The camera never lied... until AI told it to

tech.hindustantimes.com:

An amateur photographer who goes by the name "ibreakphotos" decided to do an experiment on his Samsung phone last month to find out how a feature called "space zoom" actually works.

The feature, first released in 2020, claims a 100x zoom rate, and Samsung used sparkling clear images of the Moon in its marketing.

Ibreakphotos took his own pictures of the Moon -- blurry and without detail -- and watched as his phone added craters and other details.

The phone's artificial intelligence software was using data from its "training" on many other pictures of the Moon to add detail where there was none.

"The Moon pictures from Samsung are fake," he wrote, leading many to wonder whether the shots people take are really theirs anymore -- or if they can even be described as photographs.

Samsung has defended the technology, saying it does not "overlay" images, and pointed out that users can switch off the function.

The firm is not alone in the race to pack its smartphone cameras with AI -- Google's Pixel devices and Apple's iPhone have been marketing such features since 2016.

The AI can do all the things photographers used to labour over -- tweaking the lighting, blurring backgrounds, sharpening eyes -- without the user ever knowing.

But it can also transform backgrounds or simply wipe away people from the image entirely.

And the debate over AI is not limited to hobbyists on message boards -- professional bodies are raising the alarm too.

- Sidestepping the tech -

The industry is awash with AI, from cameras to software like Photoshop, said Michael Pritchard of the Royal Photographic Society of Britain.

"This automation is increasingly blurring boundaries between a photograph and a piece of artwork," he told AFP.

The nature of AI is different to