Doesn’t that steak look amazing? Even with the lemon and berries, I would definitely order steak.
There’s only one problem: I can’t. It’s not real.
I generated that picture using an AI program called Fooocus (kind of like the ever-popular ChatGPT, but for pictures.) Basically, taking all the defaults, all I did was ask it to draw me a picture of steak. Literally one word. About thirty seconds later, an image too good to eat appeared.
Is That You Skynet?
I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I actually pretty chill on the whole AI thing. I know tech pretty well and tech both a) gets really excited about things b) has no idea how to do most of things it says it does c) hasn’t killed us all yet.
Still, I would like to live in a world where I can believe what I see and AI is definitely blurring that. A lot. Right now with people and complex objects, there are tell tale signs that something isn’t right (look at a generated image’s hands and you’ll see what I mean. In the case of that steak I had to look at it for a bit until I realized there’s a bump nearest to us that doesn’t quite look perfect. But even then I had to stare for a long time.
AI and Food Photography
Is there a problem? I don’t know, but I feel a greater sense of unease now than when I started playing around with AI generation. I don’t know if the moral of the story is don’t be too jealous of the picture of a perfect meal because it might be faked. I don’t know if I’m worried about our photographer friends. I don’t know if this is all a case of being worried about nothing.
Still, I wanted to make you, oh gentle reader aware, that at the very least, don’t believe everything you see on the internet. Them robots are awfully good at tricking us.
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