Peter Moore's Wildlife Blog: An AI for effort

Intrigued by the improvements which various friends seemed able to get enhancing photographs using AI, I succumbed to the temptation to experiment recently and inadvertently ended up having a pretty illuminating chat with a well-known AI brand about the ethics and practicalities of editing images in this way.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September - no AI enhancement needed with close views like this

Long-tailed Shrike (adult) with prey, Eastleach Martin, 5th September

Long-tailed Shrike, Eastleach Martin, 5th September (regular edit)

It started after a visit to Eastleach Martin on the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire border on 19th July where Garry Hayman, Phil Saunders, Brett Spencer and I saw our first UK Long-tailed Shrike. My car was still in Spain after a breakdown in June, but I persuaded Garry that he really needed to drive me to see this bird, and, although we made a hash of meeting up at a sensible location, we were on our way within the hour of news breaking. This being the first day it was identified, there was a large crowd which stayed at a respectful distance, meaning that views were distant and photos poor, particularly with heat haze which was present for most of the day.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

Brett sent me some AI enhanced phone scoped images of the Shrike when we got home and I could not help but be impressed with the quality, particularly when compared to the original. I tried it on my own distant, soft, hazy shots and was again impressed. It sharpened them up without them looking overly sharpened, brought out the colours without over-saturating and seemed to get the light levels just about right. But then I noticed that it had added white undertail feathers which were simply not there in my original image (the bird was in moult and the tail wasn't in great shape at that point, and there was a bit of white in a bramble behind which the AI 'imagined' into tail feathers).

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

This realisation led to a bit of back and forth with the AI about, in lay terms, not making shit up, and through conversation, if it can be called that, a bit of trial and error and a few refinements, between us we came up with a form of words for 'authentic' editing, namely, 'Enhance this photo conservatively: reduce noise, improve sharpness and tonal quality by recovering information latent in the original data only. Do not invent, replace or hallucinate detail'. To my mind this meant it would be doing not much more than one would do using a typical digital photo editing package.

Long-tailed Shrike (adult), Eastleach Martin, 5th September

In my limited experience of AI it's not a great listener, and it continued to 'make shit up' despite this instruction, so I refined it further and settled, with the advice of the AI, on the following instruction: 'Treat this as documentary wildlife photography. Apply only conservative restoration (noise reduction, sharpening, tonal and colour improvements). Do not generate or invent feather detail, eye detail or other features not present in the original image'. I subsequently learnt to insert a 'very' before 'conservative' if I think it's trying too hard.

So this is the best I could do with a regular edit on my first visit to the Long-tailed Shrike on 19th July

And this is the first AI edit - pretty good but it invented undertail detail which wasn't there

And this is what I settled on after a couple more 'conservative' AI edits - pretty good though it has perhaps lost too much of the ochre wash on the lower back

Now I'm no expert on the technicalities, but when I explored the issues in a lengthy exchange with the AI, it's fair to say, 'authenticity' in digital photo editing is probably best thought of being on a spectrum rather than either side of a clear line. That said, there does seem to be quite an important distinction between asking it to restore an image (which it interprets as only recovering data from the original image), versus enhancing an image (which it interprets as using any means necessary to make it better, including imagining or filling in gaps based on some assessment of what ought to be there).

My Wallcreeper photos from Pic du Midi (this one taken 30th June) were a bit soft due to them being in shade and some heat haze so I experiemented with AI - this is the regular edit (no AI) - compare with...

A 'conservative' AI edit of the same image

Another original Wallcreeper here

'Conservative' AI edit here

My starting point about using AI for image enhancement was, I should say, sceptical - not about the output so much as the process and the ethics of what might be considered 'cheating'. Then again like many people I use packages like Topaz which boast their AI credentials. So if you are using packages like those on your PC to edit photos, is there really much difference between that and asking AI to do it over the internet? Especially if you click 'auto' when using them? And if a rubicon has been crossed, maybe, as Brett suggested, it was when we went from celluloid to digital, not when we went from photo editing software which uses AI to using AI platforms to edit photos directly?

Probably my most nicely posed Wallcreeper from Pic du Midi on my second visit on 3rd July - a bit soft even after some sharpening in a regular photo editing package

'Conservative' AI edit of the same image, which I think is quite impressive

Original image

AI edit of the above image

I'm really not sure, to be honest, but I think for this and all sorts of other reasons - energy use, seemingly being owned by unscrupulous billionaires etc - I'll be using AI only very sparingly, only to edit very conservatively, and will be transparent about it (as in this post) when I do. Anyway, all this is a long-winded way of shoe-horning in the fact that a family event last weekend took me within twitching distance of the now departed Long-tailed Shrike, enabling me to get some pictures good enough (by my standards) that no AI enhancement was necessary!

The contrast between shaded area and the rest of the image was a bit too much in this original

I asked the AI to reduce the contrast which it did but the rocks just look a bit fake

One of my worst ever record shots of a rarity is this Canada Warbler in Pembrokeshire in 2023...

I think the AI did a pretty good job of restoring this, though at the first attempt it invented the bird's face which simply isn't there!

An amusing post-script, whilst messing with photos, I sent 'before and after' comparison photos of the Black Lark on Anglesey to a friend with the message 'Catastrophically unsustainable resource consumption, and ultimately being crushed under the heel of our AI overlords, is a small price to pay if it makes my shitty photos look good' - except instead of posting this to my friend I posted it into the open dialogue box in the AI platform by mistake!

White's Thrush from Shetland in 2023 - original edit

White's Thrush - AI edit

Black Lark on Anglesey in 2003 - my original image was a fuzzy digiscoped one

AI edit of the Black Lark - I think it's done a pretty good job of this though it does seem to have taken a bit of the heaviness out of the chin, despite me asking it not to invent detail

It said 'haha' implying it 'got' the joke, but then the cheeky AIrsehole had the nerve to have a dig at me that the energy it used to enhance the photo was a fraction of what I used to travel to see the Black Lark, claiming that I was therefore 'saving' energy by using it! I countered that this argument only held if the AI edit had negated any need to go back again for better photos, but as things stood it was just using extra energy on top of what I had already used. To be fair it took that on the chin, but I still didn't know whether to be impressed or disturbed that it felt the need to defend itself over the suggestion of unsustainable energy use, and that it did so by invoking 'whataboutery'! Perhaps even more disturbing is that while it challenged my jibe about energy use, it never felt the need to challenge the bit about ultimately being crushed under the heel of our AI overlords...