No, it’s not “a little bit more involved”, it’s significantly more involved because it also requires the skills to even know what you’re talking about, the experience of having done it before to be convincing, the inclination to spend the time on it, downloading Photoshop itself, possibly cracking it… There are a lot of steps, most of which most people haven’t done and don’t know how. With generative AI, you just open a website and type a few words.
There are significantly more people able to type a few words into a prompt than people who can use an image editor fast and convincingly and would be inclined to waste their time on this kind of fake.
> This is the kind of thing it was very easy to hire people for.
But would you? People grumble about $0.99 for an app they’ll use everyday, I doubt paying even $5 (and waiting for a result!) for a fake image to mislead police is high on anyone’s list.
Making this image was likely fast and free. It’s a crime of opportunity.
This argument has always seemed a bit silly to me. It's like responding to someone saying that it's easy to set up a hello world web server without AI with "but but but first you need to know what a web server is and how to use the command line and download a compiler/runtime and and and", as if there were some dire shortage of people who are already programmers. There are literally millions of us, the existence of one who would want to put up a website about pretty much anything you can think of is not some huge shock. We know this because we were literally there in that pre-AI world full of sites about all sorts of things! Just because you can now do the same thing with a prompt doesn't mean it was magically unlikely to find a site about, I don't know, the social lives of cane rats before.
And there are literally billions of everyone else.
Do you not see that the amount of fake images has exploded with free access and ease of use? That’s what a tool does. It’s silly to argue generative AI doesn‘t make a difference in the proliferation of fake images, just like it’d be arguing that digital photography on a small multi-purpose device that is always with you doesn’t make people take more pictures.
I very much disagree, since you went on to make your whole point with an unrelated matter and apparently I misunderstood your point. Maybe you don’t know how to make your point clearer, but that isn’t the same as it being impossible to be clearer.
> and it's rather silly to twist my words
There was no twisting intended, and if I misconstrued your point I’d appreciate the correction (i.e. clarification).
Specifically: If you do agree that access to generative AI increases the proliferation of fake images (do you? I’m really asking. Sounds like you might), then what exactly is your objection to the original point?
Why does it HAVE to be my relative when the actual question is whether hello world web servers exist?
I don't know why people are so determined to miss the point that "people can do [image manipulation] faster with AI" does not magically mean that people weren't doing it before AI, at scale mind you. Did y'all really unironically believe EVERY single image you saw on the internet prior to the past few years was entirely real and entirely what it was presented as? My goodness
> Why does it HAVE to be my relative when the actual question is whether hello world web servers exist?
No, that is not the question. I mean, maybe it’s the question you are asking, but no one else is.
> I don't know why people are so determined to miss the point that "people can do [image manipulation] faster with AI" does not magically mean that people weren't doing it before AI, at scale mind you.
That is not the point. The argument is simple: easier and cheaper access to a tool makes more people use the tool more often. Manual image editing is harder and takes longer than typing words into a box, thus more people do it more often and with fewer thought.
If you have the idea to manually edit a wolf into a street, you’ll first have to go to your computer or tablet, have a bunch of skills, and spend time doing it. You have plenty of opportunity to say “fuck it, I’ll do something else”. Most people drop at that point
because they can’t be bothered.
With generative AI, you can be so drunk you can barely stand, sitting on a portable toilet at a concert, haphazardly type a few words and get the result, immediately and for free.
Do you not see the difference between those two?
We can go further back: You could do image manipulation on film, before digital was a thing. But few people knew how or had access to the necessary chemicals and dark room. Do you not think the ease of access and digital tools increased the amount of people doing it?
> Did y'all really unironically believe EVERY single image you saw on the internet prior to the past few years was entirely real and entirely what it was presented as?
No, no one believed that and no one is making that argument and I think you know that.
There are significantly more people able to type a few words into a prompt than people who can use an image editor fast and convincingly and would be inclined to waste their time on this kind of fake.