Eight images used in the study; four of them are synthetic. Can you tell which ones? (Answers at bottom of the article.)
A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science on Monday found that AI-generated faces generated with three year-old technology, particularly those representing white individuals, were perceived as more real than actual face photographs, reports The Guardian. The finding did not extend to images of people of color, likely due to AI models being trained predominantly on images of white individuals—a common bias that is well-known in machine learning research.
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Researchers used real and synthetic images sourced from an earlier study, with the synthetic ones generated by Nvidia's StyleGAN2 image generator, which can create realistic faces using image synthesis. It's worth noting that StyleGAN2 was released in 2020, and AI image synthesis has progressed rapidly since then—but newer AI models were not involved in the study.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Nuke on Saturday November 18 2023, @10:10AM (5 children)
I find telephone scams with European voices more convincing than ones with Indian acccents. I know, I'm racist.
(Score: 3, Funny) by crafoo on Saturday November 18 2023, @12:09PM (1 child)
Do you know how I can tell you are white? You think racism is bad/unethical.
Some of the most fun you can have is asking a blank-slater egalitarian why only white Europeans think racism is bad while every single other person on the planet (all ~85% of them) have a strong preference for others of their own race. Either they suddenly turn into a race-realist or they effectively admit they demand white European culture be forcibly exported to all corners of the Earth.
(Score: 4, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 18 2023, @01:38PM
> only white Europeans think racism is bad
The superior thinking of the white European race shines through!
(Score: 2, Informative) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @03:36PM (1 child)
That's not very bright. A Black woman on the phone once thought I was Black. I mentioned it to my daughter, who told me I do sound a little Black on the phone.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 1, Troll) by krishnoid on Saturday November 18 2023, @06:09PM
"Why yes, I am! In fact, I'm Octavia Butler's [octaviabutler.com] ... er ... nephew! Please check out my science fiction on my website [mcgrewbooks.com]!"
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Saturday November 18 2023, @10:03PM
Not once have I ever been scammed by the person who leaves Chinese voice mail; because I don't speak Chinese. I'm such an awful person.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DadaDoofy on Saturday November 18 2023, @02:33PM
Too bad TFS left out the important detail that 100% of the people studied were white. If the study hadn't in itself been racist, I'm pretty sure the outcome would likely have been significantly different.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @03:39PM (1 child)
QOTD: "It's sort of a threat, you see. I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be very effective."
Citation: Douglas Adams, One of the HHGTG books, I've forgotten which one. Voice of Slartibardfast.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 20 2023, @03:37PM
ChatGPT seems to think it's from the "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" book. Which is possible, but I wasn't able to nail it down. Except for a quote in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. Which doesn't mean a whole lot as far as canon is concerned. It's possible that the line is from the first book, but I don't know the series well enough to know.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2023, @07:58PM (3 children)
Our expectations for what a photo should look like have been skewed since like 2015 or so, when the hardware became as good as it will get and computational photography became the norm. Our minds are baselined now on expecting automatic brushup and filters that are skewed towards making lighter skin tones look better.
A raw image taken by your smartphone in 2023 looks like a raw image taken from any potato phone. The lens is crap, the size is crap. In many cases, the same camera is used on budget tier phones but without the post processing software available.
But the post processing, once done by the SoC but increasingly done by cloud computing, makes it look better and more professional. This is why so many people download sketchy GCam APK's for their $200 Android phones and do just fine. The stock Fairphone camera app is trash; using GCam on the same device is literally indistinguishable from a base tier Pixel 7a.
Billions of photos are taken every day that go through this computational photography. BUT HOLD ON -- computational photography is biased towards white faces because it was biased towards lighter skin tones of East Asia and Western Markets. This is a premium feature and so premium markets are able to pay more for it.
One of the selling points of Pixel Phones when they did the soft reset with the Pixel 6, was that the Tensor SoC combined with Google Photos processing algorithm was better for darker skin tones. So finally, in 2021, people with darker skin tones could also experience computational photography's benefits. And therefore the Pixel phones target a completely different demographic than iPhones with their advertising.
So since we expect an airbrished / auto generated white face to be the norm, it's no surprise that it's less distinguishable from AI generated white faces.
Also, going into 2024 in the year of your Lord, the general idea for the best photos is: iPhone if you're white; Pixel if you are dark; and OnePlus or Samsung if you are golden.
TL;DR - computational photography skewed towards white faces and messed up our expectation of what white people look like on computers and phones.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Saturday November 18 2023, @09:38PM (2 children)
Let's review. There are two mobile operating systems, iOS and Android, that implement computational photography for the platforms the vast majority of the world's photographs taken on. Two of the most woke corporations in the world, Apple and Google, are responsible for the design of those algorithms.
Are you seriously implying those companies designed them to be blatantly racially biased?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2023, @07:54PM (1 child)
What does it mean to be "woke" and how do you quantify it so that you can tell something is more woke than something else?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2023, @09:37PM
We know it when we see it. But mostly we can document what these companies are doing and judge them by their actions.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Opportunist on Saturday November 18 2023, @11:08PM
It's because all non-white faces look the same.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday November 18 2023, @11:56PM (2 children)
I only got 6 out of 8 right, but in my defence I'm pretty sure that the guy I thought was a fake photo is actually a robot.
reasoning:
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2023, @05:28AM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 20 2023, @03:40PM
I think I only caught 2 of the fakes. The Asian portrait just looked off, so I figured that was one for sure and it was. The rest were much more difficult to discern.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by Reziac on Sunday November 19 2023, @02:39AM
What the study really found is that real live white people don't look as realistic as photos of fake white people.
I dunno, I think maybe they need to upgrade their image sources.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2023, @07:47PM
You see, it would be even worse with Chinese since they all looks the same...
- Anonymous non-Chinese