I guess I havent noticed that people do that for things other than selfies.

I generally just burst-mode-scan an area or scenery location and later that night, or when I add to Strava or wherever, I have an old school contact sheet (but with 60-80 images per thing) to look though. Then narrow it down to 5-10, pick the one or two I like best and discard the rest.

True, its just a fun story. This reddit post makes it clear, though, that while people will review the images carefully, they may still not be able to accurately determine differences.

Just take the story above with one more minor step: You snap a pic of the park, briefly glanced at it to make sure it wasn't blurry (which the AI would have fixed anyway) or had an ugly glare (it did, the AI fixed it) or worse a finger (the AI also fixed that).

You're satisfied the image was captured faithfully and you did a good job holding your plastic rectangle to capture unseen sights. You didn't look closely enough to notice all the faked details, because they were so good.

This fake moon super enhance? It already proves people will fall for it. I could easily see people not realizing AI turned the flowers in the picture more red, or the grass just a little too green, etc.

People will quickly see that their faces don’t look right. That’s usually the first thing they look at.

Faces are definitely harder.

The story has to get stretched a lot to imagine a total dystopia, but its possible.

People like digital mirrors for all their benefits: lighter, more features, music and weather all on one "mirror". You can have voice chats, see how you might look with various makeup/styles/haircuts. This digital mirror gets so popular, and (undermining myself here a bit) high enough quality, that people want these new cool wall screens instead.

And you betcha, AI is of course going to be added. Take insta pics without needing to hold a phone, then apply filters all in one with your voice! Some people take dozens of photos, forgetting briefly how they look.

Now, people are used to every day seeing themselves in the digital mirror with minor touchups for how they would look if they used some sponsored makeup. They used to do it daily so it would match, but kept forgetting as it always showed the improved version (with a small icon saying, you are 40% matched to the predicted image!).

Some 20-something walking around in Chicago passes The Bean, and realizes they don't look quite the same as they did in their home mirror. They take out their phone to take a pic of themselves, which is of course synced to their mirror with the same "makeup enhancement suggestions", still warning them it doesn't match.

They put away their phone, confident in the knowledge The Bean is just a dirty and distorted mirror, which is why they don't look as good. The camera has always been trustworthy. Why doubt it today?

(again, fun story, I don't think this is likely. Just plausible for some people).

Instagram photos of faces already don’t look right. They are horribly smoothed out and glowing. And people seem to like it.

What that huh? People are specifically using filters to alter their, wait for it..faces!

But they'll forgive it if they look better than what they've always thought. Just a bit better, not overdone. There's a sweet spot.

Iphones already HDR the crap out of their photos. Saturation put to max levels for that pop, colors looking only vaguely like they really did.

The contrast between what my camera raw with a stock profile puts out and what my iphone puts out is striking, and it's very clear the iphone's version of reality is optimized for Instagram and maximum color punch at the cost of looking real.

Thing is, that's what people like. So that's what we're getting.

Reality be damned.

You can turn it all off in settings, if you’d like. You can also flip a switch and get RAWs.

The point is that people already accept unlifelike photos.

Of course they do. Why would they want lifelike photos? To remind them of how utterly crap things actually are? No, people want to have that idea of what life was like. Sharing a lifelike image on socials would get laughed off the platform. enhance, Enhanced, ENHANCE get all the likes

Are you British? It doesn't look dreary and depressing everywhere in the world. Silicon Valley is pretty famously nice out most days.

doesn't require one to be British to be thoroughly unimpressed with a photo and want to enhance to improve on the situation to be more in agreement with one's imagination.

You've been able to make "unlifelike" photos ever since you could adjust the aperture, white balance, focal length, and choose the framing. How many times have you seen the Pyramids at Giza in pictures and films? How many of those times were framed to include the nearby city slums and dumped rubbish?

https://www.destinationtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/P...

https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Giza_pyr...

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/view-side-slums-egyptian-pyr...

No one is saying otherwise. I'm sorry, I don't know what your point is.

Not outright saying it (and not you, your comment was just a place to hang another comment off) but parent comments in this chain saying "people already fall for it" about computer adjusted photos and software might adjust how "red the flowers are" or how "green the grass is", and the parent comment saying "you can turn all this off and get RAWs" - as if they believe there is some objective truth which RAWs capture and which cameras used to show that they now don't show because of software post-processing.

My point is that there never has been, cameras have always let you adjust the shot - including "how red the flowers are" by changing light source, film type, shadows, which contrasting other colours are nearby, etc.

It's like airbrushing and similar techniques, except automated. It's better than life (face-smoothing filters, eye-enhancing filters, whitening filters, HDR that blows the colors to make up for the tiny sensor and minuscule optics, major sharpening artifacts, smoothing texture, the list goes on and on)

With old-school photo processing--yes, in a darkroom--you could achieve unrealistic results. But it was a choice. That's not what you got when you sent your negatives to the Costco to get printed. That's akin to the results I get when I use my camera, especially when looking at jpgs straight-out-of-the-camera.

In contrast, we get modern cellphones doing incredible processing to almost arbitrarily replace content with what some algorithm feels you'll like better, whether or not it resembles reality.

I lament that it usually resembles beginner photographer work, where they've just discovered HDR tone-mapping, local contrast, global contrast, saturation, sharpening, and smoothing filters, and promptly slam every single one of them to the stops. I did it, and now I recognize it when I see it in cellphone pics my friends send me via imessage.

Been there, done that. I recognize the stigmata of saturation slammed to the stops and excessive use of HDR and local contrast.

The default is excessive editing now, probably because it helps cover up limitations of tiny sensors and small optics.

The iPhone camera is tuned for realistic color unless you've left the style setting on Vibrant. I guess it doesn't have an "even less vibrant" style.

It does have higher than real contrast, but that's because images are 8-bit - if you don't try to fill the range, it's going to look low quality with banding artifacts.

But it seems to do weird stuff like remove shadows off people's faces.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/06/mkbhd-post-processing-ruining...

Yeah, it exposes people in the foreground differently than the rest of the picture. That's still trying to fit them into 8-bit - basically it's trying to avoid the "black people don't activate soap dispensers" effect where dark skin isn't visible in a dark picture.

Larger cameras don't do that specific one, but they do care about skin in white balance and autofocus, and then photographers expose it specially in Lightroom or with flashes.

It's somewhat overtuned though.

Doubtful - they’ll just think they’ve taken a great photo because they’re a skilled photographer, and they won’t be shy about telling you so.