I am ambivalent about using artificial intelligence to restore photographs. Or, more specifically, I’m concerned about manipulated photographs supplanting original images and further blurring the line between reality and misinformation. However, the allure of AI-enhanced images is strong, as I often contend with blurry, poorly lit photographs in unnatural sepia or black-and-white tones. Photographs whose condition sometimes exacerbates the distance between us and our ancestors.
I have been experimenting with ChatGPT lately, feeding it queries and images to be restored and colorized. The results are somewhat haphazard, with many images weird and off-putting. Other times, the images are breathtakingly sharp and … alive. Black Wide-Awake exists to resurrect forgotten lives, and I believe these images are valuable to help us connect with the men and women we read about in these posts. From time to time, I’ll share the better ones here, clearly marked as AI-generated. Let me know what you think about them.
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Hartford E. Bess (1910-1988), founder of Handel’s Chorus.
The technology is definitely intriguing and scary at the same time! I sure wish it was as developed years ago, when I was trying to generate a presentable image for obituaries from a 1” square photo on one’s old driver’s license. Loving the articles!
Thanks, Margaret!!
Love it, would love to see more.
it may be a generational considerration. as a child of the age of ” sepia ” when color chrome came about in the 60’s the enhanced color of the time initially while advanced still did not capture the reality of the moment in which it occured for me. digital color lended greater sharper clarity but still even that is a representation of actuality. for ME i love the uniqueness of ” sepia ” as it defined an age in which the world and the times were defined in ” sepai .” obviously nastalgic for ME trumps all. c’est’ lavie ‘ !!!
That definitely is another aspect that I wrestle with, and it’s why I include the original image. My thought with this series is not necessarily to improve upon the photograph as a photograph, but to try to imagine what people might have looked like in “real life.”