On a recent (amazing) trip to California, I enjoyed a great conversation during a long car ride with my dad through the mountains between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Surrounded by the forests and the serenity of a beautiful space, we got to talking about the current state of the “Post-AI” world. Specifically, we started talking about what all these tools are doing to our collective understanding of truth.
Truth, for much of mankind’s existence, has been something that people have sought time and time again. Science is the never ending quest for truth through incremental steps along the way. Philosophers have been working to solve human truths since humans found enough time to avoid being eaten to start thinking about such things. We buy self improvement books by the dozens each proposing to have solved “it” and show us the way to some fundamental truth that will clarify and exemplify our purpose.
So what does it mean when we’re equipping ourselves with tools that allow us to easily warp reality and create something else?
We talked a bit about a particular experience that I found when iOS introduced the ability to make small “improvements” to your photos using AI editing. This lovely feature is called “Clean Up in Photos” featuring Apple Intelligence – and from a technical point of view it’s pretty awesome. Highlight something on the screen and wish it gone.
Here’s a photo I took from that same trip (IMSA at Laguna Seca!), in its original form:
What a beautiful car! The “Pit Walk” is one of those really great moments in auto racing because you get to walk right up to the machines that are about to race. You can say hi to the crew & wish them luck, take some photos, admire the craftsmanship, and really immerse yourself in the experience.
But what happens if you decide to do a little “Clean Up”?
Through a couple taps of the finger, suddenly there are 2 fewer race crew members in view. The car becomes more featured – it stands out nicer without having those pesky bystanders in the frame.
But what is this image now? It’s not true. It’s not a lie, either? We’re so used to seeing everything edited and curated and modified and perfected that this tiny little tweak may seem like the best way to preserve a family memory. It’s just a small edit. But every one of these small edits becomes a part of something more complex – more insidious. We’re able to make these changes so quickly and easily that most people wouldn’t even think to take the time to add captions or notes that this wasn’t what we really saw. There were 2 people in the background, who aren’t there in this photo anymore.
Here’s an even further edit, removing even more people from the scene. Yes, there are now some weird artifacts happening on the image – the AI tools are showing their present limitations. I’m certain if I took this into a photo editor with more tools and prompts I could make even their pseudo-essence vanish.
And lastly, here’s another bunch of missing people:
So my question to myself – and to my dad on this trip we were taking – and to you the reader… What is this image? Is this image true? Is this reality? Or are we all creating these small incremental chips away at the boulders of truth we used to take as a given? I think it matters and I think we each need to assume a degree of responsibility for both our contribution to this erosion of truth, as well as our emotions and expectations when interpreting the world around us. We’ve built tools that allow nearly everyone to alter their reality and the tools are getting more sophisticated and easier to use. The costs of deploying these tools is cheap or free. But the costs to our society and to each other for not acknowledging their existence and not questioning their value over the long-run is meaningful.
I am a big fan of this latest era of technology. I find AI-based tools to be utterly exciting and I’m gearing up to write another post about my positive outlook on all of this. But as we’re expanding our use of these tools and creating a world for each other where they exist, I think we should also be mindful of their impact and continue the conversation about how we should use, notify, alert, and warn each other that they’re in use. I think there’s a role for more warning labels, more public awareness of editing and AI-driven alteration. I think we need to spend more time focusing on governance of these tools and how we want each other to be able to trust that what we see is what’s really there. Let’s work together to make sure these philosophical questions around the nature of truth aren’t lost even as we build machines that make these concepts less certain.