before/after is fantastic. Really shows how normal the past is. No wonder she keeps doing it. It must be pretty good for her to be able to remember those moments. I love it!