My parents discovered the wonders of ChatGPT and happily used it for everything they could think of. I’ve had the “conversation” with them about the credibility of LLMs, but like most people, they indulge in social media fads from time to time. Whether it’s using ChatGPT to turn you into an action figure or caricature yourself, they’re now well-versed in uploading a photo to the chatbot as part of a request.
Looking at their Facebook post history recently, it seems like the latest thing to do Give the AI damaged old family photosfaded or missing much or any color and ask it to “restore” the photo. The result is a sleek, modern-looking photo, but there’s a big problem: it’s not my mom and dad in the photos!
Grandma likes to get approval
It’s no surprise that using artificial intelligence to “restore” an image has become quite popular. Photoshop is hard work, and even with modern tools and a skilled artist, restoring a photo can take many hours. In contrast, AI will produce a new photo for you in seconds, ready to share online.
Sites like Facebook, above all else, trade on nostalgia, so posting shiny new versions of old photos is almost guaranteed to attract snarky likes and comments from old classmates or extended family.
Manufacturing vs. recovery: where the line really is
Close enough to be weird
However, there is a big problem here. Generative AI technologies don’t “restore” anything; It creates a completely new image using the original as input. At first glance, and many people will not give more, it looks like the same photo. However, if you take a minute to dig into the details, it’s different in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Here is a history Family photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. To illustrate the problem, I ran it through ChatGPT with the “Restore this photo as taken today” command. People who do this online either use similar instructions or use artificial intelligence “recovery” tools that use a similar command internally but hide it from the user.
Take a closer look at the image created by artificial intelligence. AI not only expanded the frame to include details that were never there, but also changed details like the poster on the wall. However, the most The important thing here is the faces and poses of the people in the photo. It’s like someone hired a bunch of lookalikes to sit for the same picture. These are not the same people!
It can be hard to tell people you don’t know well, but when my dad posted a picture of himself going through the AI mill, it was evidently (and disturbingly) not his face that came up. What’s worse is that when he posts photos from before I was born, I can’t tell which one is his real face without juxtaposing them because I have no real memories of his face during that time.
Why changes are more important than you think
It’s not just innocent fun
The further back you go, the bigger the problem. I never met my grandfathers in person, so photos are the only proof I have of what they looked like or what my older family looked like when they were young. These photos are a link to my personal family history.
Now, I see people all over the internet voluntarily replacing family members with creepy doppelgängers in photos of non-existent places. If I were you, I would destroy those AI images immediately create a secure, unalterable digital backup of my family photos in several long-term storage environments.
How to preserve originality while enhancing old photos
It takes effort, but it can be done
When you hire a professional person to restore a photo, like AI, that person cannot restore information that is not in the original photo. However, a trained restoration artist knows how to preserve a person’s true features and will not change anything in the image more than necessary.
Even when old photos are colorized, color choices are informed by research to be as close to reality as possible. Your typical AI tool doesn’t even try to do that.
However, does this mean that it is impossible to properly recover photos without using artificial intelligence? Not quite. For example, in this Guide by PIXimperfect You can see the workflow using a mix of traditional photo editing tools and adjustable AI filters that allow you to retain the exact original facial features and allow you to compare the results to the original photo to double check that no wrinkles or lines are out of place.
But of course, most people will choose the easy way of just pressing a button and seeing a new photo pop up in seconds. However, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it to erase the real faces and places that make up your family’s history, and maybe your own children will never know what their grandparents really looked like? Personally, I don’t think so.
