.png)
Mirror, mirror, on the wall…
Photo manipulation is nothing new. The practice dates back to the 19th century, to the very first photographs. Artists retouched glass and tin plates with ink, paint and airbrushing. Like the recent fake photo of Donald Trump embracing Dr. Fauci, they combined images for dramatic effect (above courtesy Rick Soloway)
Back in the day, portrait photographers made a good living by making subjects look good. Hair, makeup, clothes, serious poses, artfully arranged backgrounds, lighting, touch-ups in the dark room – vanity paid the bills.
When cameras, film and printing became accessible to all, casual snaps ruled the roost. Stylized portrait photography didn’t die (e.g., weddings and school photos), but it was left to experts. Still is.
More to the point, there was no need for home-brewed photographs to look like Madison Avenue advertisements or celebrity posters.
Can you imagine a ‘70’s teenager showing her Fotomat developed bikini snaps to everyone in her class? In her school? In the world? That pretty much describes today’s social media: glamorous personal images and video carefully curated for public consumption.
Photographs and videos posted on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat Et al. are now the form of social currency. As a result, people aren’t people on social media. They’re a carefully cultivated brand, competing against other brands for the one thing humans crave after food and shelter: attention.
Image manipulation across these platforms was a foregone conclusion, right from the start. If nothing else, the act of shooting and selecting a specific photograph or video to post is a form of image manipulation.
Of psychological manipulation. Here, this is who I am. All the other things I do that don’t look I’m LMBL (Living My Best Life)? They don’t exist. I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world.
Over the last few years, image manipulation software became less expensive and a hell of a lot easier. Social media users have taken to it like a Hollywood producer to cocaine.
TikTok’s “Bold Glamor” filter, for example, de-ages and “beautifies” faces on video with the click of a button (63-year-old author above).
AI takes image manipulation to the next level. Anyone can change a subject’s hair, eye and skin color; bone structure, height, weight and clothes. They can change the background to anywhere in the world. They can add or subtract people, including people who don’t exist. They can be exactly who they want to be, but aren’t.
Young ‘Uns are already suffering from social media-driven mental illness. More than a few committed suicide when they realized they couldn’t compete with high-level online LMBL’s.
With AI image manipulation they can compete. Online. Which creates a strange paradox: they get attention for who they want to be, not who they are.
The situation reminds me of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac (Steve Martin’s adaptation above). The large-nosed title character’s love falls for his stand-in, who relies on Cyrano to "generate content” to capture Roxane’s heart. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t end well.
Neither will it end well for posters using AI-generated images and video to “be somebody.” They’ll have to compete with other posters – as they do now – and themselves. The more beautiful and glamorous their online persona, the more ugly and pedestrian they’ll feel in “real life.”
The only silver lining I can see in all this: it will soon get to the point where everyone knows that nothing on the internet is real. Not Donald Trump hugging Dr. Fauci. Not people pretending that their world is all sunshine and roses. Perhaps at that point people will see that the best filter is no filter.
That the best place to judge someone – body and soul – is in the real world. Oh wait. Apple Vision. Never mind.
Comentarios