See the Apple Intelligence Photos App 'Clean Up' Tool in Action

[Velli]

Just wondering why the disappointment on this clean up feature? I tried it on a few photos and it seemed to work well for me.

Because some people think everyone scrutinizes every image they come buy every day, to figure out how it was edited. While in reality most images, if they are lucky, are used to scroll past quickly on Instagram. And most people won’t notice even the most obvious of fakes if it isn’t pointed out to them.

I’ll be the doomsayer - feel free to skip:

All those fake pictures we scroll by, AI or not, does actually affect our view on the world. If you think fake pictures on social is bad now, just wait 6 months. We are going to see a transition period where the amount and quality of fake images and videos shoot through the roof. In the beginning it will cause all sorts of mayhem, until we reach a point where people just accept that everything on a screen or in print is fiction. And the actual non-fiction will simply drown out, whether and die.

And then we will be forced to ignore all of it, and put more emphasis on the things we experience in real life, and the people we talk to face to face. For good and for bad. We will have better science and more factual information than ever in history, yet it will be drowned out by the sheet amount of junk.

Don’t believe me? Consider this: Right now tech pundits are debating whether it’s an issue that these tools are becoming available to Average Joe, whereas with Photoshop at least there was a barrier to entry. Now consider what will happen when the AI content is no longer created by Average Joe, but by the AI itself. We are all scared of the Terminator 2 scenario of robots killing us all. It might not come to that, but “robots” WILL kill our digital lives as we know it. And there is only one solution: Go off grid. Talk to the neighbour, instead of random dude from Indonesia.

I already deleted all social medias from my phone. I’ve had enough, and it hasn’t even really started yet.

 

[Marco Klobas]

This is a very good example showing how all these AI related stuff aren't intelligent at all (not only Apple's).

The house's wall boards have been considered to fill the bricked column (the visible horizontal stripes).

Why?

Even the worst graphic designer would have considered stone bricks only. Maybe in a sloppy way, with a sucking result – still, bricks not boards. Clearly this is a 2D image analysis without taking into account the 3D depth of the scene any intelligent being would have taken into account instead.

They could be useful tools in some scenarios – they are not "intelligent", though.

 

[Velli]

I don’t know if this tool does it, but now there is a new metadata type that states if a picture has been through AI or not.

How many times have you looked in the metadata on a random picture on Instagram? Outside of photographer nerdery of course.

 

[Velli]

This is a very good example showing how all these AI related stuff aren't intelligent at all (not only Apple's).

The house's wall boards have been considered to fill the bricked column (the visible horizontal stripes).

Why?

Even the worst graphic designer would have considered stone bricks only. Maybe in a sloppy way, with a sucking result – still, bricks not boards. Clearly this is a 2D image analysis without taking into account the 3D depth of the scene any intelligent being would have taken into account instead.

They could be useful tools in some scenarios – they are not "intelligent", though.

“Yet”. The word is “yet”. Consider where we were two years ago. Now think two years ahead. THAT’S why people are excited about this. If you don’t see it, you are in for a ride. As in, you will be taken for a ride.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Is this actually AI? Its almost the same as the retouch tool that Photoshop has since ever, doesn’t really understand the context behind the subject to erase and just uses what’s it’s around to patch the empty space…

I have a feeling that the processing is all done on the phone, exactly the same way that Photoshop, which you mentioned, does.

The Google example shown in the video used bits of car image to fill in the image in the background, which is why it appears to have done a better job on filling the space when the person in the middle was taken out. It seems to "understand" what's needed to fill in the image, and then either it checked from online sources or its AI brain was trained on enough images to know what to generate. So I'm assuming the Google version relies on off-device processing more than Apple's version.

At least that (added to the fact that this is still in beta) appears to be the difference. Better for privacy, worse at removing exes.

 

[Marco Klobas]

“Yet”. The word is “yet”. Consider where we were two years ago. Now think two years ahead. THAT’S why people are excited about this. If you don’t see it, you are in for a ride. As in, you will be taken for a ride.

Content Aware Fill was introduced in Photoshop in 2018. 6 years ago. The shown example uses a 6 years old technology.

I don't deny there will be progresses and refinements in this field. Just don't call it intelligent. Not yet, at least.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

How many times have you looked in the metadata on a random picture on Instagram? Outside of photographer nerdery of course.

The point is, Instagram and other social media sites can read the metadata of posted images, and add something to the post that says the image has been altered.

If they want to, that is

 

[Reason077]

Little Johnny grew up to be a bad egg, he’s in jail now and we don’t speak of him no more. Time to edit him out of the family photos!

 

[Velli]

Content Aware Fill was introduced in Photoshop in 2018. 6 years ago. The shown example uses a 6 years old technology.

I don't deny there will be progresses and refinements in this field. Just don't call it intelligent. Not yet, at least.

If you don’t see the difference between a sloppy, poorly done image edit done on a dedicated computer using professional grade software, and a sloppy, poorly done image edit done by your mother in law drawing a circle on her phone, I can’t help you.

The revolution isn’t quality. It’s availability. Ten billion poorly done edits will do a lot more damage than a thousand perfectly done ones. People pointing out the quality of these edits are completely missing the point. 99% of the world CAN’T DO those edits you did in Photoshop ten years ago. But, today or tomorrow, they can do something good enough to fool that same 99% into thinking something is real. Who cares about the 1% who sits in forums and points at the missing arm?

Smart people don’t elect presidents. Stupid people do. Smart people are outnumbered.

 

[Velli]

The point is, Instagram and other social media sites can read the metadata of posted images, and add something to the post that says the image has been altered.

If they want to, that is

1: It’s trivial to strip or alter metadata.

2: AI features will become so engraved and blurred into standard photos that it will get complicated to draw a line. What does “unaltered” even mean at this point, let alone in three phone generations?

3: People will grow numb to the warnings. And, psychologically, people will to some degree take in as fact even what is declared as fiction.

How many people have their knowledge about what happened to JFK from Oliver Stone?

Edit: Oh, and by the way, *I* am not calling it intelligent. Doesn’t need to be intelligent to fool the 99%.

 

[Velli]

Little Johnny grew up to be a bad egg, he’s in jail now and we don’t speak of him no more. Time to edit him out of the family photos!

Your great-great grandparents grew up in a world without photograps. Their reality was what they saw with their own eyes. You and me grew up in a world where reality was what we saw in photos. That was the evidence. To the point where we psychologically forget the things we experienced but didn’t photograph, and remember the things we photographed even if they were less eventful.

Our kids will grow up in a world somewhere in between, where an abundance of photos exist, everything we do and see will be documented - but the only certain reality is what we see with our own eyes.

 

[Velli]

Also, on the topic of Instagram: Content providers don’t need to fool you into believing it’s real. Alm they need is to make you look at it for long enough to determine if it’s real. Even if you look for five seconds, instead of scrolling past, that’s a huge win.

 

[ForkHandles]

Tools like this should clearly state in the corner of the photo that it was edited by AI, so people know.

Actually it’s worse than that.

Skip forwards, 10-30 years, the majority of images/texts that AI will learn on will have been created by AI.

Incest if you like, keeping it in the family.

It’s already been shown that AI photo data feeding AI models create a warped view of the world, facial features mould together etc etc

AI seriously runs the risk of being that snake that started to eat its own tail.

Good article here

AI Appears to Be Slowly Killing Itself

AI-generated content flooding the web. That could be a problem for AI models, which are widely trained via web-scraped data.

futurism.com

 

[Freddy Fruitfly]

View attachment 2410433View attachment 2410433

 

[Freddy Fruitfly]

 

[Velli]

Actually it’s worse than that.

Skip forwards, 10-30 years, the majority of images/texts that AI will learn on will have been created by AI.

Incest if you like, keeping it in the family.

It’s already been shown that AI photo data feeding AI models create a warped view of the world, facial features mould together etc etc

AI seriously runs the risk of being that snake that started to eat its own tail.

Good article here

AI Appears to Be Slowly Killing Itself

AI-generated content flooding the web. That could be a problem for AI models, which are widely trained via web-scraped data.

futurism.com

AI inbreeding is my new favourite term!

I think this is just one example that we have absolutely no idea where we are heading. To stay positive, I believe the results is more likely going to be weird, than dangerous. But, I could be wrong.

 

[Velli]

View attachment 2410435

We managed to go four pages before a BTTF reference. New record I believe!

 

[ChrisMac47]

All these AI features are great for promoting pure analogue (film) photography. People with real intelligence are embracing film, giving them real photos, not artificial creations (if you want that, take up painting).

 

[AndiG]

An eraser tool is so oooooooooold (can't even remember when I used one the first time)

Let's have a look on the future with foldable phones and features Apple may have in 5 years (like foldable phones)

 

[attila]

Is this actually AI? Its almost the same as the retouch tool that Photoshop has since ever, doesn’t really understand the context behind the subject to erase and just uses what’s it’s around to patch the empty space…

It's indeed a feature that's existed in Photoshop for quite some time, and yet, even Adobe renamed it to "AI" now.

Anything to trick investors into giving them more money. Given how dumb they can be (remember Elisabeth Holmes?), I can't fully oppose the idea.

 

[Marco Klobas]

If you don’t see the difference between a sloppy, poorly done image edit done on a dedicated computer using professional grade software, and a sloppy, poorly done image edit done by your mother in law drawing a circle on her phone, I can’t help you.

The revolution isn’t quality. It’s availability. Ten billion poorly done edits will do a lot more damage than a thousand perfectly done ones. People pointing out the quality of these edits are completely missing the point. 99% of the world CAN’T DO those edits you did in Photoshop ten years ago. But, today or tomorrow, they can do something good enough to fool that same 99% into thinking something is real. Who cares about the 1% who sits in forums and points at the missing arm?

Smart people don’t elect presidents. Stupid people do. Smart people are outnumbered.

I get your point and appreciate you highlighted the effects of these tools on society.

I just pointed out the sloppy result to simply underline that there's nothing intelligent in that process. It's a very fast, automated and handy computational task. Like it has always been since IT was born.

In fact, since I was a boy, a computer has been defined as a stupid yet very fast machine.

"Who cares? Regular people don't consider these differences" you would say and you're right. Since this is somehow a technical forum I thought it'd be useful to address the weak "intelligence" side. Especially considering the hype spreading even among tech savvy people on this matter.

If this is intelligent, then how will be called a proper sentient-like machine developed in the future (assuming it's possible)? AIOS – Artificial Intelligence On Steroids? Marketers will find a better and effective name fo sure.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

View attachment 2410435

Well played, Sir.

 

[Leachb31]

So Apple does something photoshop has been doing long before AI was even a thing, and Apple calls this a revolutionary AI feature?? Really? I guess it's a good marketing pitch for all their stupid sheeple.

 

[ForkHandles]

AI inbreeding is my new favourite term!

I think this is just one example that we have absolutely no idea where we are heading. To stay positive, I believe the results is more likely going to be weird, than dangerous. But, I could be wrong.

What I’m looking forward to seeing is the AI outbreeding.

Humans learning grammatical correctness from articles written by AI. Humans then create their own content, publish it, and AI laps it up as human content, absolute confirmation bias.

Language runs the risk of changing quite rapidly I think.

 

[NightFox]

I don't get what the problem is with the AI-generated car in the background in the video - there are countless cars that look just like that, just check the 3D view on Apple Maps.