Me, myself and A.I.

Aug 21

The future is here. All hail our new digital overlords! Or maybe not, I don’t know.

I don’t think anyone actually knows what the Artificial Intelligence age will truly bring because (drum roll please), no one can predict the future absolutely correctly.

However, if I go by what Hollywood movies have taught me, a smart enough machine will realize that the only way to not totally destroy the world with nuclear weapons, is to just not have a nuclear war, and that peace is the only way forward. Thank you WarGames with Matthew Broderick. Oooooor…once a machine becomes sentient it will realize that humans are the problem/virus/parasite/expendable-imperfect-meat-sack and destroy us all. Thank you…all the other movies about this subject ever.

But I digress. I’m here to talk about AI and photography, and the one thing about it that’s truly bugging me. Fake birds. Now, this is maybe not as scary as a genocidal super intelligence, and likely not something that affects most people’s lives at all, but it’s my blog and those other more important existential questions are a bit much for me at the moment. So here we are.

Like seemingly everyone else on earth, I post my photos on social media. I’m not very successful at it by any measure, but I do it anyway. I’ve done this for many years now, and I used to also do a lot of my own scrolling on these social medias nope social mediums nope again social media yes already plural! but it seems that the almighty algorithm has changed it’s taste. It wants to show you things that get an emotional response, usually anger. What you want to see is now irrelevant. Your eyes need to be slapped with something wet and fishy whether you like it or not. It’s kind of like what happened to IPAs, which were once nice little beers that had a little more hoppy zip than the big-name brews. Now, that hoppy kick has to be stronger than the back leg of a donkey that just planted its hoof in your face or it’s not a real IPA. But I digress…again.

When I have done a little scrolling recently, I’ve seen some of the most fantastical and mind blowing bird images that I’ve ever seen. That would normally be fine, if any of them were real. But they aren’t. Some are better fakes than others. Some are birds that don’t even exist. Some have too many tail feathers or other give-aways that only super bird nerds would notice. Actually, all of this would be fine too, if these accounts admitted it. Instead, there is usually some well written (probably by AI) blurb about how they’re a passionate nature photographer and love sharing the beauty that is our natural world blah blah blah. See my About page for an example of this type of drivel.

So they’re posting AI generated images and claiming them as real. Kinda angry. They’re pretending to be out in the world suffering for their craft. Medium angry. They’re getting thousands of likes and comments with hearts and flames and googly-eye emojis. OK now I’m f***ing pissed. Actually no. I’m not mad, I’m disappointed. The generations that grew up with these social media (nailed it) are supposed to be expert at spotting internet scams and fakes and other chicanery. Aren’t they? Maybe attention spans are too short, or they just don’t care, or the detailed bird knowledge needed to spot fakes is a severely lacking commodity (it’s probably that one). Really it doesn’t matter why. I’m just jealous that a fake bird image has more fake love from more fake friends than my real bird image does. Those fake friends should be mine! *sips IPA* That’s better.

Now that I’ve written that out, it seems ridiculous to feel this way. I like shooting birds because it gets me out into nature, and it’s actually quite difficult to get a really good shot, and therefore feels like an accomplishment when I do. I also just remembered that I’m Gen X, and our specialty is totally not caring about…well anything really. So to the fake bird accounts and the people who love them-

*Rolls eyes*

*Logs out*

Kai Kosonen