We can remember it for you wholesale ...

Scary stuff that... it really shouldn't do that without the user prompting it to do so! I'd say the photojournalistic principles are a fair enough guideline as to what could be considered "real (enough)".
 
Nothing is real..... and nothing to get hung about.

I understand there could be serious implications, but people need to learn that "photographs" are merely a human-created image that MAY use some elements of reality. There really shouldn't be any more attributing "realness" to a photo (especially in modern times) than there is to a novel or a painting.
 
Nothing is real..... and nothing to get hung about.

I understand there could be serious implications, but people need to learn that "photographs" are merely a human-created image that MAY use some elements of reality. There really shouldn't be any more attributing "realness" to a photo (especially in modern times) than there is to a novel or a painting.

Yes, they need to learn that. But most people haven't learned it... and possibly never will. I'd hate to be convicted of a crime because of that kind of ignorance.
 
well, we have a long ways to go before we get to the point where an algorithm puts a gun in your hand while you're standing over my dead body. But just in case it ever happens, I just told my wife you didn't do it and any photo that says otherwise is just a lie. So, at least she'll know. Although I guess I'll still be dead.
 
Well, people disagree to the extent to which a single photograph represents "reality", but there is something to be said for the idea that a single photograph at least captures a single moment in time. Or if you can countenance the idea, sometimes an "extended moment"

What seems odd and slightly sinister to me about this particular example is that, without the photographer's intervention or choice, a moment in time has been manufactured.

Of course, if you see any photograph, whether printed or on a screen, created from whatever original medium, you have no idea whether that photograph has been manufactured in the same way. Naive as it may seem to us now, the debate that raged around the Cottingley Fairies demonstrates that fakery is not new in photography.

Nevertheless, I still find it all a bit peculiar and dystopian
 
I agree. I've had a couple of photos from my 'phone "auto-awesome'd" (they upload automatically to G+ but are only visible by me) - they are without exception, crap, with the sort of filtration loved by teenage girls, but they have not yet gone this far.

What DID happen automatically was that my travels around the Greek Islands back in the Summer were automatically turned into an animated "travel journal", with a map, dates of when I was where, and mini-slideshows of each location. All very clever, but... Location appeared random, putting me on the mainland more than once (I suspect this had to do with IP address locations rather than my MAC) and the photos were not what I would choose from the ones I took. If anyone took it as gospel they would be a long way from reality.

Again, all very clever, but do I - or we - really want this level of automated memory-creation? I don't...
 
Bill, you seem to be implying that your memories are real as well. I know on more than one occasion that what I remember happening actually never happened at all....or happened in a way quite different from my memory.

And really, the author's example is pretty far from "re-imagining a moment that never happened". A lot of wedding photos are more manipulated than that (intentionally) and many involved probably never even know about it.
 
What seems odd and slightly sinister to me about this particular example is that, without the photographer's intervention or choice, a moment in time has been manufactured.

The automated nature of it really is the unsettling part about it. Methinks we are already giving the computers too much control....imagine what things will be like 50 years from now. I'm glad I won't be around to see it.
 
The automated nature of it really is the unsettling part about it. Methinks we are already giving the computers too much control....imagine what things will be like 50 years from now. I'm glad I won't be around to see it.
what silly nonsense is that, Luke?!? Whether you'll be around to see it is not up to you; it'll be up to the Matrix!
 
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