Huawei’s camera mistook a plane for a bird and…
…I really dislike “AI-enhanced” photography. It makes it harder and harder for me to trust any photo, even those taken by people I know on their personal devices.
Source: https://nitter.catsarch.com/youy1qwq/status/2075444313132351828#m
@drahardja I wanted to ask how they thought attempting anything like this could possibly be a good idea even if it had been implemented perfectly. But of course they didn’t think that. They weren’t trying to make their product better. They were trying to differentiate it.
@integerpoet Something something photos of the moon
Jul 12, 2026, 6:13 AM@drahardja That's no moon! @integerpoet
Not so much differentiate it, but more like make it sellable at all: Smartphone cameras are optical garbage; if you'd look at the output of a smartphone camera that was processed in a traditional way, you'd barf all over it. They're terrible. Only by sending them through the indigestion of an image enhancement transformer network they become palatable.
The downshot of that is, that consumers who don't give a fuck just accept it, killing the market for proper cameras.
@datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja Yeah, the fundamental resolution limit of a lens smaller than your thumbnail was hit several years ago. The only way for smartphone cameras to "improve" over the last generation is dirty computational tricks like that.
There is a way to at least somewhat boost the effective resolution of the optics though, and generative transformers ain't it: stacking multiple images. Capture multiple frames at once, along with an accelerometer trace for approximate alignment, and you can stack them together to mostly erase the "lost" resolution from the bayer filter thanks to it being impossible to keep a phone perfectly still. It's not perfect and only provides a small boost at the cost of "longer exposure", but at least it's not generative shit that tries to guess what's in the image and then just makes shit up...
Full-size cameras are still infinitely better though. (And I use similar techniques like exposure and focus stacking with mine)
@becomethewaifu @datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja jep, my old compact camera from 20 years ago had a feature like that and it was so awesome at making details far away recognizable. Was able to beat a camera with double the zoom level at that even.
(also has the added bonus of being able to capture LED matrix displays lol)
Jul 11, 2026, 4:00 PM@datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja I'd rather have optical garbage than a camera that lies on purpose
Jul 12, 2026, 12:00 PM@datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja yeah luckily this picture looks good now thanks to the enhancement
@datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja Smartphone cameras aren't that bad. I had to switch from Google Camera to a third party app because Google Camera had "ai upscaling" that could not be disabled & would ruin every picture I try to take. The third party app I use now just captures raw sensor data & encodes it into whatever format I put in the settings & images look way better.
But an actual camera is still going to make better looking images.
Jul 12, 2026, 3:19 PM@jackemled
Which third-party camera do you use ?
I use opencamera ... It seems to be without any "AI enhancements"
Jul 12, 2026, 7:36 PM@jackemled @datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja Ish - only part of the processing happens inside the app, another part happens in the firmware and happens regardless of the app used. Doesn't mean it's worse for that, but it's not the raw sensor data.
Jul 14, 2026, 11:59 PM@datenwolf @integerpoet @drahardja no one is calling for ending automated software enhancement of photos. This has been a standard feature in phones since way before the "AI" hype, using techniques that were actually useful for that purpose, instead of throwing images into a random garbage generator
@integerpoet @drahardja It seems to have crossed the line from "using computation methods to improve image quality" to "using computational methods to fraudulently market image quality as better than it is".
Jul 12, 2026, 2:22 AMSimilar to how some phone photos of the moon are entirely fake.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moon-photos-ai-galaxy-s21-s23-ultra
@rl_dane @integerpoet @drahardja
Just link to the OG reddit thread instead of the friggen verge
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are_fake_and_here/
Jul 12, 2026, 7:38 PM@miketango @integerpoet @drahardja
I can read The Verge in a text-based browser. Not so much new reddit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But yeah, I just wanted to post a quick summary of the subject, not necessarily the original blow-by-blow.
But sorry for the bloated Verge link. I know it's not fun to visit on a modern browser. :(
@rl_dane @integerpoet @drahardja old.reddit.com
Jul 13, 2026, 12:31 PM@miketango @integerpoet @drahardja
True.
Also, redlib. Just replace the domain name with redlib.catsarch.com
Jul 14, 2026, 9:54 PMJul 14, 2026, 11:40 PMSo far, the worst thing that the Google Pixel Camera app does is dodgy upscaling.
I haven't caught it entirely faking anything... yet.
I think the Huawei and Samsung nonsense is just an extension of a longstanding tendency of Asian brands to just throw features at the wall and see what sticks.
I remember as far back as the Samsung Galaxy S III days, they had features like a screen-wipe gesture to take a screenshot, and hand gesture recognition, some of which were extremely half-baked.
I also remember seeing a Samsung (IIRC) TV in 2013 that had gestural recognition that only the preteen son of the household could get working in the least. 😄
On Mastodon, 41 likes is “doing numbers”. I’m famous!
Jul 11, 2026, 10:44 AM@drahardja spectacular how the feathering is facing the direction of travel 🤦♂️
Jul 11, 2026, 12:50 PM@stefanct angle of the wings says otherwise.
But these are mere flight mechanics details https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/114099221792334226
Jul 11, 2026, 3:03 PM@Phosphenes ha! We are so gull-ible 😆
@drahardja
I wonder how many such unknowingly AI enhanced 'photographs' have already ended up in evidence in legal proceedings? It's a truly horrifying thought.
@drahardja I read an article a few months ago how it's basically impossible to use modern photographs to identify species, because the AI "enhancements" replace crucial details from feather patterns to putting a completely different head on the creature.
Jul 11, 2026, 11:32 AM@jernej__s @drahardja i HATE this state of yhe world. It's not just a dislike. Culture is being DESTROYED and we must FIGHT against these attacks.
Jul 11, 2026, 6:55 PM
@drahardja
It's a bird? It's a plane? What next? Superman!
Jul 12, 2026, 6:16 AM@hackersquirrel New and improved! Now with feathers! And chemtrails! @drahardja
@drahardja
At least the feathers could be on the trailing edge!
Good catch. I think the 'bird' is flying the opposite direction as the plane. The back of the plane bulges like a bird's chest.
@drahardja this is too funny, the whole ai situation is too funny
Jul 11, 2026, 11:52 AM@drahardja though it explains how planes can fly, now I get it!
@imrehg @drahardja birds aren't real!
Jul 12, 2026, 6:17 AM@CjMalone That doesn't mean they can't fly! @imrehg @drahardja
@drahardja oh my 🤪
@drahardja "Check out this photo I took of the Moon with my phone" type shi
@drahardja
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a bird-plane!
@drahardja honestly, Huawei allows us to take photos of things that have never been seen before and all we can do is moan. As a species, it seems we're never satisfied.
Jul 11, 2026, 3:51 PM@drahardja to cap it all, the feathers are aerodynamically the wrong way round!! The feathers are pointing forwards towards the leading edges.
Image-ination
@drahardja
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's slopper-cam!
Jul 11, 2026, 6:54 PM"AI-enhanced photography" struck me as a truly horrific idea right away. Qualitatively different from enhancement by imposing a model that isn't even meant to be accurate.
A lying technology. Orwellian.
@drahardja his! Is it a bird? 😮 Don't be absurd! 🙄
Jul 11, 2026, 7:58 PM{ facepalm }
Thus advancing the day when photographic evidence will not be legally admissible in a court of law.
@chrisgj198 @nyrath @drahardja My nightmare scenario is the day where you no longer have the option of NOT using LLMs ("AI") because they're embedded in absolutely everything and no alternatives are commercially available. When your phone "interprets" what you're saying instead of repeating the sounds that came out of your mouth. In the name of data compression all of our data is going to be hallucinated.
@drahardja hhhhh. If a person had done this by hand I would think it could be a good surrealist take but instead...
@drahardja@sfba.social It surprises me that I'm apparently the first person to mention Birdplane, by the Axis of Awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6hmUv06tg&list=RDVx6hmUv06tg&index=Vx6hmUv06tg
Jul 12, 2026, 4:38 AM@drahardja I guess it happens when the plane's engines ingest too many birds during a birdstrike, it sprouts feathers…
@drahardja extremely creepy
@nothacking @drahardja And yet images taken with those apps still manage to look better than the first party apps, at least in the case of Google Camera deep frying every image with its mandatory AI upscaler.
Jul 12, 2026, 6:53 AM@drahardja isn’t there an app like Halide for android, where you have total manual control?
@drahardja "AI-enchanced"-mode is getting very ridiculous...
