Dear Readers, when you glance quickly at the ‘photo’ above, what are your first thoughts? Here are a few from the Facebook page where it appeared:
“Wow, wonderful mother”
“Maternal love”
“So beautiful and precious!”
Um, yes. And also completely fake. Although this is tagged as photography, it’s an image generated by artificial intelligence. As are the ones below. I particularly like the parrot with the kittens.
And then there are the slightly more realistic but still fake birds. These are often based on real birds, but have been slightly tweaked into a kind of hybrid between two or more species.
Does it matter? Well, it’s a bit cynical to be generating fake animals (and plants) for the purpose of getting Likes, and I hate that some people are being taken in. All of the sites that I found these pictures on are tagging them as photographs, which they ain’t. But some of them are getting so good now that they could easily be taken as real photos. The more scrupulous AI artists are being clear about what exactly their images are. The two below, which were both labelled as AI images, are both of species of owl that really exist and actually look like this. I rather like both of these images (by Aye Aye at this Facebook page). However, do they add anything to the best photographic images of the birds?
I have no problem at all with AI images if everyone knows that that’s what they are (in fact, in a shameless plug, my brother has an Etsy shop selling a whole range of images here). However, if I was trying to make my living as a wildlife photographer I think I would be very fed up with the way that AI images are being passed off as ‘actual’ animals. I know that we all know that the internet is full of fake news, but I’m particularly peeved that you can’t even look at a thrush and some chicks anymore without someone messing with your head.
I think there’s also a slightly different issue here. If you look at the AI images above, they seem ‘hyper-real’ to me – the birds are fluffier, larger-eyed, brighter coloured, and altogether more ‘cute’. Does an overdose of this make the real life creatures seem a bit, well, boring in comparison? Does a constant diet of sugar make you less partial to things that are more complex, harder to digest?
And just a few tips to see if something is AI or real on the interwebs…
a) Has someone actually specified a species? This makes it easier to check on whether the image is accurate.
b) Click on the photo, then right-click. One of the options is ‘Search the Web for Image’. If this is a real species, it will throw up other images that you can compare it with. Sometimes you’ll find that it is a real bird/plant/bug but that it’s had its colours changed, or has been digitally manipulated in some other way. This leads us into something of a grey area, but for me if it’s been ‘tidied up’ in Photoshop that’s a bit different from being completely digitally created.
What do you think, Readers? Have you been caught out by AI? Have you, like me, seen an image of, say, a colourful insect (like the one below) and had to check if it’s real, only to find that it is? Do you get really aggravated by images that say that they’re photos when they’re clearly someone’s fantasy? Am I just being a curmudgeon (you can be honest (ish)). Over to you!
A real, actual insect – the Picasso Bug (Sphaerocoris annulus) Photo by By Alandmanson – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75139200
Someone sent me video of birds on Whats-app the other day because I like birds. The bright images flashed past against a background of soothing music – one of the images was similar to your #6. Pretty to look at although every one of them a fake – the sender, though thought they were real. Did you notice the chicks in #4 have both ears and whiskers?
It does bother me. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but then I when you said about it being a diet of sweet and cute, that was it. One of the reasons groups raising money for conservation use “cute” animals is that humans are more likely to give money for pumas than for frogs or, heaven forbid, spiders!
It’s one thing to use Photoshop to increase saturation or make a photo more “golden,” and another to create AI Disney-fied portraits that reinforce our need for things to be cute in order to like them. I feel like it only makes us less likely to support conservation of the less cute. Why does everything have to appeal to our narrow aesthetic tastes?
Agreed, and it now appears, following the Kate Middleton story, that photo agencies have strict rules about what’s allowed and what’s not:
AP’s news values and principles explain that minor photo editing, including cropping and toning and color adjustments, are acceptable when necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and should maintain the authentic nature of the photograph.
“Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of ‘red eye’ from photographs is not permissible.”
Of course, the images of the ‘mother birds’ in my piece are completely fake, but the owls? Is that somebody else’s photo taken and enhanced? And why wasn’t the original owl good enough? Feels like we have to be very careful whenever we look at an image.
What a timely topic! (Monday’s headline story) It’s one thing to try to improve a family photograph, but quite another to create a false reality. I don’t know that there’s a clearly defined point at which the line is crossed: it’s more of a gut reaction. I wonder what to do, if anything, about friends who post AI, false-reality pictures in good faith on FB etc. Should I point out that the purple green bird is not real and perhaps spoil the pleasure they wanted to share?
That’s a good question, Jill! If it’s a friend, I generally remark that it’s lovely, but did they notice that it’s AI – sometimes by direct message if I don’t want to embarrass them publicly. Same thing with other fake news that people sometimes inadvertently post. I’d always rather that it was me who pointed it out, rather than someone who might not be kind…
All those water droplets look completely false to me. It’s harder to tell on the others unless you’re an expert.