[839083]

If you treat photos as pleasurable pictures, then machine-generated photos will serve fine (e.g. stock photos).

What if you replace "photos" with "music", "art", or "literature"? Sure, we will get to a point where a computer can write a symphony that fits all the characteristics of Beethoven, or write a stylistically accurate Shakespearean sonnet. But it won't have the weight of the artist's observations behind it.

[cma]

In Rio you can pay a fee to take a train up to the famous Cristo Redentor statue, where lots of people take pictures. But all around the train station there are little green-screen photo studios that will make a fake picture at the Christo Redentor statue for you for a much lower fee.

[LeifCarrotson]

Given the choice between these options, which would you pick? Or, at what price points would you consider each to have equal value?

1. Train ride with half hour viewing time to observe the Cristo Redentor. No cameras allowed.

2. Train ride to the statue for a photo of you in front of it, but while the camera can see both you and the statue, you can't see it from your position.

3. Green screen photo of you artificially in front of the statue.

I think a lot of people would, if they thought about it, strongly prefer the first option and ascribe little value to the others. But because they do have cameras and there's an expectation that you take a picture as a tourist, they end up viewing their trip through their camera lens or smartphone screen.

I think it would be a compelling sell if the camera app on a smartphone could prompt users with an offer of a professional-quality photo or video (optionally with the user green-screened in) of a concert, sporting event, or landmark. "Studio X has a professional recording of this event from N angles with better equipment than yours. Add this video to your library instead?"

The killer use for this might be to record/sync school concerts, plays, and sports. So many parents with mediocre cameras all trying to capture the event, and no good way right now to share the output.

[brian_cloutier]

> Sure, we will get to a point where a computer can write a symphony that fits all the characteristics of Beethoven, or write a stylistically accurate Shakespearean sonnet. But it won't have the weight of the artist's observations behind it.

"I've noticed the many photographers here, [...]. Always the same conventional eyes, noses, mouths, waxy and smooth and cold. It still always remains dead. And the painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go." - Van Gogh

We've been asserting souls for quite a while now and we've been wrong every time. What does the weight of the artist's observations mean? How is that different from the result of machine learning, which is nothing if not carefully considered observations.

[dwighttk]

If you could have any photograph ever taken, or a Van Gogh, which would you rather have?

Note: The most expensive Van Gogh paintings sell for about 2 orders of magnitude more than the most expensive photographs.

(I was actually surprised at how much the most expensive photographs sold for)

[d--b]

The question is whether would you make a difference between a photograph of your kid, and a photograph of someone who looks exactly like your kid (and that you know is not your kid).

[marcosdumay]

> and that you know is not your kid

I don't expect any reasonable answer to this, but...

There are two sets of photos, both exactly alike, yet one of those sets was created by capturing photons while the other was created by computers. Both were created by pointing a machine at your kid during a trip, and subsequently giving you a digital image. How to you tell those apart?

How do you know it's your kid on your kid's photos anyway?

[dwighttk]

One set of photos is possible… the other is the fever dream of a Verge editor.

[marcosdumay]

Is it really? A sensorless camera is pushing it, but the amount of processing current cameras do to your photos is staggering.