Loading…
22
Thought AI photo tools were a gimmick until I saw the exhibit at the Chicago History Museum last weekend
I went to the Chicago History Museum last Saturday and they had this display where an AI restored old photos of the 1893 World's Fair, and the detail it pulled out of a scratched glass plate was honestly kind of unreal. Two years ago I watched a tool try this on my grandpa's wedding photo and it turned his face into a blurry alien, so I wrote the whole thing off as a party trick. What got me was that the restored version was just one person's guess at the damage, not the truth, and the museum labeled it that way. Now I'm wondering how many of these AI restoration apps people post online are quietly making stuff up. Has anyone found a tool that shows you what it changed vs what was actually in the original?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
knight.anna5d ago
Picture my surprise when I found out those "restore your old photos" apps are basically doing fan fiction with your family's faces. The museum did it right by saying hey, this is ONE guess at what the damage was hiding, but most apps just hand you the made up version and let you believe it's real. That scratched glass plate at the museum probably had a real face under there that the AI just invented new eyes and a nose for, and nobody would ever know the difference. What really gets me is that people are out here restoring photos of great grandma and then printing them on canvas like it's a fact. If a tool won't show you a side by side of before and after, you're not restoring anything, you're just getting a drawing that looks like your relative. The museum was honest and that's rare, because honesty doesn't sell subscriptions.
3