The camera doesn’t lie

[Wapping]

The old adage, certainly used to be (near enough) true.

I have an interest in history, where contemporary photographs and film can certainly bring things to life. The rise of fakes has already polluted ‘politics’ and ‘social’ issues (some of it regurgitated on these pages as ‘the truth’) and it’s now working its insidious tentacles into history, even into the darkest moments of our past.

BBC reveals web of spammers profiting from AI Holocaust images

The BBC has found an international network of content creators profiting from AI generated posts on Facebook.

www.bbc.co.uk

This alone is worrying for our future, let alone our past. My italics:

A spokesperson for the tech giant [Meta] said while those fake images did not violate its content policies…….

Lies can become ‘truth’ very quickly and shared, innocently or (increasingly) deliberately with millions.

 

[John Armstrong]

Hopefully there's a special place in hell for those who profit from the suffering of those who were caught up in the Holocaust.

 

[karlp]

It is at the point where you cannot believe any photo is a true image or AI generated

 

[SBD]

It is at the point where you cannot believe any photo is a true image or AI generated

And that, I fear, is exactly the point

(And is already the case with audio tracks)

If you really cannot believe your own ears and eyes, then you can be convinced of anything. A very dangerous place to be.

 

[Wapping]

Of course some manipulation of genuine old photographs and films is very welcome. A prime example is the colourisation and complete clean-up of the WW1 films by the very talented (and sensitively responsible) Peter Jackson, to commemorate the 100 years since the end of the war.

But that is not fakery per-se, not least as the original film(s) still exist and were not tampered with at all. It is then down to informed teachers to explain to classes of schoolchildren (and maybe adults, too) that WW1 films were not shot in colour and maybe look very odd to someone in the 21st century.

Fakery and malicious fakery are very different.

 

[Wapping]

Hopefully there's a special place in hell for those who profit from the suffering of those who were caught up in the Holocaust.

Indeed so.

But, to an extent we need to be careful there, too. There are some excellent films and indeed books based on the Holocaust, which ‘make money’. Good examples would be the recent film ‘Zone of Interest’

and, of course, Primo Levi’s writings. I guess that into that category you could also place ‘Slaughter House 5’ and ‘Catch-22’ both high quality and fictional but based (as novels) on very real events.

But, these are not fake nor malicious.

 

[The Other PaulG]

Fake images are without question making the truth very much harder to ascertain, not sure where that will lead us.

On a slightly more positive AI theme, the Imperial War Museum and Google have just digitised their entire store of paper and audio WWII records.

They had basements full of paperwork, within which there was a massive amount of information, but effectively inaccessible. Having scanned it and let AI do its stuff, it's now possible to search against a single individual's name and be presented with every record within which they are referenced. Hopefully this will unearth a lot of value for those wishing to know more about an individual's wartime record.

 

[Wapping]

Indeed, AI has revolutionised data bases. So much easier than dusty basements, collapsing cardboard boxes and scratchy microfilm copies.

It is the beneficial (I’d say, intelligent) use of technology and about as far away from fakery as it’s possible to get.

 

[The Other PaulG]

I believe that some of the film/audio records were on the verge of failure through decay, too, so they would have been permanently lost. All in all, a very worthwhile project.