Photography in general is in a weird place right now. AI-assisted autofocus, subject tracking, zoom/upscaling, exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR and lots more that all cameras have now is considered fine. Heavy AI-assisted editing in tools like Lightroom is considered fine. But the second an LLM gets involved for even the tiniest detail suddenly everyone is in agreement that "this is AI!!"
I feel like the distinction comes down to "edited" vs "generated", but even here the line can be blurry. For example, is AI denoise really just removing noise from an image, or is it generating a new image of what it thinks the original signal was?
Why everything has to be touched by AI? I really don't get it. Not long ago a canadian writer was also in the center of a storm accused of using AI in a novel that won a prize.
Why do people fall for it so easily? Is it just laziness? Rush to finish things? We are so much better at creating new things that using the tech feels like cheating to ourselves.
Human body, esp. brain (or more broadly even nature) has a motivation to do more with less energy expenditure.
Drugs allows you to cope with hard things or allows you to escape the toll you have to pay.
Similarly, AI allows brain to do more with less energy expenditure. This is why it looks so tasty and is very addictive.
Your brain doesn't work at that hard, AI allows this, however there's no free lunch on that planet. The effort you give into something returns as quality and finesse, however it's tiring as well.
Addiction is a complex is a hard problem regardless what you are addicted to, it's not a light or easy matter to discuss, though.
OK, but not only that. People learn quickly that in most contexts, expending effort to create a high quality work is not noticed much less rewarded.
It's like anything goes in most human endeavors. Society is winging it; duct-taped solutions abound. Most people lack taste or a keen eye for quality, and only notice when there is something seriously wrong. Even then, politics and all sorts of other concerns skews how people respond to things. This is why we complain about AI slop in the fields we know about, while the public at large think AI is the best thing after sliced bread.
Faced with this, unless someone is really passionate about their work, they eventually kind of tune out, and then look for how to expend the least effort possible to get whatever (uncertain or politicized) reward they can in their endeavors.
I still don't think the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating. He was pretty open about his process, and Nikon took some time to determine whether it was within the rules or not. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/winning-nikon-small-...
Edit: an earlier statement from Nikon said that he was complying with the investigation and "At this time, we don't see that any rules were violated" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck4gjn1yzprno
What you see as evidence of a weak case I see as evidence of the judges being responsibly cautious, and affording the photographer every reasonable opportunity to make their case. I would need to see additional evidence before I took a statement beginning "at this time..." as stronger evidence than something subsequently stated by the same party.
As it happens, the final decision is not that the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating, but that the video was ineligible for the competition.
I don't think that's an honest summary of what happened. It seems like every other scientist was pointing out aspects of the submission that were clearly generated by AI. things appearing out of nowhere or behaviors and appearances that don't match reality at all. it's pretty clear AI was not used purely to post process b/w source images. Or at the very least, was not used responsibly. Whether or not he intended to cheat, the lack of discipline is pretty egregious
Publish or perish. The stakes are incredibly high. Cheating may be the difference between keeping and losing your job.
Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.
This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.
Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.
Don't take it personal, HN is always hit and miss, sometimes someone reposts the story 2h later and it gets traction just because a few people happen to have browsed /new and upvoted it.
That's the reason why there's a "second chance" pool where things can be revived.
sehw: I can't reply to your post as it's marked "dead", but the points are not important, that's why they are not a very visible part of the page in any case. Complaining about being downvoted is usually counter-productive.
Just continue to share interesting links, comment on topics you care about and don't worry about the silly internet points.
Why do people fall for it so easily? Is it just laziness? Rush to finish things? We are so much better at creating new things that using the tech feels like cheating to ourselves.
Drugs allows you to cope with hard things or allows you to escape the toll you have to pay.
Similarly, AI allows brain to do more with less energy expenditure. This is why it looks so tasty and is very addictive.
Your brain doesn't work at that hard, AI allows this, however there's no free lunch on that planet. The effort you give into something returns as quality and finesse, however it's tiring as well.
Addiction is a complex is a hard problem regardless what you are addicted to, it's not a light or easy matter to discuss, though.
It's like anything goes in most human endeavors. Society is winging it; duct-taped solutions abound. Most people lack taste or a keen eye for quality, and only notice when there is something seriously wrong. Even then, politics and all sorts of other concerns skews how people respond to things. This is why we complain about AI slop in the fields we know about, while the public at large think AI is the best thing after sliced bread.
Faced with this, unless someone is really passionate about their work, they eventually kind of tune out, and then look for how to expend the least effort possible to get whatever (uncertain or politicized) reward they can in their endeavors.
Edit: an earlier statement from Nikon said that he was complying with the investigation and "At this time, we don't see that any rules were violated" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck4gjn1yzprno
As it happens, the final decision is not that the disqualified photographer was intentionally cheating, but that the video was ineligible for the competition.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038640
It makes no sense why you’d do something so foolish.
Especially since everyone else is aware of that. If you don't take the risk, you will lose to someone who did and got away with it.
This researcher is in China, where I gather the competition is even fiercer than in the West. I do not know that for a fact, but if it is true it makes it even clearer.
Viewed that way it's not foolish. It's actually mandatory. And it's just going to get more prominent as the AI makes fewer mistakes, and competitors get better at spotting and removing them.
Chicanery seems to scale anywhere that there are insufficient institutional barriers.
That's the reason why there's a "second chance" pool where things can be revived.
Just continue to share interesting links, comment on topics you care about and don't worry about the silly internet points.