[HN Gopher] Update: iPhone Camera app did not replace person's h... ___________________________________________________________________ Update: iPhone Camera app did not replace person's head with a leaf Author : agar Score : 391 points Date : 2021-12-31 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | ctdonath wrote: | Sometimes a leaf is just a leaf. | bluishgreen wrote: | It wasn't the AI that did the Auto-filling this past day, it a | large mass of humanity that auto-filled an incident report into a | plausible outline of a story. I think this will happen more and | more once AI reaches a point of higher cognition. | matznerd wrote: | I'm glad we got to the bottom of this. More importantly, good to | know there is not someone running around with a leaf for a | head...I can sleep again. | layer8 wrote: | Or maybe the leaf-head people forced him to post the | "explanation" and the really AI-produced video. | xattt wrote: | Who are these people who cook up manufactured controversy for the | sake of Twitter attention? | | The actual explanation will get lost in the discourse and leaf- | head will live on in the minds of the impulse-minded masses. | | See also: Yanni/Laurel and the dress thing. | tailspin2019 wrote: | > leaf-head | | Well now you've just gone and given this thing a catchy name. | That's not exactly going to help matters. | | #leafhead | jhgb wrote: | This makes some of the "informed opinions" in the recent | discussion hilarious to read in retrospect, considering that the | event reasoned about in those comments didn't actually happen to | begin with. | [deleted] | Kranar wrote: | Happens all the time, what's fascinating is that in the | original discussion there are people who came to the conclusion | that it's just a leaf that is in front of her face, either one | that is in the process of falling down or one that was pushed | right in place by the wind... | | The people who made such comments were never replied to, and | while I can't see upvotes my suspicion given how far down you | have to scroll to read them is that no one cared to give those | possibilities much credibility. | lil_dispaches wrote: | TWTR's image and video compression is so bad I'd call it a market | signal; they can't afford images??? | dagmx wrote: | isn't it more likely that they're optimizing for their users? | The goal is to have a product where people are scrolling past a | multitude of media content quickly. Having very small versions | of that media immediately display is the UX their users benefit | from. | upbeat_general wrote: | Definitely this. I still wish they'd have a "show original" | button or even detect when you're staying on an image/zooming | in and download the full res then. | liamkinne wrote: | Question for the audience: would you say this is an example of | Occam's razor? | ctdonath wrote: | Yes. In an area with lots of leaves, not unreasonable to think | motion or parallax unexpectedly included a leaf - vs some wild | convergence of leading edge technological bugs perfectly | rendering content in a system which shouldn't. | Natsu wrote: | That said, it's hard for people to know any more after things | like the "I am not a cat" video. | routerl wrote: | Yes, and therefore bad troubleshooting. | | Don't blame systems for bad input; garbage in, garbage out. | OzzyB wrote: | Yes indeed. | | IMO this is also a good example of engineers looking for | complex bugs and solutions which are simply not there. | draw_down wrote: | ben_w wrote: | I wouldn't. We do know, indeed boast, that AI is used to boost | the apparent performance of consumer grade cameras and | especially iPhones. There is that example of a photocopier | changing numbers in the images it copies. Illusions are | reasonably likely to be either in the human _or_ the machine | vision systems. | tshaddox wrote: | I think a better question is how many people would | independently develop the accusation if they were presented | with the original photo without comment? | henvic wrote: | Definitely. I'm into photography, although I'm not by any means | an expert, and when I first saw this news I just ignored it | thinking there were so much going on, and the cause might be | anything simple, it didn't really spark my curiosity. | | I thought maybe it was just some processing glitch, maybe it | was computational photography messing up, maybe it was just a | question of focus, or maybe a mix of things. | Gupie wrote: | The leaf turns out to be real but hasn't the guy's head behind it | been removed? Unless the guy has such a small head its completely | hidden! | mdoms wrote: | Well it was a woman and her head was not completely obscured | and is clearly visible. Have you even seen the original image? | Gupie wrote: | Yes, it looked like a woman to me but I was going by the | title of the thread "man's head". | | Anyways, the image I was commenting is the one clicking on | the thread title takes you to. The head is definitely | missing: | | https://twitter.com/mitchcohen/status/1476951534160257026 | | What image do you see the head as being "clearly visible"? | mdoms wrote: | The one that you linked where the face is obscured and the | head is visible...? | Gupie wrote: | There is a browning where the head would be, but there | are twigs and other leafs in the brown area but no head | that I can see. | dTal wrote: | Yeah I don't understand everyone going "oh, that explains it". | That is not a photo of a leaf in front of a face. A foreground | leaf is involved, but it's not large enough to obscure a face. | There's also a leaf-textured halo of brown which looks like it | was once someone's hair. | brandon272 wrote: | Yes, it's clearly still a photo that has been messed up by | the phone in terms of some kind of artificial image | replacement, smoothing and blurring. We just have slightly | more context for where the big leaf in front of the face came | from. | jonas21 wrote: | I feel like it would have saved everyone a lot of time if he had | included the full photo in the original tweet. You can see it | here in this thread by @sdw [1], and it's much more obvious that | there's a tree in front with leaves hanging off it. | | [1] https://twitter.com/sdw/status/1476957856347746305 | adamrezich wrote: | kind of incredible how since we were primed to see it as a | camera/software glitch, that's how it looked, but, now that you | mention it... | geocrasher wrote: | Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who saw the original | accusation, only a few will see the follow-up. It will forever be | known that iPhones replace people's heads with leaves. This is | how urban legends are born. | | This is one of the few times I'll ever feel sorry for Apple! I | can only imagine the calls they're going to get from Karen's who | didn't take good pictures to begin with and blame Apple for it | because they saw an internet that one time that somebody's iPhone | replaced a head with some leaves. | xiphias2 wrote: | This is not just urban legends. In Hungary there's a soft | dictorship where Viktor Orban is controlling the mainstream | media with lots of lies. After independent organizations go to | court, they usually win against Orban, and the media | organizations publish corrections, but nobody reads them. | mc32 wrote: | Looking at the original, yes, something leafy is in the | foreground; however, the person's visage and locks are made | into cubist/polygonal-like leafiness in the background. | fartcannon wrote: | Yeah, this seems like damage control. The AI definitely made | a mess of that woman's face. | [deleted] | Digory wrote: | Twitter should have the ability to issue apology/retraction | tweets. They know who's seen the original. | bluecatswim wrote: | Their largest audience is "journalists" who wouldn't be happy | with something like that. | wellthisisgreat wrote: | This is why I don't like Twitter. | | Post now, think later | dagmx wrote: | I think it also speaks greatly to people's paranoia about | technology they don't fully understand. | | I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that because | they know just enough to know it's possible but are not perhaps | familiar with a given domain (I certainly know that applies to | me). | | It's perhaps some spin-off of the dunning-kruger observation... | There must be a spot on the curve where a person knows just | enough to be freaked out by what they're seeing, but not enough | to explain it fully. Whereas here the Halide devs know the | domain well enough to quickly diagnose it. | corobo wrote: | > I think a lot of the HN crowd are susceptible to that | because they know just enough to know it's possible | | Absolutely think this describes what happened | | I'd have probably been more skeptical myself had I not seen | an ad earlier in the day of an Android phone removing people | from the background of an image as easily as you'd crop it. | Whoops! | gwern wrote: | It's also an example of selection effects: this dude mentions | he's taken 44k photos. You might think that such an experienced | photographer wouldn't be fooled by this - "what, it was just a | leaf in the way when he was zoomed in? that's all? surely he | wouldn't make such a mistake, and it's surely machine learning | at fault!" - but he's only human, and that's 44k+ chances to be | wrong, for just a single photographer, where social media will | amplify the oddest anecdote it can find across every | photographer in the world. | | It's not, "he took one photo and it came out wrong", it's, | "humans everywhere took billions upon billions of photos and | you only were told about the weirdest ones which fit a | Narrative". | blondin wrote: | OMG, i was reading Quora today thinking exactly about what you | wrote in the first paragraph. but in a different context. | | there is that false story that gathered tons of likes and | comments, even though a buried comment debunked the whole | thing. the worst part is that it's since been shared in many | Quora spaces. where it is gathering more likes and comments. | | i stopped for a minute and wondered if the situation could have | been prevented. | mdoms wrote: | > This is one of the few times I'll ever feel sorry for Apple! | | They're a trillion dollar company who don't give even the | slightest little fuck about you. Stop feeling sorry for them, | that is an insanely unhealthy way of thinking. | OJFord wrote: | The ( _a_ of course, but the one originally involved) responded | 'it's a very cool lesson in focal length compression' though; | so it seems to me from that & still from looking at the image | that the iPhone _is_ doing something - making choices, | engineering trade-offs - that makes this accidental edge case | worse. | jolux wrote: | No, focal length and its effects on imaging is a fundamental | aspect of how lenses work. You could reproduce this with any | camera. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_ | distortion_(photog... | jolux wrote: | This case actually seems even simpler though. There was a | leaf in the foreground obscuring the face from the camera's | perspective. Distortion doesn't quite enter into it. | masklinn wrote: | They're not talking about the obscuring itself, but the | focal compression effect which makes it look a lot like | the leaf is where the head should be, rather than clearly | being in front of said head. | | Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably | doesn't help. | jolux wrote: | > Though the aggressive denoising and small lens probably | doesn't help. | | I think it's mostly this. The photograph is incredibly | noisy, very difficult to tell what's going on. | OJFord wrote: | Oh I didn't realise that was called 'compression', makes | sense though, I was just thinking too software-y! Don't | modern iPhones have multiple cameras for depth of field | though, it _could_ (or intends to) do something clever to | make it clearer couldn 't (resp. ) it? | jolux wrote: | The photo is already heavily denoised per the sibling | comment -- possible they could do more but it's difficult | when the sensor and lens are so small. | Veen wrote: | It's quite amusing though that so many brain cycles were wasted | trying to figure out how ML image processing was to blame. I | don't recall anyone in the previous thread saying: maybe | there's a leaf between the camera and the woman's head. It | certainly didn't occur to me that it was something so obvious. | | (btw, is the "Karen" reference really necessary? It's a sexist, | racist insult that detracts from an otherwise interesting | comment) | iszomer wrote: | Still interesting to see how people can rush to blame ML | post-processing over a trivially overlooked parallax effect | even when the former argument/theory may still potentially | exist. | | > btw, is the "Karen" reference really necessary | | No, it wasn't necessary but at this point, what isn't | considered a slur anymore? | dan_pixelflow wrote: | Genuine Q: how is it racist? | [deleted] | ravar wrote: | Its racist against the group that you "can't" be racist | against | philosopher1234 wrote: | It's racist against the group who can handle a bit of | racism. | ratsmack wrote: | You didn't define which group that is... maybe you can | enlighten us. | ctdonath wrote: | A demeaning term applied to a subcategory of whites. | geocrasher wrote: | Stereotyping != Racism | | Every culture, color, creed, nationality, and gender has | Karens. | tw04 wrote: | There were a bunch of people who did say "I bet a leaf fell | off a tree when you snapped the photo" - and the OP insisted | that didn't happen. | geocrasher wrote: | Well, to be fair, he was correct. That's not what happened. | mirekrusin wrote: | Nobody dare to insult saying that the leaves must have | been in front of a face, just like nobody would dare to | say to "google search doesn't work on my computer!" - | "did you turn it on?". | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | You don't see men playing the victimization card at the drop | of a pin. It is a genuine social phenomenon worthy of | disregard. | magicalist wrote: | > _You don 't see men playing the victimization card at the | drop of a pin_ | | I don't believe this was said jokingly, but just to be | sure, this definitely happens all the time. | donarb wrote: | > is the "Karen" reference really necessary? It's a sexist, | racist insult | | And also misused quite frequently. Its origin was a white | woman who called the police on a group of black people who | were doing nothing wrong other than being black in the wrong | place. | acrobatsunfish wrote: | I don't know where you heard that, but for a long time it | was just a fill in name for a middle aged woman with a | short hairstyle who would usually cause issues at customer | service in retail. The "I'd like to see your manager" and | the Karen stereotype go way further back. It's not usually | about race with a Karen it's about power and getting their | way even if that's not how the rules are set up. (This | coupon is a year expired but I want it, this TV was marked | for a dollar so you have to sell it to me, etc.) | jazzyjackson wrote: | you can't very well say a meme is misused, a meme is | whatever it is. | | Also, central park karen is a recent addition to the long | history of using karen as a punchline, anytime you think | you know the origin story, check _know your meme_ first, | you might be surprised: | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karen | mkr-hn wrote: | Anil Dash's interview with one of the co-founders of that | site was interesting. | | https://blog.glitch.com/episode/function-episode-3 | phkahler wrote: | So to make it meme it gets abstracted to "some self | absorbed busybody stirring up unnecessary trouble for other | people" or something similar. Nothing really racist or | sexist about it at that point is there? | ratsmack wrote: | When we make every abstract thought racist, it weakens | and renders the word "racist" into a casual meme, not | unlike the name "karen". | nerdponx wrote: | Its origins _are_ "racist" and "sexist" in that the | stereotype is specifically a white woman. | | I don't think there's anything wrong with a little | stereotyping: the only reason it's "bad" is that actual | bigots ruin the fun, so to speak. If anything, I feel bad | for people named Karen. | geocrasher wrote: | I know exactly what the origin is (and as somebody | commented below, it predates the incident you refer to). I | also used it because it aptly describes people whose | exaggerated sense of entitlement and privilege overshadows | their desire to think critically. | | My daughter saw this in person, where a woman was mad at | people at the butcher section of the grocery store, calling | woman who bought a whole chicken an 'animal murderer'. Plot | twist: the very same woman had chicken breasts and thighs | in her cart, but because they were not a _whole_ chicken, | she disassociated them from the animal they came from. I | rest my case. | silisili wrote: | Incorrect. Karen was originally someone who tried to wield | power over retail workers, and always demanded a manager. | The white lady calling police on black people usage came | wayyy later. | | Now it's been abused and overused to where I don't even | know what it means anymore. Lady comes outside to ask | TikTokers to quit doing burnouts in her yard and it's | 'shutup kawen, stupid kawen LOL amirite' | treyfitty wrote: | No it wasn't- there was just a heavy intersection between | middle aged women complaining and BLM + other wokeness. | "Karen" is used correctly here and your origin story is | completely false. | lostlogin wrote: | It's the race stuff that now has me laughing. The machine | learning had a data set that had too many white people and too | few people of other colours (leaf colours?). Somehow this was | relevant. | infotropy wrote: | That or leaf people (similar to lizard people) can only be | detected using iPhones. | judge2020 wrote: | Wouldn't need to obscure leaf people if we turned everyone | into leaf people. | pverghese wrote: | But the iPhone has replaced her face with leaves. If you look | at the photo. The place where her face and neck would be is | replace with a blurred out brownness even on the parts not | directly obstructed by the leaf. | paganel wrote: | For what it's worth I did send my friends this tweet with the | rebuttal, after I had sent the original tweet a few hours ago, | of course. | jpxw wrote: | I find that people on here are _extremely_ uncharitable when it | comes to anything Apple | [deleted] | tshaddox wrote: | Eh, I mean you're right that more people will hear the | accusation than the retraction, but I think everyone already | knows and will continue to know that iPhones have excellent | cameras. I wouldn't be worried about the reputation of iPhone | cameras. | dagmx wrote: | It's less about the reputation of the cameras but there was | an unhealthy level of conspiracy in the original thread with | regards to trust of digital images in general. | | That post was already being widely used to justify the fairly | ludite views on image upscaling by the judge in the | Rittenhouse trial for example. | in3d wrote: | The judge was absolutely right to allow the defense to make | sure no AI upscaling is used. It has nothing to do with | Luddite views. | dagmx wrote: | The judge didn't merely ask whether any such thing was | used. He continuously pressed his own uninformed opinion | over the evidence rather than trying to educate himself | on the matter, especially given "expert" testimony | | https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle- | rittenhous... | | That's throwing his own incorrect mistrust of the | technology into things. It wasn't based on precedent or | founded by rational examples. | | He also didn't provide alternate means for video playback | that he would trust. It's reductionist. | | At the very least, a competent prosecution should have | then pulled up content in VLC and said "the source code | for zooming is here and verifiable" | colejohnson66 wrote: | Interpolation algorithms (such as bicubic) used for | zooming are not "AI" anymore than a decompression | algorithm is. There's no "training" involved; it's an | entirely "pure" algorithm. Same input in gets the exact | same output out. | donarb wrote: | There was no AI upscaling. If you enlarge an image | between two white pixels, the inserted pixel is white, | you will not get an interpolated black pixel. | californical wrote: | Original discussion for the photo: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739235 | aaron695 wrote: | zenexer wrote: | I disagree with the conclusion. | | It looks like two images--one with the face obscured, one with | the face visible--were combined. Notice that both the leaf and | the person are sharply in focus, and there's a distinct circular, | blurry outline around the face where a transition occurs between | the two images. | | No, the leaf in the photo isn't fabricated by iOS. No, iOS didn't | copy a leaf from elsewhere in the image to continue the pattern. | But the conclusion, "iPhone Camera app did not replace person's | head with a leaf" is probably incorrect: it looks to me like it | did, in fact, replace the person's head with a leaf. It just so | happens that the leaf was really there from the perspective of | one lens or photo. | | Wasn't this documented as intended behavior on newer iPhones? | Images from different lenses will be combined and faces replaced | with clearer versions in some scenarios. In this particular | instance, the "clearer" version was a leaf, as there was a leaf | in the way. | | This isn't really bad thing; it's an understandable bug in a | piece of technology that usually works amazingly well. However, | it does mean there's room for improvement. | karlshea wrote: | > No, the leaf in the photo isn't fabricated by iOS. No, iOS | didn't copy a leaf from elsewhere in the image to continue the | pattern. | | Those two things are exactly what everyone was assuming | happened. So while you're right about what is going on with the | camera behavior, I think you're disagreeing about a completely | separate conclusion than everyone else arrived at. | | > It just so happens that the leaf was really there from the | perspective of one lens or photo. | | In the original thread the photographer was fairly certain | there _weren 't_ leaves in front, which is what started all of | this. | draw_down wrote: | sombremesa wrote: | I'm amazed that such stupid stuff takes up attention, and more | importantly, takes up _my_ attention. Thankfully it 's just a | minute or two, but clearly I need to be more careful about what I | click on (and let into my head...I'm sure this type of thing | degrades bayesian priors for everyone reading it). | thinkingemote wrote: | Basically HN is mostly an entertainment site. Like the regular | News, one of its primary things is to grab our attention. | krisoft wrote: | > I'm sure this type of thing degrades bayesian priors for | everyone reading it | | What kind of thing do you mean by "this type of thing"? Why do | you think it degrades bayesian priors? | | Life is, among other things, a constant quest to better | understand the world around us. For every "real discovery" | there is a ton of noise. Most of that noise can be easily | discarded, some look more convincing. This particular instance | looked more convincing. | | We know that modern imaging equipment is very complex. You | shoot a picture and complicated processes happen which were | optimised by thousands of engineers to produce a good looking | photo. In the past we have seen that such complex pipelines can | introduce plausible looking artefacts in a different context: | https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres... | | This is why it could be possible that maybe something similar | happens with the camera app. People investigated, and it turned | out that that is not the case. | | For every breakthrough in our understanding there were | thousands of perhaps and maybes. For every eureka moment, there | is a bin full of superluminal neutrino experiments. This is | normal and part of the process of reasoning about the world. | | If your thinking processes get damaged by encountering as of | yet unexplained phenomenon then your brain is broken and you | should ask for a refund. | mysterypie wrote: | Could someone give an ELI5 please? As I understand it, the | explanation is that there was a leaf close to him that obscured | the face. But what's he saying about parallax? Isn't the preview | image that he would have seen on the camera display coming from | the same lens that captures the image? | NathanielK wrote: | The parallax in the video is just a tool since photographs | don't have any real depth perception like our eyes do. The | small leaves on the foreground and the big leaves in the | background enhance the illusion, since they're about the same | size in screenspace. Maybe the preview showed a leaf, but it's | close enough to skintone I doubt it stuck out to his brain on | the little phone display. | | In meatspace, his eyes are at a different vantage point | focusing on the face, while cellphone cameras try to keep | everything visible as sharp as possible. | daenz wrote: | I think we bought into it because it looks plausible. In the | original image[0], the boundary between the leaf and the person's | face looks legitimately blended in a way that only AI auto- | filling does. From that, it's not a leap to extrapolate that the | leaf itself was auto-filled from the surroundings. | | 0. | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FH0N9HNWQAE0n9R?format=jpg&name=... | daxuak wrote: | The blurry plus the tiny twigs connected to those leaves still | make my brain think it's some GAN artifacts. | sroussey wrote: | Conspiracy theories typically have some "plausible" core to | stare at (much like every other illusionist). | stefan_ wrote: | Yeah, it has that very distinct blurry mess look that you get | with all the AI stuff that is always conveniently skipped over. | | And frankly looking at the original picture again, focus is no | excuse for that. Yes, there is a leaf, no, the AI whizbang | still blurred it all to crap. | post-it wrote: | The AI whizzbang salvaged a photo that would have otherwise | been impossible to take with a lens that small. | snazz wrote: | The blurriness and "oil painting effect" likely has more to | do with aggressive noise reduction and the fact that small | lenses usually aren't super sharp to begin with. | avianlyric wrote: | Original image was using digital zoom, so working at the | limit (or beyond) what the sensor could provide. Image | processing is just doing the best it can with very little | input. | | https://twitter.com/mitchcohen/status/1476399735858683906?s=. | .. | zepto wrote: | > the AI whizbang still blurred it all to crap. | | Maybe... | | Or maybe the wind was just causing the leaves to move, | resulting in some blurring. | nawgz wrote: | Am I crazy? I ignored this whole debacle the first pass but | that couldn't more clearly be a leaf connected to a branch | jasode wrote: | _> but that couldn't more clearly be a leaf connected to a | branch_ | | Yes, the leaf itself is "clear" but what threw people off was | the blurry and dark halo _surrounding_ that leaf which looks | like manipulation artifacts. | | When you use Photoshop tools like healing brush, clone/stamp | tool, or A.I. Content Aware Fill, you often get strange | visual artifacts like that. Here's a quick example of erasing | a person that leaves behind blurry artifacts: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC4TsTRTHiY&t=1m42s | nawgz wrote: | I fail to see how the similarity of those "artifacts" would | imply that the camera software added a leaf... and a | branch... and connected them realistically... in the | foreground... in place of the face it apparently "replaced" | | A simple application of Occam's razor could've saved a lot | of furor | jasode wrote: | _> and connected them realistically... _ | | Well, that's the crux of the issue that you don't seem to | see. For many observers, _it does not look realistic_. | The unnaturalness of the pixels is what makes it | plausible for Apple software to have a bug. If it looked | 100% realistic to everyone, _we wouldn 't be in this | thread discussing it._ | | E.g. Image saving algorithm with a software bug can cause | pixels to be incorrectly "replaced" even though the | programmers never intended it: | https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox- | workcentres... | | EDIT reply to: _> , especially when the image so clearly | depicts that._ | | You still seem to be missing why this _discussion of AI | error was even possible_. In this very thread, there are | commenters who still don 't see "clear depictions" of a | realistic foreground leaf even after being made aware of | parallax demonstration in the update... _because the | blurriness_ keeps hijacking the brain to make it look | like a fake artifact. Consider that the actual person who | took the original photo didn 't realize it was a real | foreground leaf. (Or so he claims.) | | In other words, saying _" Am I crazy? I don't see why | there's debate about the dress being blue or white when | ... it is clearly and realistically BLUE"_ -- doesn't | actually add to the discussion. Hey, it's great that the | foreground leaf looks realistic to you. But your personal | perception is not relevant _to why others perceived it as | an artifact._ | nawgz wrote: | I don't think you read what I wrote, so I'll say it | again: claiming some image processing AI introduced an | entire branch, twig, leaf construct in place of a face is | comical, especially when the image so clearly depicts | that. | | I'm much more likely to interpret this thing as anti- | capitalist sentiment being expressed in a ridiculous | fashion than an actual good faith argument there could be | a bug so rare but so profound that people's faces are | mistaken for the background and the AI's post hoc | justification is that there is a branch and leaf there so | it'll output that. It doesn't even make sense what is | being claimed here, your links don't really change that | | Edit: I see a leaf in the foreground, and the situation | was a highly (digitally) zoomed picture with a tree in | the foreground. This has nothing to do with color | perception like you imply; the fact that a bunch of | people - whose perception was previously influenced to | believe in AI error - don't think it shows the exact | literal situation it correctly shows hardly makes it a | relevant discussion | | Edit 2: what I see might not be relevant, but the camera | software showed the situation correctly, and you're still | arguing because the digital zoom produced artifacts that | the entire branch / twig / leaf that was literally there | might NOT have literally been there and could have been | added by some magic unexplained AI replacement. | | It doesn't even make sense. There is no room for human | perception here. If the software was rendering leaves | instead of faces, it wouldn't be a single guy finding | that scenario, and especially not when the argument the | leaves didn't exist in the first place was based on | compressed video. Comical stuff. This is literally | conspiracy theory argumentation from you | jasode wrote: | _> _I_ see a leaf in the foreground,_ | | You keep repeating "I". Again, the emphasis on "I" in | your sentence is not relevant to the commenter right | above you perceiving something else: _" The blurry plus | the tiny twigs connected to those leaves still make my | brain think it's some GAN artifacts."_ | | The blue/white dress example was not to apply color to | the iPhone example but a cultural reference to this | perception debate: | https://www.google.com/search?q=was+dress+blue+or+white | | Or put another way, consider : | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind | | EDIT reply to: _> This is honestly blowing my mind that | you think theory of mind applies_ | | Let me try to put it this way... _nawgz_ sees a clear and | realistic leaf in the foreground. Case closed. Therefore, | nawgz would not even submit a Twitter post or a new | thread to HN wonder why the head is missing. And yet, | such a thread _exists_ with (some) commenters wondering | if the software had a glitch: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739235 | | Stepping outside of yourself and considering Theory Of | Mind might help explain to you why such a thread exists | with comments even though you yourself see no issue with | the photo. | | EDIT2: _> There is no room for human perception here._ | | There is room for human perception because the person who | took the original iPhone photo and posted it on Twitter | is a _senior iOS programmer with a degree in computer | science_ and yet he overlooked the possibility of a real | leaf. If we take his story at face value, his _particular | mind and perception_ initially chose to believe that iOS | photo software replaced the head with a leaf rather than | consider a scenario that a tree branch in front of his | own house occluded the walker 's head. Only when his | friend theorized that a real leaf is in the foreground, | he then went back outside again to notice that there's a | low hanging branch on his tree. (That's his later video | showing parallax demonstration.) The original | photographer did not believe the pixels in his own photo. | That's a human perception issue. | nawgz wrote: | There is a massive difference between a perception debate | about color - infamously tricky - vs whether or not a | leaf existed. This is honestly blowing my mind that you | think theory of mind applies to digital zoom not being | able to resolve details at multiple distances flawlessly. | The AI replacing a face with a leaf is also a comically | circumvent construct to explain those artifacts | | Edit: I explained how theory of mind applies - a bunch of | anti-capitalist or anti-Apple folks who think that | magical AI is everywhere broke this photo spectacularly. | I don't really care why people think it's something that | it's clearly not; people think covid vaccines are meant | to shorten lifespans, or that climate change is a hoax, | or that god exists. | | None of the justifications posted are even close to | relevant or believable at a glance, let alone after | seeing the reality of the thing | nawgz wrote: | Yes, well said, it's a human perception issue; even smart | guys can do really dumb things, like accuse image | processing software of adding a leaf, even though the | leaf is shown to attach to a tree that is indeed right in | front of this person's house. | | What this isn't is a software issue, or something that | was reasonable to point to as one; after all, the | software was exactly correct, and to an unbiased observer | in an immediately obvious way. | kaycebasques wrote: | Never underestimate the power of starting your root cause | analysis with the assumption that it's pilot error! At least, | when doing my own root cause analysis, it has saved me a lot of | embarrassment to assume that I did something stupid and to | rigorously rule out all possibilities before I blame someone | else. | ghaff wrote: | Or really starting your root cause analysis without being open | enough to a wide enough set of possibilities. | | As a fairly trivial example, years ago now I wrote a little | article observing that a Sony ad boasting about how responsive | their camera was (at a time when many digital cameras had a | distinct delay) was using a rather famous wildlife photo shot | on film. I also noticed that it wasn't quite the famous frame | though it was still an excellent photo. Odd. Maybe something | about rights. | | You probably see where this is going. Subsequently I saw other | ads in the series which had _clearly_ mistimed versions of | other famous photos. At which point the thing I had never | considered clicked--to my somewhat embarrassment. | | (In my defense, the wildlife photo used was certainly not an | obvious example of bad timing unless you were familiar with the | original and even then it was subtle.) | nvr219 wrote: | What a rollercoaster. | Semiapies wrote: | I mean, I've seen dumber reactions to a leaf. I've seen dozens of | cryptid enthusiasts argue about the nature of the bright orange | Sasquatch that was living in the woods near a nature camera | because of the blurred image of a falling leaf. | | This is pretty dumb, though. | literallyaduck wrote: | You mean people haven't been holding the leaning tower of Pisa | all this time. I am shocked! | | I've seen some strange things from stitching photos for | panoramic, it isn't a huge leap of logic to think some | compression or interpolation algorithm went wrong. | | Glad to know it was a problem of perspective. | jstanley wrote: | This isn't the whole story. | | Just look at the picture: | https://twitter.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968/ph... | | Imagine what a person's head would look like in relation to the | size of the body. Where has the head gone? What's the nebulous | dark stuff textured like leaves where the person's hair should | be? | | I am happy that the iPhone didn't invent the leaf, but it has | pretty obviously done something weird with it. | ChildOfChaos wrote: | Are you guys bored or something? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-31 23:01 UTC)