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Comment by wildrhythms | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the relevant tweet:

https://twitter.com/earcity/status/1638582541706829824

It's not just adding teeth it's actually changing the facial features which seems completely insane to me. Is it just me? Like this is a terrible application of this technology.

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And this after they were caught “faking” photos of the moon:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

To be clear, they’re adding detail that the camera can’t see. What they’re doing is more sophisticated than substituting a reference moon.png in place of your shot, but it’s adding Samsung-provided detail if it detects a moon either way.

So if a new crater appeared on the moon tomorrow, their camera would need a software update to capture it.

> a new crater appeared on the moon tomorrow, their camera would need a software update to capture it.

Source? Afaik it was using ANNs to upscale, not dropping in previously taken images.

The Reddit user tested at one point by completely removing/whiting-out areas of the image, to remove any possible detail to upscale. And it still manages to create the same sort high detail upscaled image.

You cannot upscale something that doesn't exist in the image data. The moon image test involved a massively downsized and blurred image. The detailed information about craters was simply destroyed and cannot be recovered, simple as that. On top they also tested it with a halved copy of the moon in the same picture and only the full moon in the picture got more detailed as the AI didn't recognize the halved moon.

Samsung made use of the fact that the moon always looks the same from our perspective as it's tidally locked, meaning image "improvement" algorithms can more or less copy-paste moon surface details into the image (yes, of course it's more complicated than drawing moon.jpg over the picture, but the end result is the same).

People added additional craters and as long as it was recognized as moon also the added craters were enhanced.

This above comment is a great example about the limitations of language when dealing with image manipulation and generative image enhancement.

“People added additional craters” … no they didn’t. Without knowing anything about what people interested in stress-testing Samsung’s software did, I can say that because if they did really add additional craters, it’d be front-page news.

I assume what people did was added artifacts which are not real (let’s call it ‘fictional’) to an image. Samsung’s software enhanced it as long as these fictional artifacts conformed to its notion of what a blurred crater looks like.

So it turned fictional artifacts into higher-res fictional artifacts. At this point, you might as well generate the moon image in a terrain generator like World Machine.

Put it another way, if Coca-cola tomorrow puts a giant billboard that says “Drink Coke” on the moon, and it turns out Samsung’s software didn’t expect that, it’ll need a software update.

More realistically, if tomorrow you have a lunar impact crater with a shape distinctive enough that Samsung’s software doesn’t expect, again, you’ll need a software update.

And that’s the heart of the issue: the camera is no longer capturing reality, but instead injecting detail that someone at Samsung decided would be appropriate for your shot.

> And this after they were caught “faking” photos of the moon:

This genuinely isn't informative evidence of how the process works. You're not seeing the raw samples from the camera, which are going to be very noisy even if you're showing it a white circle. "It's actually the moon" may be a reasonable belief given the noise level.

These features have been on Asian made phones for a while. Sometimes you'll see a "beautify" filter which will feature things like "lighten skin", "make eyes rounder" or "thin face".

I know how strangely offensive this all sounds but it's completely factual - there's some lost in translation thing that is I'm assuming benign and normal in some other culture which comes across as pretty inappropriate and even a bit racist to Americans.

Particularly common with selfies, because most people see photos of themselves and think it looks horrible (they're used to seeing themselves mirrored!) and want to "touch up" the picture.

Incidentally on a tangential note, this is why most front facing cameras on phones, tablets, and laptops mirror the video feed on your own screen: To trick your brain into thinking you look OK.

"trick your brain into thinking you look OK" -> show you the version of your face you're used to, since most people most often look at themselves in ... mirrors.

That does sound like there are some remaining effects of colonialism (white=beautiful, etc.)

Yes, but it's also historically associated with class too (even in the west) - the lower class had to do manual labour outdoors and thus were exposed to the sun longer. As a result, they tended to be sun burnt and darker. Thus, dark skin was associated with lower class / poverty, and fairer skin implied that the person lead a more a sheltered life (due to their wealth).

Europeans have the opposite effect: rich people can afford to “go south for the winter”, so looking tanned is a sign of wealth and prosperity.

Unfortunately excessive retouching/filtering of digital photos has been a significant problem in East Asian cultures and that is spreading elsewhere quickly. Samsung is merely catering to the target market that has a demand for these things because beauty standards in most human societies are messed up.

> Unfortunately excessive retouching/filtering of digital photos has been a significant problem in East Asian cultures and that is spreading elsewhere quickly

I'm not sure why you think this was something that only happened in "East Asian cultures" until now?

Apps like Meitu are far more prevalent in East Asian Cultures.

There are large percentage of the population who has not posted a non-retouched version their photos in years

It's on a completely different level there. My sister went to a wedding in China and sent me some of the pictures. The smoothing was so extreme I couldn't even recognize her. And they were photos from a "professional" photographer.

You can't have real people marring the image of a perfect wedding.

A problem for who exactly? Asians seem to love it.

Do they? It’s highly problematic because it’s basically an arms race.

Everyone bemoans it but they do it anyway because otherwise you feel like you can’t compete.

It leads to wide spread body dismorphia and severe self image issues

Long term AGI play to make humans progressively less comfortable in meatspace. Reality getting you down? Just plug yourself into the ~~battery~~ Metaverse. Our self-disconnect system has a remarkably low failure rate, we promise.

Now the Meat-a-verse is something I could get behind.

Yes lets defend bullshit beauty standards that make people even less comfortable in their own skin.

That's your western opinion though.

Maybe, but matters of self-esteem should transcend culture. Nobody deserves to suffer unnecessarily because they are literally physically incapable of measuring up to some manipulated version of "beauty", and nobody needs products that cater to it.

Is this more your issue though? The "beauty apps" feature are super popular here in Asia. So again subtle colonialism where the west forces their ideal on Asia.

As if the east doesn't have its own things it would like to impose on the west.

I think self-esteem transcends culture. You can call it colonialism, but I say you want people to suffer. Because culture!

Also, unrealistic beauty standards are fairly universal. These awful beauty apps are but one solution, and they are gaining ground here in the west. Is this a case of eastern colonialism? What about TikTok?

Empowering people to feel comfortable in their own skin, as they are. How could anyone not want that?

They're not suffering though. And they're choosing it. That's my point. You seem to be projecting your own bias here.

Yes, I am projecting my bias. That's my opinion. That is the whole point.

If you cut someone, and they heal, that doesn't erase the fact that you cut someone. The important thing is not to cut them.

My friends here drive me crazy with their self-conscious body-shaming because they grew up constantly surrounded by impossible images of beauty. They do this so much that it is a nuisance. And what we have here is but a fraction of what it sounds like the east has. People living under your system must be positively insufferable then, without their precious beauty apps.

To be clear, I'm against any fake anything. Fake tits, fake lips, fake asses, fake selfies.... unless there are medical reasons it is all garbage.

OK well at least you are honest about your bias, so thanks for that. Using your analogy though no one is being cut here. You are projecting that they are cut, but they never are. And medical procedures to improve appearance aren't fake, they simply create a new look and in Asia they lead to ALOT of improvements in self esteem. The medical reason is it makes them feel better.

It's a problem for reality. Let's not bring culture into this. Those faces do not exist in reality.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

I think you mean you upscaled their reality to your own :)

Imagine complaining about an an optional ai upscaler doing ai upscaling things. Literally shooting himself in the foot and crying from the pain

Imagine complaining about the idea of living in a society where pretty much every single picture we see reflects an AI's view of what reality "should" be rather than actual reality, and where all pictures of everyone's friends and family is automatically altered to suit the AI's view of what a human "should" look like. The only images of actual reality are those taken by the select few who both care enough and are technically proficient enough to get their cameras to not do automatic AI retouching.

Doesn't sound like such a ridiculous thing to complain about anymore, does it? Do you at least see why some people may be opposed to further steps in that direction, even if you yourself is fine with it?

You have the option to turn it off if it bothers you, it isn't even all that difficult to do.

The issue is one of defaults and changing and influencing the greater behaviors of society as a whole.

In this case you even have to intentionally press the enhance button.

Korea in particular is more known for actual plastic surgery than digital plastic surgery.

Samsung features have always overpromised, undelivered. Remember the facial unlock that would allow a photo of someone to unlock the phone?

That was a thing with one of the later Google Nexus phones, too.

Didn’t Windows have the same issue too?

The mobile OS? Did that even have face unlock? I don't recall that being a thing.

Android added face unlock way back around 2012 for the Nexus 7 which was incredibly insecure. I think they eventually removed it.

Pixels are pixels. How is a camera supposed to know if a face is real or a color print?

Facial recognition is a bunch of snake oil

Apple uses a laser infrared dot projector.

Other manufacturers cheap out on that part, or prioritize design (no notch/camera hole) over security.

"Cheaping out" is not the best description. Apple has riddled the space with a ton of patents. https://insights.greyb.com/apple-facial-recognition-patents/

Microsoft is using IR to do Windows Hello so there must be some workaround to the patents.

How does Apple do it?

"The technology that enables Face ID is some of the most advanced hardware and software that we’ve ever created. The TrueDepth camera captures accurate face data by projecting and analyzing thousands of invisible dots to create a depth map of your face and also captures an infrared image of your face. "

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208108

How do your eyes do it? (You can do it securely without a lidar by thinking about this.)

You mean the iris unlock? Turned out all those videos were fake. By eiter pressing the fingerprint sensor on the back. Or using a store demo unit.

Yeah, I noticed that. It's making the eyes more asian looking... The Koreans are into something...