Memories of birthdays, holidays, weddings.
And also with his hand raised hitting the ball from Diego's goal against the English in '86.
Or that of the 1930s, of eleven workers who built the Rockefeller Center in New York, sitting on a beam 250 meters high and without protection.
Moments that are preserved in the collective memory or were kept in a box, and
now on the cell phone or in the cloud
.
Photos.
A materialized moment that works as well as a memory aid.
And if it is with a better smile, perhaps to convince ourselves that everything in the past was better.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been threatening to come for everything and the first thing it
can bury is the idea of photography as a representation of reality
, as something that happened, something that was, a document.
Several next-generation cell phones, launched at the end of last year and at the beginning of 2024, incorporate AI and sensors that allow elements to be added or removed from a photo with the touch of a button.
Or change the background and go from a cloudy afternoon to one with full sun.
All without anyone discovering the trick.
For example, the first one to come out with a powerful AI tool was the
Google Pixel 8
.
Then came the
Samsung Galaxy S24.
When God gave a hand to the Argentine National Team, in Mexico 1986.
The potential photos from these cell phones add to the filters of social networks, especially on Instagram, where when someone posts an admirable image without retouching, they usually add "without filter", because the
usual is already the unreal.
The
New York Times
addressed the issue with concern in its article “Photographs taken by cell phones are increasingly fake.
Time to worry?”
In one of his paragraphs he explains: “Imagine a photograph in which a person's shoulder does not appear completely in the image.
With Google's software, you can now press the
Magic Editor
button and move that person within the area bounded by the photo.
“The software will then use artificial intelligence to produce the rest of that person’s shoulder.”
Photography: “Procedure or technique that allows obtaining still images of reality through the action of light on a sensitive surface or on a sensor,” defines the Royal Spanish Academy, which may have to review the concept, especially because the new phones make that cameras can incorporate elements into the photo,
even at the time of creation
or taking.
Google executive Rick Osterloh describing the powerful AI tools that come with the Pixel 8, at the launch of the cell phone in New York, on October 4, 2023. Photo: AFP
The North American newspaper reflects that “the arrival of the Pixel 8 represents a
turning point
.
It is the first phone available to the general public that integrates artificial intelligence directly into the photo creation process at no extra cost, propelling cell phone photography into an era in which people will increasingly have to
question whether it is "What you see in your images is real
, including the photographs your loved ones send."
After the commotion caused by the arrival of these cell phones, Meta announced that in the coming months
it will begin tagging images generated with AI
on its Facebook, Instagram and Threads networks.
"We are building tools that can identify invisible markers so we can tag images from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock," said a company executive.
If Maradona's arm had been erased in the photo of the goal by the hand of God with AI, would football fans today have one less epic to tell?
And if someone had thought to remove “the tank man” from the shot, the one who stood in front of the Tiananmen tanks in 1989, would the ending of that story have been different?
The shocking image of Tiananmen, in 1989. With AI the "hero" could have been removed with the push of a button.
Photo: EFE
In search of the truth
“When photographic and cinematographic images first appeared and later television images, part of their success lay in a supposed better relationship with some principle of truth.
It was soon understood that a photo or a film had a point of enunciation and, therefore,
was as forgeable as any other discourse.
But with the appearance of the digital image and the structuring of the visible based on the principle of information, this fact became much more evident.
"AI intensifies this principle of simulation by hiding it
with a very high production quality and a democratization of access to the production of adulterated images," says Margarita Martínez, teacher and researcher in the Philosophy of Technology.
"In this framework - adds Martínez - it is not surprising that, from now on, no one trusts an image as documentary evidence. But that only shows that we should never have trusted the image, or that we must look for
mechanisms to guarantee new principles of veridiction".
But if any evidence can be discussed, then what are the columns where the ideas of historical or documentary truth should be cemented.
“I believe that the mechanisms for discerning between different visual evidence must be reformulated and refined to see which are truly documentary in nature.
But past events will not be less or more inaccessible than now.
Or does history only work with visual testimonies of the facts?
In that case, how do we do ancient history, medieval history?
We do it with preserved objects, papers, furniture and written testimonies
, for example, among many other documents and instances that intersect.
For that matter, even if armed with unsimulated images, is our real life the one we show on a photo network?
A smiling and unretouched selfie for the public taken during a sad private scene is a true image, although a false or simulated document regarding an idea of happiness,” Martínez maintains.
SL