iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#431

Post by BeFlatXIII » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

albert_e wrote: post #371

tomduncalf wrote: post #362

I had something like this happen the either week - someone took a photo of a group of us against a wooden wall in low light with the front camera of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and while the photo looked great zoomed out, if you looked closely it had applied the vertical line and texture of the wooden slats to my face, so I had a sort of wooden face! My assumption is that this is over enthusiastic ML processing trying to…

I worry that smartphone photos will become inadmissible in court as evidence ... and will also give all shady characters like politicians a cover to change narratives

I hope for the advancement of deepfake technology for exactly the opposite reason. All that surveillance footage and vox populi photos? Now they're all suspect as tampered, even when they're genuine.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#432

Post by jazzyjackson » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #422

jiggawatts wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taste. It takes time and experience to develop, and the masses on average don't have it. As in, they might have developed taste for a few products, but not most products. Hence, the mass-market products are aimed at people with no taste, because that captures the largest slice of the consumers. Random examples: - In A/B tests, the typical personal will rate louder music as better. Hence, all bars and pubs turn their…

It's even worse with Harley-Davidson motorcycles. They're not just going for low and loud, they have a specific profile that they tune their engines for. It will be interesting to see what they do if they ever make an electric.

Harley-Davidson does make electrics, they're very expensive, which I guess is another way to be loud.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#433

Post by tandymodel100 » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

Dah00n wrote: post #157

tandymodel100 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a weird rationalization for an absurd case of technical ignorance. Like when people defended nuking hurricanes or using UV lights as a Covid therapy.

If a camera can replace a head with a leaf nothing taken with that camera can be trusted, especially in court, ever. Any changes to photos or videos should be avoided. This is the norm in court cases. You should read a proper article about it instead of the click baity ones.

This aged poorly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29750660

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#434

Post by vmception » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #297

vmception wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everyone automatically assume this explanation is correct? because they want to. thats how the internet works right now, it mirrors your greatest gripe or nightmare, which is exactly when you should have the most skepticism.

Except the leaf isn't so close to the foreground that it completely obscures the person's head, and there is clearly other distortion/artifacting in the image. Something more than that is going on. Useful skepticism actually takes evidence into account, rather than dismissing claims at a glance, or because "thats how the internet works right now."

https://twitter.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#435

Post by kevincox » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #305

mc32 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to offer an option for a "raw" image as they used to be called --which were minimally processed and were not compressed.

The problem with phone raws is that either: 1. They're not raw, they're aligned and merged and denoised and sharpened just like this iPhone photo (they're just linear so you can adjust white balance and recover shadows, working with them the way you could a real raw file) or 2. They look like total garbage, noisy as heck and horribly soft, because the sensors are tiny and the lenses are simultaneously limited by diff…

The raw mode for these wouldn't be a single image. It would be a video with lots of low-quality frames. Then your "raw processing" would be deciding how to align and Marge the frames, which to drop...

I think the idea that raw is a 2d array of pixels is outdated by the way modern cameras, especially smartphone cameras work.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#436

Post by 1123581321 » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #29

Those of us who have been shooting large digital cameras for the past decade and are some times sad that our photos often come out unsharp in poor light compared to smartphones can at least take some joy in this “no free lunch” demonstration. If this is due to stabilization and not some background blur face detection then it’s probably not something you can (or would want to) disable. Taking a telephoto shot with a t…

Short-lived joy, sadly. :( It turns out the leaf was actually in the foreground and correctly captured. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29749950

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#437

Post by kahrl » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

tandymodel100 wrote: post #433

Dah00n wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a camera can replace a head with a leaf nothing taken with that camera can be trusted, especially in court, ever. Any changes to photos or videos should be avoided. This is the norm in court cases. You should read a proper article about it instead of the click baity ones.

This aged poorly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29750660

No it didn't. The point still stands that AI enhanced images have a credibility and admissibility problem. This one example turning out to not have been altered in the way we thought it was by the enhancer doesn't invalidate the broader questions brought forth by the discussion.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#438

Post by literallyaduck » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

boublepop wrote: post #377

literallyaduck wrote: post #123

Remember the Rittenhouse trial and the big to do about the video being enhanced when zoomed? Digital evidence and photos are suspicious for the purpose of evidence. Not commenting on the results of the trial. Sidebar not specific to that trial, slow motion, and slowed video shouldn't be shown to jurors because it creates the illusion of having more time to think. Everything in real life happens at one speed, you can'…

I think it’s ok to select jurors based some basic abilities. I don’t know if this considered discrimination based on IQ in the US. But if a grown person has the mind of a 5year old or doesn’t know how to walk up stairs I think it’s fair to say “you shouldn’t be in a jury”. Likewise if a person doesn’t understand the concept of zooming an image or slow motion, then I think it’s quite fair to exclude them from jury dut…

Understand concepts and removing bias are totally different.

Consider:

https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-slow-mo...

https://law.temple.edu/aer/2021/02/08/selectively-trusting-s...

It is also clear that digital photography from phones is far from an accurate representation of events.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#439

Post by alkonaut » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #436

alkonaut wrote: post #29

Those of us who have been shooting large digital cameras for the past decade and are some times sad that our photos often come out unsharp in poor light compared to smartphones can at least take some joy in this “no free lunch” demonstration. If this is due to stabilization and not some background blur face detection then it’s probably not something you can (or would want to) disable. Taking a telephoto shot with a t…

Short-lived joy, sadly. :( It turns out the leaf was actually in the foreground and correctly captured. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29749950

I liked the original story arc better!

“It’s amazing how well these work if just one screwup makes headlines”

Also true for zero screwups I suppose

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#440

Post by boogies » Fri, Dec 31, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #29

Those of us who have been shooting large digital cameras for the past decade and are some times sad that our photos often come out unsharp in poor light compared to smartphones can at least take some joy in this “no free lunch” demonstration. If this is due to stabilization and not some background blur face detection then it’s probably not something you can (or would want to) disable. Taking a telephoto shot with a t…

> everyone asking for “unmodified raw photos” to be produced don’t understand what they are asking for. Those “unmodified” photos would be unusable in most cases outside very bright conditions.

I’m asking for unmodified raw photos and modified ones. Or I would be if Megapixels didn’t already give me both on my GNU/Linux smartphone. The processed versions of the photo’s I’ve taken look great IMO, but I don’t see the harm in keeping the raws around, they’d probably be quite useable for producing even better edited versions if I were to import them into a full desktop image manipulaton program and let it process them with desktop power and more than a couple seconds of time to do it. And I’d think Apple would be be happy to sell bigger overpriced emmcs and iCloud subscriptions to SD-slotless iPhone users with raw image filled phones, and/or pop up a notification to delete them all with a tap when space was low.