No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.

TL;DR: The new Reimage feature on the Google Pixel 9 phones is really good at AI manipulation, while being very easy to use. This is bad.

Image manipulation has always been a thing, and there are ways to counter it...

But we already know that a shocking amount of people will simply take what they see at face value, even if it does look suspicious. The volume of AI generated misinformation online is already too damn high, without it getting more new strings in it's bow.

Governments don't seem to be anywhere near on top of keeping up with these AI developments either, so by the time the law starts accounting for all of this, the damage will be long done already.

I work at a newspaper as both a writer and photographer. I deal with images all day.

Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

So, as a professional, am I worried? Not really. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘trust and verify when possible’. We generally receive our images from people who are wholly reliable. They have no reason to deceive us and know that burning that bridge will hurt their organisation and career. It’s not worth it.

If someone was to send us an image that’s ‘too interesting’, we’d obviously try to verify it through other sources. If a bunch of people photographed that same incident from different angles, clearly it’s real. If we can’t verify it, well, we either trust the source and run it, or we don’t.

Okay so it's the verge so I'm not exactly expecting much but seriously?

No one on Earth today has ever lived in a world where photographs were not the linchpin of social consensus

People have been faking photographs basically since day one, with techniques like double exposure. Also even more sophisticated photo manipulation has been possible with Photoshop which has existed for decades.

There's a photo of me taken in the '90s on thunder mountain at Disneyland which has been edited to look like I'm actually on a mountainside rather than in a theme park. I think we can deal with fakeable photographs the only difference here is the process is automatable which honestly doesn't make even the blindest bit of difference. It's quicker but so what.

There was actually a user on Lemmy that asked if the original photo for the massacre was AI. It hadn’t occurred to me that people who never heard of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre would find the image and question if it was real or not.

A very sad sight, a very sad future.

Relevant XKCD. Humans have always been able to lie. Having a single form of irrefutable proof is the historical exception, not the rule.

We literally lived for thousands of years without photos. And we’ve lived for 30 years with Photoshop.

Awful title.

This is a hyperbolic article to be sure. But many in this thread are missing the point. It's not that photo manipulation is new.

It's the volume and quality of photo manipulation that's new. "Flooding the zone with bullshit," i.e. decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio, can have a demonstrable social effect.

Meh, those edited photos could have been created in Photoshop as well.

This makes editing and retouching photos easier, and that's a concern, but it's not new.

We've had fake photos for over 100 years at this point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

Maybe it's time to do something about confirming authenticity, rather than just accepting any old nonsense as evidence of anything.

At this point anything can be presented as evidence, and now can be equally refuted as an AI fabrication.

We need a new generation of secure cameras with internal signing of images and video (to prevent manipulation), built in LIDAR (to make sure they're not filming a screen), periodic external timestamps of data (so nothing can be changed after the supposed date), etc.

Even a few months ago it was hard for people with the knowledge to use AI on photos. I don't like the idea of this but its unavoidable. There is already so much misinformation and this will make it so much worse.

This is only a threat to people that took random picture at face value. Which should not have been a thing for a long while, generative AI or not.

The source of an information/picture, as well as how it was checked has been the most important part of handling online content for decades. The fact that it is now easier for some people to make edits does not change that.

These photoshop comments are missing the point that it's just like art, a good edit that can fool everyone needs someone that practiced a lot and has lots of experience, now even the lazy asses on the right can fake it easily.

Photography manipulation existed almost since the invention of photography. It was only much harder see the famous photo edition https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

People can write things that aren't true! Oh no, now we can't trust trustworthy texts such as scientific papers that have undergone peer review!

It's always been about context and provenance. Who took the image? Are there supporting accounts?

But also, it has always been about the knowlege that no one... Absolutely no one... Does lines of coke from a woven mat floor covering.

I think this is a good thing.

Pictures/video without verified provenance have not constituted legitimate evidence for anything with meaningful stakes for several years. Perfect fakes have been possible at the level of serious actors already.

Putting it in the hands of everyone brings awareness that pictures aren't evidence, lowering their impact over time. Not being possible for anyone would be great, but that isn't and hasn't been reality for a while.

As if photo manipulation hasn't been around in better forms for decades...?

The world's billionaires probably know there's lots of photographic evidence of stuff they did at Epstien island floating around out there. This is why they're trying to make ai produce art so realistic that photographs are no longer considered evidence so they can just claim its ai generated if any of that stuff ever gets out.

It's going to be used prolifically for something much more boring. Embellished product listings and fake reviews. If online shopping is frustrating now. It's probably going to get a lot worse trying to weed out good quality things to buy as photographs are no longer reliable.

This reaffirms my wish to go back to monkey.

This is one of the required steps on the way to holodecks. I've been ready for it for 30 years.

we've been able to do this kinda shit since the days of film, it wasn't hard, just required some clever stitching and blending.

It's "more accessible" I'm more concerned about shit like AI generated videos though. Those are spooky. Or also just the general accessibility of "natural bot nets" now.

There are even actual statues of completely made up stuff.

TAKING OUR JOBS

• AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry - Wired

• Democrats push bill to hire illegal immigrants - FOX News

HARASSING WOMEN AND CHILDREN

• Boys are taking images of female classmates and using AI to deepfake nude photos - Fortune

• Female Fox journalist harassed and chased by migrants while reporting outside shelter - Dailymail

A THREAT TO OUR WAY OF LIFE

• A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn - NYTimes

• Poll: Americans Fear their way of life is under threat - Fox News

THEY'RE SHITTING ON THE BEACHES

• ...[Coming Soon]
• Wasaga Beach reacts to reports of beachgoers defecating in sand - CTV News

REWRITING HISTORY BY DOCTORING PHOTOS WITH NEVER SEEN BEFORE PHOTO MANIPULATIONS

Sorry everyone I keep forgetting which zeitgeist that media is currently using to make us hate and fear something.

I wish tools to detect if an image is real or not become as easy to use and good as these AI tools bullshit.

Damn, those are pretty damn good!

No sweat since i am eschewing most things google related.

I think https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mostly-skeptical-thoughts-on-the mostly applies to this too

It's a shitty toy that'll make some people sorry when they don't have any photos from their night out without tiny godzilla dancing on their table. It won't have the staying power Google wishes it to, since it's useless except for gags.

But, please, Verge,

It took specialized knowledge and specialized tools to sabotage the intuitive trust in a photograph.

get fucked

If I say Tiananmen Square, you will, most likely, envision the same photograph I do.

There was film of that exact event. The guy didn't get run over by the tank, he got on the hood and berated the driver.

Cops in America would run you over for less