Computer-generated photos: artificial yes, intelligent no
Software has artificially generated 100,000 portrait photos. They can be downloaded free of charge. This is one thing above all: funny.
Recently, a report about 100,000 freely available portrait photos made the rounds on various news portals. What's special about this is that the photos have been put together by software, so they are not of real people.
In other words: artificial intelligence! You can now generate people on a computer! Robots will soon take over the world! And then comes the Singularity, the zombie apocalypse, the Third World War, the Last Judgement and so on... So it's a perfect opportunity for the media to scare people a little.
Unfortunately, all the excitement falls apart as soon as you actually look at these photos.
The pictures are so bad they give me fits of laughter. About one in five people are squinting, the backgrounds are just plain broken, and it looks especially bad when there's another face in the photo.
I see it positively: These photos cannot be used for fake profiles on dating portals. They can't actually be used for anything at all. Except for amusement. Finally, you can laugh at people who look crazy, because they're not people.
It's fun to surf through the 100,000 photos - because no matter how many bad pictures you've seen, you'll always find one that's even more stupid.
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My interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.