For those too young to have seen it, here is the famous scene from Blade Runner, which is set in 2019, that popularized this idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzlX43ykxQ
Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
91–100 of 453 posts
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had already convinced myself through prior experiments that it wasn't using EXIF data, and decided not to spend extra time making my post 100% proof against cynics because I know from past experience that truly dedicated cynics will always find something to invalidate what they are reading. I don't know how "iconic" that rocky outcrop in Madagascar is, to be honest. Google doesn't return much about it.
It absolutely tried to use EXIF data when I asked it to guess the location. Here is proof - https://imgur.com/a/CHde2Cx I couldn't attach the chat directly since it's a temporary chat.
Right, but that's at least evident in the thinking trace. I added a note about that to my post.
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#93To those argue that LLMs might cheat by using EXIF, I saw a post recently on twitter ( https://x.com/tszzl/status/1915212958755676350 ) and out of curiosity, screen-captured the photo and passed it to O3. So no EXIF. You can read the chat here: https://chatgpt.com/share/680a449f-d8dc-8001-88f4-60023323c7... It took 4.5m to guess the location. The guess was accurate (checked using Google Street View). What was amazing…
I don't see how this is mind blowing, or even mildly surprising! It's essentially going to use the set of features detected in the photo as a filter to find matching photos in the training set, and report the most frequent matches. Sometimes it'll get it right, sometimes not. It'd be interesting to see the photo in the linked story at same resolution as provided to o3, since the licence plate in the photo in the stor…
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Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#94If you want to exclude memory and exif data, just open streetview in some random corner of the world and take a screenshot (avoiding any text obviously). It's pretty good if you give it enough to reason with. It basically iterates on coming up with some hypothesis and then does web searches to validate those.
Isn't all of streetview in the training set?
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#95To those argue that LLMs might cheat by using EXIF, I saw a post recently on twitter ( https://x.com/tszzl/status/1915212958755676350 ) and out of curiosity, screen-captured the photo and passed it to O3. So no EXIF. You can read the chat here: https://chatgpt.com/share/680a449f-d8dc-8001-88f4-60023323c7... It took 4.5m to guess the location. The guess was accurate (checked using Google Street View). What was amazing…
I don't see how this is mind blowing, or even mildly surprising! It's essentially going to use the set of features detected in the photo as a filter to find matching photos in the training set, and report the most frequent matches. Sometimes it'll get it right, sometimes not. It'd be interesting to see the photo in the linked story at same resolution as provided to o3, since the licence plate in the photo in the stor…
If you want to be impressed I suggest trying this yourself on your own photos.
I don't consider it my job to impress or mind-blow people: I try to present as realistic as possible a representation of what this stuff can do.
That's why I picked an example where its first guess was 200 miles off!
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#96Why would you go to all the trouble of creating a blog post about this but leave the EXIF data in the image and then proclaim that it probably works without the EXIF too? Why not remove the EXIF in the first place? The two EXIF-less examples given in the update very clearly show iconic landmarks, which makes guessing very easy.
I had already convinced myself through prior experiments that it wasn't using EXIF data, and decided not to spend extra time making my post 100% proof against cynics because I know from past experience that truly dedicated cynics will always find something to invalidate what they are reading. I don't know how "iconic" that rocky outcrop in Madagascar is, to be honest. Google doesn't return much about it.
> truly dedicated cynics
I bet a lot of people (on HN at least) thought of "Does it use EXIF?" when they read the title alone, and got surprised that it was not the first thing you tested.
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#97If you want to exclude memory and exif data, just open streetview in some random corner of the world and take a screenshot (avoiding any text obviously). It's pretty good if you give it enough to reason with. It basically iterates on coming up with some hypothesis and then does web searches to validate those.
I just took a few random spots from around the globe and it got most of them right and some of them incredibly precisely right. I also tried to exclude obvious hints such as license plates, street signs, advertising, etc.
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accessible to anyone, superhuman levels of deductive reasoning to pick out your location from super minor details in an innocent photo? That could certainly be dystopian
Anyone can post to r/geogussr. Has that been dystopian all this time and I never noticed?
Honestly, yes it's a bit dystopian that a forum online exists where anyone can post a photo and experts from all around the world will help them figure out the exact location of that photo.
Lots of things that exist in our world today are mildly dystopian.
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#99I added a section just now with something I had missed: o3 DOES have a loose model of your location fed into it, which I believe is intended to support the new search feature (so it can run local searches). The thinking summary it showed me did not reference that information, but it's still very possible that it used that in its deliberations. I ran two extra example queries for photographs I've taken thousands of mi…
From the addition: > (EXIF stripped via screenshotting) Just a note, it is not necessary to "screenshot" to remove EXIF data. There are numerous tools that allow editing/removal of EXIF data (e.g., exiv2: https://exiv2.org/ , exiftool: https://exiftool.org/ , or even jpegtran with the "-copy none" option https://linux.die.net/man/1/jpegtran ). Using a screenshot to strip EXIF produces a reduced quality image (scaled…
I would like to point out that there is an interesting reason why people will go for the screenshot. They know it works. They do not have to worry about residual metadata still somehow being attached to a file. If you do not have complete confidence in the technical understanding of file metadata you can not be certain whatever tool you used worked.
Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining
#100I play competitive Geoguessr at a fairly high level, and I wanted to test this out to see how it compares. It's astonishingly good. It will use information it knows about you to arrive at the answer - it gave me the exact trailhead of a photo I took locally, and when I asked it how, it mentioned that it knows I live nearby. However, I've given it vacation photos from ages ago, and not only in tourist destinations eit…
Is that flashcard deck a commercial/community project or is it something you assembled yourself? Sounds fascinating !
I made it myself.
I use Obsidian and the Spaced Repetition plugin, which I highly recommend if you want a super simple markdown format for flashcards and use Obsidian:
https://www.stephenmwangi.com/obsidian-spaced-repetition/
There are pre-made Geoguessr decks for Anki. However, I wouldn't recommend using them. In my experience, a fundamental part of spaced repetition's efficacy is in creating the flashcards yourself.
For example I have a random location flashcard section where I will screenshot a location which is very unique looking, and I missed in game. When I later review my deck I'm way more likely to properly recall it because I remember the context of making the card. And when that location shows up in game, I will 100% remember it, which has won me several games.
If there's interest I can write a post about this.