2024 has certainly been a year where I’ve embraced Artificial Intelligence in many places in my life including my business interests and hobbies. In an educational, professional and efficiency capacity, I am (afraid to say) slowly coming round to its incredible usefulness in ways I can’t even begin to describe. Mostly due to the time savings it creates.
You’ll have seen certain posts where AI apps on my computer have read the story I’ve researched and created a suitable image to illustrate it, (of course only in situations where I don’t have any real photos or if it was say at a time prior to photography itself being available!)
As always, the research if my own. I’ll never slump into laziness of stopping being creative, imaginative or lose the thrill of manually chasing down facts and information to pull it together in human way, that no machine could ever do. If something or somebody does that for me, I’ll lose interest here VERY fast. Blantyre Project will ALWAYS rely upon and call upon local knowledge, facts, brainpower and real photos first and foremost and then, ONLY THEN, if a photo isn’t available, one will be used, under my own copyright creation to illustrate articles.
OK, that all aside, I wanted to show you this. THIS is the pace AI is evolving at when it comes to photos and video! Realism is doubling every 12 months. This girl, is known. The location is Broompark Avenue, Blantyre and the child under 10 was photographed in 1908, meaning the photo is nearly 117 years old.
Being subscribed to various AI apps and tools, I was able to create this short video, in excellent quality. Though this NEVER happened in real life, I found it intriguing to think this could be a very close resemblance to this lassie and its my reminder than in just a couple of years time, we …and I mean all of us….wherever we are will NOT be able to distinguish real photos and video from AI created content. A dangerous thing Im NOT looking forward . My concerns will surely be matched by others and it’s my sincere hope that this industry and tech becomes regulated with mandatory requirement to watermark AI generated images and video which circulate in public environments.
Looks like it could have been filmed yesterday!
It is stunning for sure Paul, as you say, a bit scary as well. However people must have thought the same when first viewing “moving pictures” back in the day?
I can just imagine the worst and the best use of such a tool! Just so scary though to think what an “evil” entity might conjure then to the positive to see the delight of families ancestors coming to life as you have done here.