Why everything has to be touched by AI? I really don't get it. Not long ago a canadian writer was also in the center of a storm accused of using AI in a novel that won a prize.
Why do people fall for it so easily? Is it just laziness? Rush to finish things? We are so much better at creating new things that using the tech feels like cheating to ourselves.
Why do we use a shovel instead of our hands? Why do we use cars instead of walking? Why do we use libraries instead of writing all the functions ourselves?
The issue here is you're trying to make something a binary that is a continuum. Humans are tool users and the vast majority of animals depend wholly on their bodies to accomplish everything. It's our greatest strength and weakness.
>We are so much better at creating new things
Are we? If this were really true we'd have had rockets at least 10 thousand years ago if not more. Actual 'new' creations that are not mixes of previous things are incredibly rare and most of those are found by shear luck with interacting with the natural world. We love telling ourselves a particular story about how creative and wonderful and fucking great we are but the vast majority of human behavior, including my own is just an iterative copy of other humans behavior.
> Are we? If this were really true we'd have had rockets at least 10 thousand years ago if not more...
Yes it is my personal belief that we are definitely much much better at creating than AI models, which the only thing they do is output an empty and dull regurgitation of its training. There's nothing truly personal and original coming out of it when it comes to creating music, literature, art, etc.
Do you know why I am so against all this hype? Because it is a poison for the mind, it deprives you from thinking from understanding and from questioning things by ourselves, and I'm already witnessing AI junkies that consume and take for granted every single output from a model.
We have already proven that most social networks are toxic and detrimental to people, especially teenagers. On top of that now add no thinking for ourselves anymore.
Why think if you can now outsource it to a computer, right?
Cheating is an emergent high order effect, not some ground rule of the universe. When 'cheating' becomes good enough it's just the cost of entry. Just look at the Olympics these days. A huge number of the people involved in different fields of it are doing all kinds of questionable medical procedures that are difficult to near impossible to detect at the time of competition.
Wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades that we have to X-ray the participants in hand competitions for robotic enhancements.
But a photography contest is not a “take a picture with your camera” contest. Post processing dictates a decent portion of “photography” and it seems like the rules for this processing are a bit of a grey area. I personally hate where it has gotten to, as a photographer, but just pointing out my observations in the assessment.
Human body, esp. brain (or more broadly even nature) has a motivation to do more with less energy expenditure.
Drugs allows you to cope with hard things or allows you to escape the toll you have to pay.
Similarly, AI allows brain to do more with less energy expenditure. This is why it looks so tasty and is very addictive.
Your brain doesn't work at that hard, AI allows this, however there's no free lunch on that planet. The effort you give into something returns as quality and finesse, however it's tiring as well.
Addiction is a complex is a hard problem regardless what you are addicted to, it's not a light or easy matter to discuss, though.
OK, but not only that. People learn quickly that in most contexts, expending effort to create a high quality work is not noticed much less rewarded.
It's like anything goes in most human endeavors. Society is winging it; duct-taped solutions abound. Most people lack taste or a keen eye for quality, and only notice when there is something seriously wrong. Even then, politics and all sorts of other concerns skews how people respond to things. This is why we complain about AI slop in the fields we know about, while the public at large think AI is the best thing after sliced bread.
Faced with this, unless someone is really passionate about their work, they eventually kind of tune out, and then look for how to expend the least effort possible to get whatever (uncertain or politicized) reward they can in their endeavors.
I still don't think the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating. He was pretty open about his process, and Nikon took some time to determine whether it was within the rules or not. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/winning-nikon-small-...
Edit: an earlier statement from Nikon said that he was complying with the investigation and "At this time, we don't see that any rules were violated" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck4gjn1yzprno
I don't think that's an honest summary of what happened. It seems like every other scientist was pointing out aspects of the submission that were clearly generated by AI. things appearing out of nowhere or behaviors and appearances that don't match reality at all. it's pretty clear AI was not used purely to post process b/w source images. Or at the very least, was not used responsibly. Whether or not he intended to cheat, the lack of discipline is pretty egregious
What you see as evidence of a weak case I see as evidence of the judges being responsibly cautious, and affording the photographer every reasonable opportunity to make their case. I would need to see additional evidence before I took a statement beginning "at this time..." as stronger evidence than something subsequently stated by the same party.
As it happens, the final decision is not that the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating, but that the video was ineligible for the competition.
Photography in general is in a weird place right now. AI-assisted autofocus, subject tracking, zoom/upscaling, exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR and lots more that all cameras have now is considered fine. Heavy AI-assisted editing in tools like Lightroom is considered fine. But the second an LLM gets involved for even the tiniest detail suddenly everyone is in agreement that "this is AI!!"
This is already present for the last decade. It's the foundation which makes "sports DSLRs" possible. AI here is not what we know as today's "AI". These are specialized models baked into DSPs to run at inhuman speeds. In Sony's case it's phase data, image itself, information from the lens, and sometimes the accelerometers on camera. This is not making something up from thin air.
AI assisted autofocus is smarter phase detect autofocus. Subject tracking is an educated guess for where the focus shall move, based on movements in the image.
My ~20 year old Nikon D70s has a 1004 pixel "scene detection and metering" sensor "trained" on thousands of images to make educated guesses in full-frame metering mode to exposure correctly. This is in no way helping or altering the image in any way. Same for faster autofocus and object tracking.
Exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR et al can be all achieved with deterministic and traditional algorithms as well. Some of these processes have history in film photography and carried over to digital from analog. Some photographers are famous for their darkroom treatment of their shots during development.
Processing an image with deterministic algorithms using the data in the raw photo is fine. This is how darkrooms work as well. However, guessing things, altering images by adding something which was not there and claiming otherwise is not acceptable. This can be a new element inside the scene or pixel details which was not resolvable by the lens/sensor/film to begin with. Both are "photomanipulation", not photography.
If the point of a competition is to show a photographer's skill, it sounds like providing deblurring or similar by educated guess would help quite a bit to win?
I guess the key point is that use of features needs to be adopted slowly in competition so that it doesn't turn into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
It's not deblurring, there's no post processing. It just selects where to autofocus, and commands the lens to focus to that point, that's all.
AI assisted autofocus and object tracking doesn't alter the image after capture. It just moves your focus point and tries to keep the object optically in focus during the half-press phase.
The most expensive equipment doesn't give you any advantage in composing, exposure, etc. If you're shooting birds, you need some tracking capabilities and fast focusing lenses. These are not expensive because they post process the image, but they have expensive glass, fast motors and powerful DSPs to track that bird in that frame.
Nobody is using relighting tricks like Nikon D-Lighting in competitions, it'll disqualified anyway. I'm not sure my Sony has similar post processing options, even.
> into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
It's easy to take bad photos with good cameras. Also it's easy to take good photos with bad cameras, as well. It's a squarely skill sport. Equipment can't help you beyond a certain point, and you need to be able to demand that from your camera first.
> AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
I feel like the distinction comes down to "edited" vs "generated", but even here the line can be blurry. For example, is AI denoise really just removing noise from an image, or is it generating a new image of what it thinks the original signal was?
> is AI denoise really just removing noise from an image...
This is why I like Darktable's profiled denoiser. It works by using a noise profile measured with a deterministic process using the camera you're targeting. In short, it's tailored to your sensor by profiling your sensor.
Publish or perish. The stakes are incredibly high. Cheating may be the difference between keeping and losing your job.
Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.
This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.
Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.
Man... This is so sad, disappointing and worrying. For some reason, your explanation in particular struck a nerve with me. Who could have predicted all the nuanced social consequences that AI would bring upon us. I don't yet know what position to take in my head on all of this. It's too much change, despite believing that the world will change and adapt. In particular, that human work will become more valuable - but as a craft. As an endeavor you do because it's artful, not because it's mandatory, or the most optimal way to quality or speed. And those two categories - human and ai work - will become very separate. While the economical value or even expectations of absolute quality in the human work will plummet.
Similarly, I expect "raw"-ness to gain on value. Photos untouched by AI or filters. Physical objects. The non-digital. Who knows, maybe physical media will make a comeback.
Either way, it's not good times we're living through, and I don't particularly appreciate all of this happening after *just* becoming an adult in the world.
Why everything has to be touched by AI? I really don't get it. Not long ago a canadian writer was also in the center of a storm accused of using AI in a novel that won a prize.
Why do people fall for it so easily? Is it just laziness? Rush to finish things? We are so much better at creating new things that using the tech feels like cheating to ourselves.
Why do we use a shovel instead of our hands? Why do we use cars instead of walking? Why do we use libraries instead of writing all the functions ourselves?
The issue here is you're trying to make something a binary that is a continuum. Humans are tool users and the vast majority of animals depend wholly on their bodies to accomplish everything. It's our greatest strength and weakness.
>We are so much better at creating new things
Are we? If this were really true we'd have had rockets at least 10 thousand years ago if not more. Actual 'new' creations that are not mixes of previous things are incredibly rare and most of those are found by shear luck with interacting with the natural world. We love telling ourselves a particular story about how creative and wonderful and fucking great we are but the vast majority of human behavior, including my own is just an iterative copy of other humans behavior.
> Are we? If this were really true we'd have had rockets at least 10 thousand years ago if not more...
Yes it is my personal belief that we are definitely much much better at creating than AI models, which the only thing they do is output an empty and dull regurgitation of its training. There's nothing truly personal and original coming out of it when it comes to creating music, literature, art, etc.
Do you know why I am so against all this hype? Because it is a poison for the mind, it deprives you from thinking from understanding and from questioning things by ourselves, and I'm already witnessing AI junkies that consume and take for granted every single output from a model.
We have already proven that most social networks are toxic and detrimental to people, especially teenagers. On top of that now add no thinking for ourselves anymore.
Why think if you can now outsource it to a computer, right?
In the do stuff with you hand competition, using a shovel is cheating and in a walking contest, using a car is cheating. Very simple concept.
Cheating is an emergent high order effect, not some ground rule of the universe. When 'cheating' becomes good enough it's just the cost of entry. Just look at the Olympics these days. A huge number of the people involved in different fields of it are doing all kinds of questionable medical procedures that are difficult to near impossible to detect at the time of competition.
Wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades that we have to X-ray the participants in hand competitions for robotic enhancements.
But a photography contest is not a “take a picture with your camera” contest. Post processing dictates a decent portion of “photography” and it seems like the rules for this processing are a bit of a grey area. I personally hate where it has gotten to, as a photographer, but just pointing out my observations in the assessment.
I fully accept that AI is a good tool.
But a damned shovel cannot create the dirt it digs.
Why don’t we allow printers in a painter competition?
Why don’t we allow scooters in 100m sprints in track and field events?
Human body, esp. brain (or more broadly even nature) has a motivation to do more with less energy expenditure.
Drugs allows you to cope with hard things or allows you to escape the toll you have to pay.
Similarly, AI allows brain to do more with less energy expenditure. This is why it looks so tasty and is very addictive.
Your brain doesn't work at that hard, AI allows this, however there's no free lunch on that planet. The effort you give into something returns as quality and finesse, however it's tiring as well.
Addiction is a complex is a hard problem regardless what you are addicted to, it's not a light or easy matter to discuss, though.
OK, but not only that. People learn quickly that in most contexts, expending effort to create a high quality work is not noticed much less rewarded.
It's like anything goes in most human endeavors. Society is winging it; duct-taped solutions abound. Most people lack taste or a keen eye for quality, and only notice when there is something seriously wrong. Even then, politics and all sorts of other concerns skews how people respond to things. This is why we complain about AI slop in the fields we know about, while the public at large think AI is the best thing after sliced bread.
Faced with this, unless someone is really passionate about their work, they eventually kind of tune out, and then look for how to expend the least effort possible to get whatever (uncertain or politicized) reward they can in their endeavors.
I still don't think the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating. He was pretty open about his process, and Nikon took some time to determine whether it was within the rules or not. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/winning-nikon-small-...
Edit: an earlier statement from Nikon said that he was complying with the investigation and "At this time, we don't see that any rules were violated" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck4gjn1yzprno
I don't think that's an honest summary of what happened. It seems like every other scientist was pointing out aspects of the submission that were clearly generated by AI. things appearing out of nowhere or behaviors and appearances that don't match reality at all. it's pretty clear AI was not used purely to post process b/w source images. Or at the very least, was not used responsibly. Whether or not he intended to cheat, the lack of discipline is pretty egregious
What you see as evidence of a weak case I see as evidence of the judges being responsibly cautious, and affording the photographer every reasonable opportunity to make their case. I would need to see additional evidence before I took a statement beginning "at this time..." as stronger evidence than something subsequently stated by the same party.
As it happens, the final decision is not that the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating, but that the video was ineligible for the competition.
Did he ever share the raw source?
They were giving him the opportunity to withdraw the submission.
Photography in general is in a weird place right now. AI-assisted autofocus, subject tracking, zoom/upscaling, exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR and lots more that all cameras have now is considered fine. Heavy AI-assisted editing in tools like Lightroom is considered fine. But the second an LLM gets involved for even the tiniest detail suddenly everyone is in agreement that "this is AI!!"
> AI-assisted autofocus, subject tracking...
This is already present for the last decade. It's the foundation which makes "sports DSLRs" possible. AI here is not what we know as today's "AI". These are specialized models baked into DSPs to run at inhuman speeds. In Sony's case it's phase data, image itself, information from the lens, and sometimes the accelerometers on camera. This is not making something up from thin air.
AI assisted autofocus is smarter phase detect autofocus. Subject tracking is an educated guess for where the focus shall move, based on movements in the image.
My ~20 year old Nikon D70s has a 1004 pixel "scene detection and metering" sensor "trained" on thousands of images to make educated guesses in full-frame metering mode to exposure correctly. This is in no way helping or altering the image in any way. Same for faster autofocus and object tracking.
Exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR et al can be all achieved with deterministic and traditional algorithms as well. Some of these processes have history in film photography and carried over to digital from analog. Some photographers are famous for their darkroom treatment of their shots during development.
Processing an image with deterministic algorithms using the data in the raw photo is fine. This is how darkrooms work as well. However, guessing things, altering images by adding something which was not there and claiming otherwise is not acceptable. This can be a new element inside the scene or pixel details which was not resolvable by the lens/sensor/film to begin with. Both are "photomanipulation", not photography.
If the point of a competition is to show a photographer's skill, it sounds like providing deblurring or similar by educated guess would help quite a bit to win?
I guess the key point is that use of features needs to be adopted slowly in competition so that it doesn't turn into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
It's not deblurring, there's no post processing. It just selects where to autofocus, and commands the lens to focus to that point, that's all.
AI assisted autofocus and object tracking doesn't alter the image after capture. It just moves your focus point and tries to keep the object optically in focus during the half-press phase.
The most expensive equipment doesn't give you any advantage in composing, exposure, etc. If you're shooting birds, you need some tracking capabilities and fast focusing lenses. These are not expensive because they post process the image, but they have expensive glass, fast motors and powerful DSPs to track that bird in that frame.
Nobody is using relighting tricks like Nikon D-Lighting in competitions, it'll disqualified anyway. I'm not sure my Sony has similar post processing options, even.
> into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
It's easy to take bad photos with good cameras. Also it's easy to take good photos with bad cameras, as well. It's a squarely skill sport. Equipment can't help you beyond a certain point, and you need to be able to demand that from your camera first.
> AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
We have photomanipulation competitions for that.
I feel like the distinction comes down to "edited" vs "generated", but even here the line can be blurry. For example, is AI denoise really just removing noise from an image, or is it generating a new image of what it thinks the original signal was?
Think of those Samsung moons? That was really just creating new information on demand for a while. I think it looks pretty tacky too.
> is AI denoise really just removing noise from an image...
This is why I like Darktable's profiled denoiser. It works by using a noise profile measured with a deterministic process using the camera you're targeting. In short, it's tailored to your sensor by profiling your sensor.
14 days ago 38 points, 64 comments (though some threads were... questionable.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038640
I was surprised at how obvious the AI was. Cilia do not, in fact, pop in and out of existence while moving around.
Anyone have a link to the video? It seems to have been taken down from YouTube.
In a news broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz3V9398LEY
Aw, they took the video down. I was curious to see how egregious the AI usage was.
Read the article and see the video there
2 week old news OP;
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038640
Why would someone do this?
It makes no sense why you’d do something so foolish.
There are low-integrity folks who are willing to risk getting caught for fakery in public spaces in trade for the promise of notoriety.
Chicanery seems to scale anywhere that there are insufficient institutional barriers.
Publish or perish. The stakes are incredibly high. Cheating may be the difference between keeping and losing your job.
Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.
This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.
Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.
Man... This is so sad, disappointing and worrying. For some reason, your explanation in particular struck a nerve with me. Who could have predicted all the nuanced social consequences that AI would bring upon us. I don't yet know what position to take in my head on all of this. It's too much change, despite believing that the world will change and adapt. In particular, that human work will become more valuable - but as a craft. As an endeavor you do because it's artful, not because it's mandatory, or the most optimal way to quality or speed. And those two categories - human and ai work - will become very separate. While the economical value or even expectations of absolute quality in the human work will plummet.
Similarly, I expect "raw"-ness to gain on value. Photos untouched by AI or filters. Physical objects. The non-digital. Who knows, maybe physical media will make a comeback.
Either way, it's not good times we're living through, and I don't particularly appreciate all of this happening after *just* becoming an adult in the world.