Like quite a few photographers, I have been flirting with AI (artificial intelligence) digital imaging. Regular readers may even have spotted my Synthetic Stupidity gallery dedicated to the fact that at the moment, publicly available AI graphics tools really aren’t particularly good – even though they are quite good fun to play with. In fact they really are a bit crap. And my attempts to use them, even more so…
One man and his cabbage
I think Anglo-American comedian John Oliver outlines some of the the current issues with AI imaging, in a way that only a former Brummie can, in his a recent HBO skit…
The future
Joking aside and bolting-on my geek-head for a moment, I’d like to consider exactly where AI imaging might be headed?
Much-hyped products such as Craiyon and DALL·E 2 will come and go. However the underlying OpenAI will stick around, develop and find its way into a huge diversity of products, hardware and software, including some that haven’t even invented yet. Perhaps even one of your 3D printed lenses c/w a Raspberry Pi and some stepper motors? 🙂
Meantime, I think we are likely to see GIMP and PS plug-ins using OpenAI. Ditto mirrorless cameras. And I suspect we’ll see it deployed on smartphones, to beautify ugly selfies, and to make cheap arrays of shitty lenses pretend to be really expensive ones – that kind of thing.
Take for example of scar removal. I.e. the user marks a part of the subject’s skin that is a scar and identifies another nearby bit that’s undamaged skin. Thenclick “OK” and the machine sorts it out. It could also add a bit of pseudorandom stuff (in a similar manner to Maxon’s VR/MR rendering tools) in order to create more realistic surfaces. Thus reducing “Perfection Paradox” effects.
This tech is likely to find its way into many editing tasks where it can use its ‘virtual brain’ to eliminate much of the boring donkey work.
There is a currently waiting list for testing DALL·E 2, i.e. the one that is claimed to draw faces properly, to which you may subscribe, if you wish, if you haven’t already so. But don’t hold your breath. I been on the list for months and still haven’t heard a thing…
Meantime if you want to create really shite AI images of your own, then try this…