An amateur photographer who goes by the name “ibreakphotos” decided to do an experiment on his Samsung smartphone last month to find out how a feature called “space zoom” actually works.
The feature, first released in 2020, claims a 100x zoom rate, and Samsung Electronics Co used sparkling clear images of the moon in its marketing.
Ibreakphotos took his own pictures of the moon — blurry and without detail — and watched as his phone added craters and other details.
Photo: AFP / Jos Avery
The phone’s artificial intelligence (AI) software was using data from its “training” on many other pictures of the moon to add detail where there was none.
“The moon pictures from Samsung are fake,” he wrote, leading many to wonder whether the shots people take are really theirs anymore — or if they can even be described as photographs.
Samsung has defended the technology, saying it does not “overlay” images, and pointed out that users can switch off the function.
The firm is not alone in the race to pack its smartphone cameras with AI — Google’s Pixel devices and Apple Inc’s iPhone have been marketing such features since 2016.
The AI can do all the things photographers used to labor over — tweaking the lighting, blurring backgrounds, sharpening eyes — without the user ever knowing.
However, it can also transform backgrounds or simply wipe away people from the image entirely.
The debate over AI is not limited to hobbyists on message boards — professional bodies are raising the alarm too.
The industry is awash with AI, from cameras to software like Photoshop, said Michael Pritchard, director of education and public affairs at the Royal Photographic Society of Britain.
“This automation is increasingly blurring boundaries between a photograph and a piece of artwork,” he said.
The nature of AI is different to previous innovations, because the technology can learn and bring new elements beyond those recorded by film or sensor, he said.
This brings opportunities, but also “fundamental challenges around redefining what photography is, and how ‘real’ a photograph is,” Pritchard said.
Nick Dunmur of the Britain-based Association of Photographers said professionals most often use “RAW” files on their digital cameras, which capture images with as little processing as possible.
However, sidestepping the technology is less easy for a casual smartphone shooter.
Ibreakphotos, who posted his finding on Reddit, said that technical jargon around AI is not always easy to understand — perhaps deliberately so.
“I wouldn’t say that I am happy with the use of AI in cameras, but I am OK with it as long as it is communicated clearly what each processing pipeline actually does,” he told reporters, asking not to use his real name.
What professional photographers are most concerned about, though, is the rise of AI tools that generate completely new images.
In the past year, DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have exploded in popularity thanks to their ability to create images in hundreds of styles with just a short text prompt.
“This is not human-authored work,” Dunmur said. “And in many cases is based on the use of training datasets of unlicensed work.”
These issues have already led to court cases in the US and Europe.
According to Pritchard, the tools risk disrupting the work of anyone “from photographers, to models, to retouchers and art directors.”
However, Jos Avery, a US amateur photographer who recently tricked thousands on Instagram by filling his feed with stunning portraits he had created with Midjourney, disagreed.
He said the lines drawn between “our work” and “the tool’s work” were arbitrary, pointing out that his Midjourney images often took many hours to create.
However, there is broad agreement on one fundamental aspect of the debate — the risk for photography is not existential.
“AI will not be the death of photography,” Avery said.
Pritchard agreed, saying that photography had endured from the daguerreotype to the digital era, and photographers had always risen to technical challenges.
That process would continue even in a world awash with AI-generated images, he said.
“The photographer will bring a deeper understanding to the resulting image even if they haven’t directly photographed it,” he said.
Anna Bhobho, a 31-year-old housewife from rural Zimbabwe, was once a silent observer in her home, excluded from financial and family decisionmaking in the deeply patriarchal society. Today, she is a driver of change in her village, thanks to an electric tricycle she owns. In many parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa, women have long been excluded from mainstream economic activities such as operating public transportation. However, three-wheelers powered by green energy are reversing that trend, offering financial opportunities and a newfound sense of importance. “My husband now looks up to me to take care of a large chunk of expenses,
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
TECH CLUSTER: The US company’s new office is in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) yesterday launched an office in Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), marking a significant milestone in the development of southern Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the Tainan City Government said in a statement. AMD Taiwan general manager Vincent Chern (陳民皓) presided over the opening ceremony for the company’s new office at the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (沙崙智慧綠能科學城), a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan. Facilities in the new office include an information processing center, and a research and development (R&D) center, the Tainan Economic Development Bureau said. The Ministry
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities