[conartist6]

To make a shooped image good enough to fool the police into think they're looking at a completely real picture, you'd think it would take a reasonable amount of skill. If nothing else you need an exact match picture in terms of lighting and perspective.

[sigmoid10]

I guess people here are too young to remember things like the WTC plane guy. Half the people online thought it was genuine, while he did it for the lulz in a few minutes. Nobody cared about inconsistent lighting and perspective. Same way most people don't care about the obvious hallmarks of diffusion model generated pictures today.

[maplethorpe]

I'm not too young. I can't remember if I thought it was real at the time, but if I did, I give myself a pass since I was probably viewing it on a 15 inch CRT at 1024x768.

Because we're talking about the ease of Photoshopping a wolf into a scene, I think it's also worth pointing out that floating objects are a lot easier to work with than grounded objects, since cast shadows and bounce lighting are less of an issue. Having said that, it would still require some basic skill to achieve the WTC image which I think you're discounting. You'd need a working knowledge of layers, masks, and the lasso tool, which already would have placed it out of reach for most people at the time. Online resources were much more scarce, so I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was a hobbyist photographer or graphic designer. It definitely wouldn't have been achievable in a few minutes for the average person, and doing the same thing with a wolf would have been far more difficult, and well outside the realm of possibility for anyone who wasn't an expert.

[sigmoid10]

The picture in the article also doesn't look very high res. So it's actually the exact same circumstances as WTC guy, except the police actually cared enough to act on the picture but not enough to verify it. You could take all these arguments here and apply them 1:1 to photoshop in the late 90s / early 2000s. Back then it was also easier than ever before to manipulate images and non-experts could suddenly do what only professional forgers could before. AI has merely slightly lowered the bar further to the point that even people who have trouble turning on a PC can do it now.

[maplethorpe]

> AI has merely slightly lowered the bar

I guess we're not going to agree on just how far that bar has fallen. Learning Photoshop as a teen got me my first job. The only reason I had one at all was because most people couldn't do a very convincing job of it. Now even my mom, a person who struggles to open her email, can do a better photoshop than me.

[sigmoid10]

And your grandkids will be better at certain things than you too. That's just what progress in tech is. Without it, we'd still be riding horses and writing letters with ink. Sure that accelerated fraud and misuse too, but let's not pretend anyone would want to give up the all the benefits these things brought to save a few gullible people who would probably still be scammed eventually.

[maplethorpe]

> That's just what progress in tech is. Without it, we'd still be riding horses and writing letters with ink. Sure that accelerated fraud and misuse too

The original argument was about whether these tools had accelerated fraud and misuse, or whether not much had changed because people could just do the same thing with photoshop before. You and others were playing down the impact of AI. It sounds like we now both agree they have accelerated fraud and misuse.

> And your grandkids will be better at certain things than you too. That's just what progress in tech is.

You're misunderstanding my argument. I was pointing out that a large shift has happened that has enabled deception where it was not possible before, not lamenting the loss of a job that I don't do anymore. I have nothing against the progress of technology. But I do think we should think carefully about how we implement it.