This article is poorly researched and is quite shamefully exploitative of the people and the families of the people in these photographs who did not give permission. I know @vice is working on it. But I wanted to say some things about the AI used in this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dmpm/mugshots-people-arrested-by-khmer-rouge-cambodian-genocide

It cites Lowry was someone who works colorizing old photographs. It shows a tablet and a hand working on painting in the color. This sort of colorization is easily and clearly done using AI, you don’t use a pen. But this is the least of the problems.

People who have seen the photographs say that there are no smiles at all. The article talks about the smiles which are photoshopped on. People are linking the originals as comparisons. However it has been asked that we don’t share them out of respect so I won’t.

I want to talk about this because I am working with some archival portrait photographs at the moment and even in a benign studio portrait setting you don’t know how those images are going at affect people who may be related.

I have permission to work with the photos from the library, but I do not have permission to work with the photos from the individuals and their families because they are not known. Now I am just using them as datasets, I won’t be showing the people.

In this case Lowry is very blatantly showing the people and misrepresenting them in a completely different light. He does not have their family’s permissions (as shown by family members complaining about the misuse of their photographs)

Now his heart may be in the right place, but changing their expressions is just wrong. This is a gross and grisly version of telling a woman to smile. Imagine doing this to Holocaust victims for fucks sake. It’s the same damn thing. Just. No.

Here is a petition to sign. https://twitter.com/DanyChheang/status/1381095398157266944

This thread goes into some of the colorization AIs and how wrong they are. The faces are pretty homogeneously toned as well. I would almost say white washed. https://twitter.com/gwenckatz/status/1381652071695351810