Bonum Certa Men Certa

Image Fusion is Not 'AI' (LLMs Aren't Either)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 16, 2024

The term "hey hi" (AI) is being thrown around way too much these days. They say that businesses perishing (and laying off workers just to survive) is due to an "era of "hey hi"... or "hey hi" revolution"... they say taxpayers must also bail out failing companies because of some nonsensical and fictional thing - a panic about an "hey hi" arms race, whatever that even means. It's mostly meaningless of course, this narrative is made for bailouts or massive defence contracts, rescuing or shoring up failing companies. They start calling everything that accelerates some operations (e.g. GPUs) "hey hi" and even items like garments are sold as "hey hi" or marketed as "hey hi". It has gotten outright ridiculous and the media that helps with this hype is funded by these "hey hi" grifters. In other words, a lot of the media intentionally participates in lies. It is conning the readers/viewers.

There's something I've long been eager to say about so-called "hey hi" images. Like LLMs, they do not have intelligence, they just select items from labeled catalogues, add some stochastic element (so that it's not repeatable, not deterministic, it can create a different output each time), and then spew something out, mildly resembling what the prompter requested. So-called "hey hi" video would do the same on a frame-by-frame basis with adequate flow (cross-frame continuity). There's not much innovation there, it's just brute force. Voice synthesis and LLMs for generation of text are un-existing and hardly novel.

It happens to be the case that my Ph.D. is connected to this because we worked on image synthesis based on training data (we didn't call that "hey hi" more than 20 years ago) and I saw many of the same things they now call "hey hi" images even in 2003 (statistical models in generative mode). But what the current grifters do under the guise of "hey hi" is, they're strip-mining collective arts or the Commons for fake 'originals'. The whole LLM nonsense does the same to code.

Someone in IRC (active yesterday) posted a link to some article about "hey hi" images. It was about CG or autocomplete or state-of-the-art plagiarism (disguised or defended as "fair use"), not about "hey hi" at all. I said "hey hi" images was the wrong term as "it's just some CG" as "they isolate objects" ("some are labeled already") and "then do fusion of objects". I said "this is not ML/AI, it's BS [and] state-of-the-art plagiarism." The headlines about those things play alone with the lies, "so the media misframes the issue," I said. And "how are we to expect real journalism when they cannot even properly explain what's done? Who funds the media?"

psydroid said "this was always going to happen, wasn't it? [...] with all the possibilities they were going to target the lowest common denominator and extract maximum monetary value out of it..."

Then "they pretend "the machine did it!!" I argued, "then their whistleblowers die" (the insiders who said this was plagiarism all along).

That's not to say the fusion is unimpressive. We just need to understand what those blackboxes do. They basically put together many images scraped from the Web and fuse them together with some digital 'duct tape'. Some of the results can be realistic-looking, but what's the use case? Scams? Fake news? Doctoring evidence? Also, what's the "business case"? Enabling scams and disinformation?

Amusing one another less than a week ago in Twitter ("X"), some people had made some fake images, including:

Fake: Richard Stallman nos ha dejado.

Fake: Es una plaga… no hay principios ni valores. Pero la pela es la pela.

Fake: Richard Stallman

Fake: angel

Fake msdos

Fake Mira yo tengo una mejor.

That last one can be used to connect RMS to actual pedophiles, even if the "photo" is fictional.

Does society need garbage like that? Such fakes can (and always could) be done by a digital artist, it's just a little more expensive and time-consuming.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
Links for the day
Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
 
Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
Links for the day
It is Not About Politics
Beware the people who try to make this about politics
Good Journalism Saves Lives
a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
Many slopfarms will simply go offline
19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
This week we shall take it up a notch
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day