The Ice house above was built in 1846. It’s on the estate of Queen Victoria’s “Summer Palace” – Osbourne House. It was designed “under the direction” of Prince Albert. I’ve been in one before at Montacute House, the idea is that ice was collected from the lake, stored and packed tightly in this insulated chamber where it lasted most of the summer so chef’s could make ice cream and other chilled foods for the Queen. You’ll notice the date above the door is wrong…. not all is as it seems….
… and inside
ummm – interesting!
OK so the outside is changed, bars removed, strangely the date is wrong, I’d have thought that this would have been the critical thing Ai would be looking to keep correct, obviously not. It seems strange to me that a child is first taught ABC and 123, yet Ai “can’t do numbers”!!! Anyway – perhaps more worthy of discussion is the interior image. I’ve looked at it closely and to my eye it’s exact. Coloured yes, sharpened yes, my camera movement removed and details shown better, but it’s exact. So the question is: Is the left hand image any less “real” than the right?
S.H.O.U.T. 
What I’m finding with my own experiments using AI to enhance or “fix” images is that it largely recreates every image from the ground up using the original as a guide. It’s not modifying the original. And so I think it’s less real.
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Hi Jim! I hoped you might comment on this! I do agree, but the image of the tunnel interior seems so accurate I can’t see any difference, even in the detail. I suppose it’s a bit like the argument posed by basic photoshop against traditional darkroom printing techniques, or if one were into art, painting from a photo rather than real life. I suppose what I’m thinking is that unlike most other arts photography is a continuous chain of choices, edits, and alterations from before the button is pressed, up until the final digital image is shared or a print is made. I wonder when/if Ai will eventually be accepted as a “new fabulous mind bogglingly brilliant retouching brush” or “banned for the sake of humanities sanity!” Your point about is starting from scratch though is an important one, that I hadn’t considered! Cheers and best Andy
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I’ll be very surprised if, in time, AI doesn’t become a fabulous tool for editing photos. It will need to learn how to work with the existing photo and make targeted changes, rather than redrawing it. I very much look forward to the day I can say, “please remove the dust specks and scratches from this scan.”
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Amen to that! Now that would save hours!!
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It was interesting to see AI colourise the two images. I think it did rather well. Shame it doesn’t do images…
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Hi Ian! Yes, I was rather impressed too. I did a similar image “remove bars” with a tiger not so long back, and although it did that specific thing well it just produced a whole new image. Jim Grey pointed out that this is what Ai does, builds a whole new image, from the ground up, just using the original as a guide. That said in this case I think it did a good job. Especially the interior tunnel – I’ve looked closely and I can’t spot any change, apart from colour and removing my camera shake. I’ll call it ICM (intentional camera movement)!! – Cheers Andy
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