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AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

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Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#41

Post by shagie »

thadt wrote: post #33
superxpro12 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go a bit deeper on this? If the risk of mistranslation is high, I fail to comprehend how letting AI "take a swing at it" does not reduce the translation quality? How are they ensure no drop in translation quality?

They're doing transcription, not translation - so, turning someones pages of scrawled script into typewritten text. They have around 20 people nationwide that are able to do this. Most of them are older volunteers who aren't all that interested in computer assistance, but about a third of them have started leveraging the newer AI tools and it has accelerated their throughput significantly. Having a 'best guess' at th…

As a profession (and under time constraints) ... Tom Scott : How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting - https://youtu.be/XxCha4Kez9c

Part of the story is that the OCR that is handling hand lettered addresses.

I also chuckled at the cursive letter recognition sheet on the side of the cube.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#42

Post by red75prime »

arctic-true wrote: post #14
TrackerFF wrote: post #5

As long as they're not GenAI altered photos, I'm cool with these things. I'm a pretty avid member of various history groups, and one thing that has absolutely driven me nuts for the past couple of years is how many people there are that use AI for upscaling and colorization of photos - not knowing or noticing how the models fundamentally alter the photos. A couple of zooms in on the photo, and it is nightmare fuel. A…

Do you have any recommendations for colorization tools? I agree that all of the popular image models subtly tweak faces, it is very uncanny when working with pictures of people I knew before they passed. In a pre-GPT age, there were some good but not great colorization tools, and as far as I can tell you can’t get better-than-2020 performance unless you’re willing to get your expression adjusted or your eyebrows redo…

> there were some good but not great colorization tools

I've seen the-grass-is-green-the-clothes-are-beige tools. Was there anything better than that?

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#43

Post by SoftTalker »

tux1968 wrote: post #26
Morromist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, 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…

There 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 f…

No no, those are color photographs. The world was black and white back then.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#44

Post by userbinator »

z3c0 wrote: post #30
tux1968 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 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.

I'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.

Nor should they be admissible as evidence in court.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#45

Post by xmm »

danvk wrote: post #15
brrrrrm wrote: post #6

I checked 3 spots I'm familiar with and 1 is wrong https://www.oldnyc.org/#707133f-a this is supposed to be here https://www.oldnyc.org/#702487f-a also, if folks are interested in these old depictions of NYC, check out https://1940s.nyc/ as well!

(Author here) IIUC you're saying that 707133f-a should be at 5th Ave & 9th Street, not 5th Ave & Union Street? Can you say more about why? The text on the back of the first image says "Union St. Station, 5th Ave," which is how it winds up at there. On the other hand, the NYPL page[1] titles the image "Union St. - 18th St." (I briefly got excited that there might be a street sign _in_ the photo, but if you zoom way in…

I'm pretty sure both are correct at Union St and 5th Ave. The Manhattan Savings Bank building (left edge in both photos) is still there, and fairly distinct.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#46

Post by renewiltord »

mikeyouse wrote: post #9
TrackerFF wrote: post #5

As long as they're not GenAI altered photos, I'm cool with these things. I'm a pretty avid member of various history groups, and one thing that has absolutely driven me nuts for the past couple of years is how many people there are that use AI for upscaling and colorization of photos - not knowing or noticing how the models fundamentally alter the photos. A couple of zooms in on the photo, and it is nightmare fuel. A…

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 th…

Okay 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!

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#47

Post by jassyr »

I love this! Thanks for sharing. My job involves reviewing old maps and documents, and I have a special place in my heart for easily accessible archives.

So much cool stuff is freely available at libraries but in practice no one visits them anymore.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#48

Post by brrrrrm »

danvk wrote: post #15
brrrrrm wrote: post #6

I checked 3 spots I'm familiar with and 1 is wrong https://www.oldnyc.org/#707133f-a this is supposed to be here https://www.oldnyc.org/#702487f-a also, if folks are interested in these old depictions of NYC, check out https://1940s.nyc/ as well!

(Author here) IIUC you're saying that 707133f-a should be at 5th Ave & 9th Street, not 5th Ave & Union Street? Can you say more about why? The text on the back of the first image says "Union St. Station, 5th Ave," which is how it winds up at there. On the other hand, the NYPL page[1] titles the image "Union St. - 18th St." (I briefly got excited that there might be a street sign _in_ the photo, but if you zoom way in…

you're right, this is actually correctly placed! I was confusing the orientation. I live right around there and recognize the M&T bank in the photo on the left, so it can't be down by 9th

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#49

Post by raffraffraff »

TrackerFF wrote: post #5

As long as they're not GenAI altered photos, I'm cool with these things. I'm a pretty avid member of various history groups, and one thing that has absolutely driven me nuts for the past couple of years is how many people there are that use AI for upscaling and colorization of photos - not knowing or noticing how the models fundamentally alter the photos. A couple of zooms in on the photo, and it is nightmare fuel. A…

Yep, these models are all trash. They happily invent wrong detail. If you never knew anyone in the photograph, then knock yourself out, let it invent faces that didn't exist. But if you're doing anything with family photographs just stop. Unless you can tune a model on your own family photographs you can't magically add "correct" detail to a blurred, pixelated, grainy or unfocused photo. You can add colour, pretty reliably though.

Re: AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC

#50

Post by mikeyouse »

torben-friis wrote: post #39
Morromist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, 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…

I'm firmly against uncontrolled AI use. But as long as the edits are strongly labeled, I have to say I enjoy the effect. Maybe it's because I'm too young and I've never had B&W content around, but the edited picture allows me to feel the photograph as real, as a place I could have walked around, which I can't really do with the original. I find that effect more valuable than a specific roof being deformed or whatever…

The effect bugs me personally mainly because the cars are implausible colors, there are a ton of small changes to e.g. the windows on the campers etc. But even more annoyingly, most of her posts are just the color photos without even the source pic. She clearly enjoys it, and many people in the comments do too, but I just have this existential dread that those will be slurped up in the next AI push and treated as historical truth in the future.
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