This happened one day in the window well outside my office. I got banned from r/pics for posting it.
I guess some people thought it was AI, but just a cool moment in my basement window well.
Edit: taken with my iPhone several years ago since that’s all I had with me when it happened so quickly.
He is the chosen cone!
I for one, welcome our new pinecone overlord.
in fact i pine over its shining beauty
the ai witchhunt gets a bit silly, sorry you got caught up in v it. very cool photo!
I don't think its silly at all, even tho I think this image is real I still applaud the zero tolerance rule enforcement.
The reason this got removed isn't that mods are powertripping, its because AI is such a menace. Place blame where it belongs.
I remember trying to warn people on Reddit that their anti-AI crusades were going to hurt real people making real art, especially surrealists, and got banned from a bunch of art subs for being “pro-AI” as a result. Actually, they phrased it in far more hurtful and inflammatory ways, like “advocating theft.” Apparently caring about not hurting real human beings making real human art is “advocating theft.”
I don’t miss Reddit. That place was bad for my mental health.
P.S. This photo is beautiful and I’m happy you had a mind to capture it and share it. Thank you.
I get these kind of reactions on Lemmy all the time. I say something that isn't the exact party line, people assume I'm their worst enemy even though our disagreement is very minor in the broad scheme.
There's always an US vs THEM element to any culture, but to me it seems like there's been a relatively recent social trend (as in like the last decade) that anybody who isn't jumping up and down waving pompoms for the one right side of an issue is presumed to be an extremist for the polar opposite wrong side, and all their other views about the world and their overall way of life are probably also despicable. It's very simple binary thinking and works well with memes - minimal information to take in, quick and easy to process, one obvious right answer. It also fits gaming mindset very well - is this NPC on my side or should I kill him?
It's the same shit on lemmy
I was watching a video yesterday where the video author said it was sketchy that another ytber had used an AI voice but still credited the original voice actor the Ai voice was based on, the voice actor also chimed in that they agreed and were still being paid even though the AI voice was being used.
Literally every time I see arguments against AI from creative it's because losing income/stealing, he hit both those and yet that is still not good enough.
The goal posts will ever shift and the rage will never end.
In my own anecdotal experience, it’s been a lot better here, but I’m sure instance, communities, etc all have an impact. I have noticed a slight uptick in toxicity recently, but once I started using Voyager’s tagging feature I realized the perpetrators are almost always the same 4 people.
Thank you! And yes, I mean I realize it’s a two sided battle. I legitimately hate gen AI and what it was done to the art world. My current career is in the process of being completely devoured by AI and taking photos is something that brings me a lot of joy and connects me to the real world, so it’s infuriating to have both the loss of my career and denigration of my photography due to AI.
Well, also AI is hurting actual human beings. We should be fighting against it too. Yeah, be careful of crossfire, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't fire at all.
It's the same thing for writing. Use a single emdash and you get accused of using LLMs. It's like, no, I'm literate. I read books. Sorry for paying attention in class..
I don’t miss Reddit. That place was bad for my mental health.
Same i remember it was Toxic
People gonna pitchfork. I figure there are enough communities to peruse, getting banned by an overactively axe-grinding mod now and then isn't a biggie. LPT: it's not a reddit thing, those same mods are here too.
Real talk! I got banned for "advocating violence". Anyone who knows me would find that fucking laughable at best, and completely dishonest at worst. Been a few months now and I can sense an improvement in myself. I get more shit done and hate people a lot less.
Nah fuck AI, this shit wouldn't be happening if people routinely respected the rule so we could establish trust and benefit of doubt.
There is no way this lighting is real. Given the follow up pic of the same environment I take it back its correct.
You can see particles on the concrete wall in the background. You can see how the physical objects in the image interact with one another. AI is good at replicating compositions, but you spot it by the details. At least, for now. This image is definitely real.
I highly doubt AI would properly generate a Fibonacci sequence in the pinecones.
Dang it!
Eh, “perfect” is relative. There’s still plenty of weird little spots on that Pangolin’s scales
Eat it for permanent +0 to HP.
Completely unrelated, but tonight I opened an app to look for hotels, and it greeted me with a message that I had a "0% off" coupon for my next booking
That sounds like something I'd do as a GM: reveal that the PC who "bravely" ate a random, god-rayed pinecone without hesitation now had a permanent bonus to their HP.
Ooh! What's the bonus?
Yes.
To be fair, I totally understand why people think it's AI. Between the phone camera processes and the extreme postprocessing, this looks more deep fried than some memes I've seen. It almost looks like it's got a cartoon filter applied.
Add on the fact that OP is trying hard to down play how much editing has been done, it starts to feel like it doesn't add up. If OP posted the unedited photo to show the bad phone sharpening and admitted how much editing was done on top of that, people would understand what they are looking at.
Don't get me wrong, it looks cool, but when someone says "oh, no I just took this with my phone", I look at that and think that's not the whole truth.
Yeah exactly, it's a cool shot, but to me it looks like a scan of an oil on canvas painting.
Thanks for your meaningful, informed, and helpful contribution.
Of course it’s edited. Pro tip: every image is edited. Nothing anyone sees is raw from the sensor. It’s all completely arbitrary. Even people who shoot film show edited photos, they just offload the editing to the film lab. Someone else is doing the processing for them.
Even direct from a digital camera to jpeg, the camera is performing countless transformations and adjustment s before burning to jpeg. See film emulations on Fuji cameras for example.
The entire point of photography is to present to people a compelling vision that feels the way you did when you saw it.
That being said, this is basic curve and a vignette.
post the original, then.
So you don't have the original anymore?
Post original or its AI
The interesting part about doing a vignette is that it shows up in ELA when you run it through any one of the dozen doctored image detector websites, the re-encode around the changes shows up in the data when it inspects them, this image has zero error level deviation.
That's interesting because it also doesn't appear as AI at all through the AI detection tests. But here you're saying it's actually edited. Maybe the CDN was heavy-handed enough to destroy the ELA. Zip up your edited copy and give that to the masses. The nay-sayers can run it through Fotoforensics and see it's manually edited. You have already passed all the AI detection pages with 0% AI probability.
Too much HDR. I can see why they thought it's AI.
Still a nice shot. The composion and framing is nice.
Honestly, deep fried images usually give me a headache but this one is actually pretty nice. I think the horrible HDR gives it a painting like quality.
It’s not HDR, it’s a single shot and no tone mapping has been done. Just levels adjustment that could have been done in a physical darkroom.
The number of things that confuse people in this image really surprises me, but I’m assuming you’re talking about the light beam, which is the sun raking concrete at a very sharp angle. The detail it’s exposing on the concrete is actually just like that, even in the raw image.
It’s not HDR. It’s a single shot, slightly underexposed so we don’t lose the highlight detail. The rest of the work could have been done in a physical darkroom. But thank you.
I think it's just that the iPhone processing gives it a certain look that people associate with ai for possibly incorrect reasons.
I have a mental image of you in a basement sweatshop in Philadelphia- the air is full of smoke and there's a constant barrage of German speeches and gunfire being played over the loudspeaker, broken only by the occasional steam whistle. You take a longing glance out the window, wishing you were on one of the higher floors so you could jump. And there is it.
Pinecone.
Welcome to lemmy
The default subs are controlled by people involved with karma farming. Some of them are so bad that the mods will ban anyone with a high number of upvotes to prevent them from competing with the bots.
Funny enough, I bet the same mods will let a bot repost your pic in a few months.
The Holy Pine Cone of Allentown.
Considering OP's username, one might dub the holy relic The Primogen, I believe.
Ah, nice catch.
r/pics is a massive joke anyways. Screw that sub!
conus pineae divinae
TIL what a window well is. I would honestly love to see what it looks like from outside. Is there some kind of covered up grate on top?
Sometimes. The smaller (typical?) ones tend to either be fully covered or have a grate. Many are big enough to stand in, to have plants/garden, or even be used as emergency exits. And might not have any covering.
This one almost definitely had a grate of some kind.
"Obviously" has been a conclusive reason to condemn things since social media began. So of course "obviously AI" falls under that impeccable standard.
Also just curious, is taking photos with an iPhone something people apologize for now? I don't keep up with all the latest acceptibility rules.
It was more to denote the presence of Apple’s processing algorithms, which are possibly part of why people think it’s AI or painted. Lots of people on Reddit thought it was a painting and some pointed to the painterly look of details when zoomed into.
Lots of discussion about that being the result of Apple’s fusion algo, which merges many rapidly taken exposures to eliminate noise, at the expense of real detail.
What an absurd line of reasoning from that bunch.
"Obviously" you should have just posted the raw sensor data and let the viewers figure it out themselves. Sheesh.
Very interesting, thanks for the explanation. To me it's kind of pathetic that people feel such a compulsion to be cops instead of just enjoying a nice image.
Nice, thanks for sharing! Maybe it's even something for c/accidentalrenaissance?
Since the light is hitting things just right, probably put some random objects or action figures in there to see if people notice. Every day is a new story! Cool picture by the way.
the light is hitting things just right
Just as the prophecy foretold!
Welcome home then.
I won, but at what cost? My fellow cones perished.
Thomas Kinkade's pinecone.
Quest item.
Lol when I first saw iPhone my brain read it as the default signature iPhones put in emails.
Sent from my iPhone.
serves you right for posting something so lewd.
stupid sexy pinecones...
If reddit was a thing before Photoshop was around, I assume they'd block not only that too, but stuff like changing hue, exposure, etc.
I got banned because I told everybody who was mocking that removed weather guy to stop mocking him.
Frankie MacDonald?
I think he's that Canadian dude on the coast and he's super zealous.
I remember a huge like 20,000+ vote thread where people were just outright mocking him to his face, knowing that he's not aware he's being mocked.
I stood up to shame people and I got the shit beat out of me then banned.
Yeah it's all fine for thousands of people to mock a person with an intellectual disability, that's totally fine /s
I don't see how they could have mistaken this for AI. It just doesn't have the vibe, there's too much roughness and it's not just totally overloaded with details.
I think I got banned from /r/pics for some random comment too. We can be twinsees.
Right? I don’t get it. They gave no reason except pointing to a rule that stated no posting someone else’s work as your own. Which obviously was not the case here. But they did not respond to a request to look into it.
Misleading thumbnail. Looks kinda like a lit joint.
happy cake day
Thanks!
https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images
It passed this test.
Incredible that an ai image happened outside your window. What a beauteous happening met upon you.
I can see why, it looks AI as hell...
I think it looks nice. AI or not.
I'd have to stare at it for longer than I have to decide if it's AI. So until I can do that, I'm going to trust the OP until I can verify their claims.
Edit: definitely not AI. Nice shot OP.
I think part of it is the imperfections that make it look a bit more like nonsensical ai hallucinations
It's not AI.
There's one big tell that I don't think AI is advanced enough to replicate.
Op took this picture though a window that had multiple panes of glass. So there's an echo of the image from the secondary reflections between the panes of glass.
I also can't spot and of the debris in the shot blending into itself. Everything seems to be complete objects.
But that reflection? I've never seen AI do anything like that.
In case anyone doesn't quite see what's going on here, the image is taken from inside (lights seem to be off from where the camera is), through thermal glass into a concrete window space, which is common for places that have basements so the window can serve as an emergency exit (even if you need to break it to get out)...
Looks like there's some kind of evergreen tree not far from where the window is, given the debris in the photo.
Great shot OP.
Looks like AI to me. Why are there pinecone reflections on what appears to be a concrete wall in the back?
I'd love to see another photo of this basement window well.
You answered your own question. It’s a window well. It’s glass.
It’s several panes of glass. Glass is reflective.
It's not, the needles or whatever are way to consistent, even in the darker areas. AI would have fucked all that up
Also, it's a basement well window, I have one of these as well. So OP would be standing on the side of the window in his house and the pinecone is on the other side in the fire escape well
Think of it like looking into a really big terrarium
that’s exactly why it’s not AI. AI wouldn’t replicate the glass half-reflection that well. and the background is clearly the outside forest, nobody’s having pinecones detritus and plants in their own basement except that greenthumbsman from _goosebumps _
Just for fun I tried reproducing this with chatgpt and it consistently messes up aligning the light beam with its illuminated patch no matter what I try. They always fail on the weirdest details
"Please provide proof of authenticity before I allow myself to enjoy this picture."
I don’t get the ideological hate for gen-AI - especially when it comes to visual art. All I care about is whether I enjoy looking at it or not. I couldn’t care less who or what made it.
There is something special about photography. Photographs capture something real, a physical point in time. What you see really existed.
The problem with AI slop is that it gets better by the day and if you want to appreciate that single physical point in time that a photo represents, knowing that makes it special in ways that AI is not.
Likewise, created art is a window into someone’s mind and soul. Knowing this also makes those works special in ways that AI is not.
That said, the way certain communities crusade against AI is hurting actual, human artists. Especially those whose work skews toward the surreal. That is not ethical behavior and needs to be curbed.
When you don't understand how anything works, everything seems like a conspiracy AI
You sound like AI to me