Generative AI scandal has come to one of Nikon's competitions

(dpreview.com)

32 points | by DASD 5 hours ago ago

55 comments

  • neom 4 hours ago

    Here is the video they disqualified: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJSotKghcZ8

    • hmry 3 hours ago

      I'm a bit surprised the judges themselves didn't spot that it was AI. It immediately starts with things randomly appearing out of nothing.

      AI-generated fake footage in medical science is one of the things that worries me a lot these days. Now there's practically a constant stream of papers getting retracted due to fake AI-generated microscopy, before/after photos, plots(!), ...

  • altmanaltman 3 hours ago

    > The video in question supposedly showed “abnormal beating of airway cilia in a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a rare genetic disorder affecting respiratory function,” and the original press release announcing it as the winner had several paragraphs describing the importance of the imagery and how it was captured.

    > the winner “acknowledged using AI,” and reports that other scientists raised the alarm about the video, with one expert in PCD saying that the cells in the video “look nothing like those from PCD patients.”

    Imagine the gaslighting to the scientists with that press release. This is embarassing that they didn't do their due dilligence and just published it as if its real.

    AI kind of won this one imo, or exposed what little fs the company gives about these competitions until it embarasses them. I wonder what their judging standards were pre AI

  • bronzebase 3 hours ago

    [flagged]

  • qarl 4 hours ago

    [flagged]

    • Terr_ 4 hours ago

      Your question seems like a non-sequitur. The article is about a fraudulent entry, but you're talking about a low quality (or perhaps low-effort) entry.

      Real things can be low-quality, and counterfeits can be high-quality, they are separate measures.

      • qarl 4 hours ago

        There is an unending stream of hate directed towards generative AI calling it "slop" with the insinuation that it must be low quality.

        And yet here we have an example that is high quality. How can that be so?

        • ykl 3 hours ago

          I don’t think the issue in the contest is the quality level of the AI entry; the issue is that it was fraudulent.

          • qarl 3 hours ago

            I'm referring to the fact it won - which would imply something about the quality level of the AI entry.

            • jiggawatts 3 hours ago

              You can have a high quality fraud.

              Quality and veracity are independent (orthogonal) axes, but we are used to them being correlated, so some people conflate the two.

              A knock-off Chanel handbag likely won’t be as good quality as the original, but it could be even better! Even so, it wouldn’t be authentic.

              • qarl 3 hours ago

                I am discussing quality.

        • eloisius 3 hours ago

          Gen-AI images masquerading as photography are slop regardless of whether they are aesthetically pleasing or technically correct. As soon as you know the situation depicted never happened, no one witnessed it, what you’re seeing is a meaningless, derivative mishmash of other photographs. It’s reduced to pretty lights on a screen. If that wasn’t true, why wouldn’t gen-AI “photographers” proudly disclose that their image was produced with AI?

          And they can win competitions because photo competitions are usually already within the realm of derivative.

          • qarl 3 hours ago

            I'm not saying it shouldn't have been disqualified. I did not say that.

            I said that it won.

        • yndoendo 3 hours ago

          Bernard Lawrence Madoff is a great example of this. His company and him are slop. People believed it was not slop and bought into it. It is easier to scam and fool people than one can imagine.

          AI slop because it cannot ever appreciate or under stand thing that has been created. It can only interpenetrate based of someone else's writings that has opinions on the subject. It is soulless vessel to create content for profit versus real art which is an extension of emotion.

          Even pigs find slop useful and yet would find it less filling when they have a broader understanding of the world around them.

          • qarl 3 hours ago

            No matter how much you insult it and sling slurs - it won the competition.

            • yndoendo 3 hours ago

              I do not respect anyone that commits fraud with AI. They are just like Bernard Lawrence Madoff, trash! No different then the 1990s baseball players that used steroids to break records.

              • qarl 3 hours ago

                [flagged]

                • yndoendo 3 hours ago

                  I do not respect anyone that commits fraud with AI. They are just like Bernard Lawrence Madoff, trash! No different then the 1990s baseball players that used steroids to break records. Pure trash!

                  • qarl 3 hours ago

                    Be that as it may - it still won.

            • Terr_ 3 hours ago

              You've chosen a really bizarre hill to die on here.

              "In the beauty contest, the faked picture of a composite girl won! Therefore she is the most beautifulest even though she never existed in the first place! Checkmate, people who don't like my waifu!" /s

              • qarl 3 hours ago

                Slop doesn't win. Slop loses. This won.

        • nhinck3 4 hours ago

          You keep claiming its high quality, but the experts involved disagree, so all that means is that you are easily impressed by slop.

          • qarl 3 hours ago

            It won the competition. It was evaluated by professional judges. And it won.

            • nhinck3 3 hours ago

              Fraud commits fraud using fraud tool because they don't have the skills to win competition and are too lazy to develop them.

              Sounds like a sloppy way to win to me.

              • qarl 3 hours ago

                Ahhh... so you admit it won.

                Thank you.

                • nhinck3 3 hours ago

                  It in fact didn't win, you are commenting underneath an article laying out that it didn't win.

                  • qarl 3 hours ago

                    [flagged]

                    • nhinck3 3 hours ago

                      Well I just judged that I won this argument, so I've won and nothing can take that away.

                      • qarl 3 hours ago

                        [flagged]

                • ykl 3 hours ago

                  Looking at the results page, it looks like it was disqualified. If you win something but then are disqualified, then by definition you did not win.

                  Here’s an easy to understand analogy; if you deposit a fake check for a million dollars, your account will briefly show a million dollars, but then the check bounces, and your balance goes back to what it was before because you were in fact never a millionaire.

                  • qarl 3 hours ago

                    [flagged]

    • jubilanti 3 hours ago

      CTRL-F "slop" 0 results

      What in the hell are you talking about?

      • qarl 3 hours ago

        Do I really need to paste all those links again? Really?

        • jubilanti 3 hours ago

          What do those links have anything to do with this story?

          • qarl 3 hours ago

            I'm referring to the trend where all AI output is called slop. And yet here we have an example of it winning a competition.

            • jubilanti 3 hours ago

              Look, I put tokens through transformers all day long and am amazed at what they can do, probably just like you. But imagine a Tour de France cyclist wins but is found to be using a hidden ebike motor. But they won and fooled everyone! So what?

              The winning submission was SCIENTIFIC FRAUD claiming to be from a medical instrument. The competition was not to produce something that was aesthetically pleasing or that would pass as real images recorded from a camera. Just like the point of the Tour de France is not to be the very fastest in any 2 wheeled vehicle.

              But you're right, this isn't slop, it's worse. It's an entitlement that comes with the worst parts of tech hype grifter scenes like NFTs and crypto altcoins. If you can get away with lying and cheating, then it is not just morally okay but a moral obligation.

              • qarl 3 hours ago

                I hate to ruin your day - but NFTs and crypto alt coins were a scam.

                AI is not.

        • 3 hours ago
          [deleted]
    • georgemcbay 4 hours ago

      Nikon is a camera company, seems perfectly reasonable to demand the videos submitted to their competition were captured by cameras and not AI generated.

  • sawjet 4 hours ago

    I don't understand how an AI can be scandalized. It's just a spicy auto complete. Sounds more like it's the photographers who are scandalized.

    • hackernud3s 43 minutes ago

      I don't understand how that's possible. Photographers are just spicy primates.