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Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

This is quite amazing that using a diffuser rather than a lens, then using a diffusion model can reconstruct an image so well.

The downside of this is that is heavily relies on the model to construct the image. Much like those colorisation models applied to old monochrome photos, the results will probably always look a little off based on the training data. I could imagine taking a photo of some weird art installation and the camera getting confused.

You can see examples of this when the model invented fabric texture on the fabric examples and converted solar panels to walls.

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The model basically guesses and reinvents what these diffuse pixels might be. It's more like a painter producing a picture from memory.

It inevitably means that the "camera" visually parses the scene and then synthesizes its picture. The intermediate step is a great moment to semantically edit the scene. Recolor and retexture things. Remove some elements of the scene, or even add some. Use different rendering styles.

Imagine pointing such a "camera" at person standing next to a wall, and getting a picture of the person with their skin lacking any wrinkles, clothes looking more lustrous as if it were silk, not cotton, and the graffiti removed from the wall behind.

Or making a "photo" that turns a group of kids into a group of cartoon superheroes, while retaining their recognizable faces and postures.

(ICBM course, photo evidence made with digital cameras should long have been inadmissible in courts, but this would hasten the transition.)

Kinda reminds me of this a bit: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/nvidia-used-neural-n...

> photo evidence made with digital cameras should long have been inadmissible in courts

Sworn testimony is admissible in courts. I think the "you can just make evidence up" threshold was passed a few thousand years ago. The courts still, mostly, work.

Yes. One solution to the problem if false testimony was photo evidence...

But I'm less worried about the courts and more about media that might publish photos without realizing they are AI generated - or ordinary people using those cameras without understanding how they work and then not realizing there may be some details in the pictures that are plain fantasy.

Most people I know would understand "the camera comes with a built-in filter" to mean "what the camera photographs isn't what you'd see if you looked". The media publishing misleading (or misleadingly-captioned) photos is a problem as old as print photography.

Turned a guy right into a tree. This would have fascinating implications if deployed broadly.

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