Pragmatic - 119- Is That Photo Real-

0:00Welcome to Pragmatic. as well as bonus materials from all of our shows are not available anywhere else. Just visit www.engineered.network.pragmatic to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made. Thank you. I'm your host, John Chiggy, and today I'm joined once again by my good friend Clay Daly. How are you doing, Clay? Doing splendidly well. Excellent. How are you? Yeah, I'm don't want to steal that, but I'm doing splendidly well as well.

1:05So yeah, it's, um, and we're not having splendor with that splendidly well. Uh, no, no, we're cutting out artificial sweetness because I've realized they give me a headache. So, um, but yes, nevermind. It's cool. Yeah. I know. Right. Funny little factoids we talked about before the show, but there you go. Um, so it's been, it's been a minute since we caught up. Uh, really, uh, the last time I think we spoke, uh, on a podcast was actually episode 55 of bubble sort. Yeah.

1:34And that was on the 7th of September, 2024, which oddly, the edit for that only went up last week for reasons. It's like a time capsule that floated up. Yeah, it's a time capsule that everyone forgot about. It's like, oh, wow. What happened to bubble sort? Anyway, so anyway, so that was, wow.

1:55Actually, I haven't done the math in my head, but that's like one and a half years. So it's been a while. And the last time we spoke on the show was even before that on this show. So one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you again, apart from the fact that it's always great catching up, is I wanted to talk about the whole thing about fake photos and AI impacting photos and what it means for us as photographers.

2:25And although actually, you know, before I get stuck into that as the main topic to talk about, because I know we both have some interesting, some opinions on that. What we haven't, I haven't talked about photography much on Pragmatic recently, but I have actually got some new camera gear on this show. I did briefly talk about on BubbleSaw, but I think it's worth covering it here a little bit more because I've had the benefit now of actually using it.

2:52quite a bit actually between then and now. So as you know, I'm in the Nikon or Nikon, whichever you want to pronounce, how you want to pronounce it. I'm in that ecosystem, everything that I've got now, I eventually I've got rid of all my old. So I used to have a D 500, I sold that and I've gradually got sold and replaced all of my f mount lenses with Z mounts.

3:17So, yeah, so I've got my, I still have my Nikon Z62 and all the other lenses I've spoke about previously, but before I went on a holiday, first of all, I went to Arizona and I did a talk in Arizona, which I have talked about in this show. And I took this camera with me.

3:38And took some fantastic photos. I'm like, I think they're fantastic. I should probably show you, but I don't have them in front of me. I'll send them to you after the show. But anyway, so I got some of the Verde Valley Railway, which was a really cool train ride that was part of the, when you go to the conference, they had this day in the middle of the conference because it was like a five day conference and then on day three.

4:00We basically had a few hours in the morning, there were a couple of talks, and then we just went and did this excursion for the rest of the days, a bit of sort of a mid.

4:08Mid-conference break nice, which I thought was a kind of a nice touch. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I actually really liked it So we've got some nice photos of that and I like the train right because I got lots of photos actually so there you go Never mind. You got you got photos while you were on train or off the train? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah both. Yeah, yeah both So when we when we were on the train some of the scenery was just magnificent So it's a beautiful part of the world Beautiful part of Arizona. So anyway, so I got this Nikon Z 30 and I got the Z 30 because it was it's essentially a pocketable camera pretty much and it came in a kit with a DX lens a 16 to 50 VR DX lens which is it's very much like a pancake lens so it's not the skinniest lens because it as you rotate it.

4:59uh, it will actually protrude. So it will extend. Okay. Yeah. It doesn't extend a lot, but when it's in, when it's actually locked and closed, it's relatively compact. So I bought a super slim line, skinny, small camera case for it. Uh, but if you don't mind a ridiculous bulge in your pocket, you can actually shove it in your hip pocket of your jeans. Do not recommend, but you probably could. So that's, that was an interesting lens. It came with it.

5:26I still have it. I have used it. It's handy in some situations. But the lens I really wanted was the super telephoto like it starts out at it's the knock on Z 28 millimeter to 400 millimeter. Nice. So that with because the Z 30 is of course a crop sensor.

5:45So when you go 1.5 x therefore on that you will get an effective reach of 600 mil which is awesome Yeah, that was impressive. So the only thing is on the 400 mil ends. It's an f8 aperture. Yeah, which is not that great is VR both the camera the body is not VR but the lenses we are yeah correct yes so yeah so the so you're absolutely right the z30 does not have in-body stabilization which is a shame but the z62 does so when you put the 28 400 on the z62 it's super stable And it's fantastic. And it takes great moon shots, which I think I've sent you one in the past. But where that, where the combination, the Z30 and the 2400 really shines is when you are on holidays, you can basically take photos of everything from close up portraits all the way out to like distance shots. And like when I'm trying to bring in scenery. So what it is, I took that to Arizona and I was able to get some fantastic shots of like there's, they were all

6:52there were caverns in the side of them, of the mountain range and the valley. And they'd been dug out by like native Americans as shelters and so on against the heat over the, you know, centuries and whatever else. And so like, you couldn't get close to them because they're a fair way away, but I had the reach. So I was able to get some, some better photos of those than most of the other people. Right. So one of the things that I One of the things I also took this lens away on as another, we did a cruise and about three, four months after that to New Zealand. And I took it with me to New Zealand and I also took a whole bunch of really great photos I couldn't have otherwise got. So it's been, I've been really happy with it as a lens. The only caveats that you would expect is you do start to get a bit of

7:47You do get a little bit of vignetting and there's a little bit of pin cushion distortion even with the lens corrections that are done on the on the long end. It's still on the long end. Yeah. But you know what? It's for something that covers 28 mil to 400 mil f4 to f8 across that range. I mean, that's still pretty impressive. And I'm not going to complain too much. It's not like I'm buying a prime lens that can give me 600 mils of reach on a full frame.

8:16That's going to cost me $10,000 probably. So I mean, for something that didn't cost, cost a fraction of that, they can cover that range. It's pretty impressive. So I'm pretty happy with that. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times I think, um, you know, I had people who, who got into photography with me, um, years ago who aren't in it anymore. Cause you know, they're always trying to strive for something extremely perfect. And it's like.

8:41You know think back about the capturing the moment. Yeah, regardless, right? I mean a vignette is I'll take that if I if I got the moment that I was, you know, striving for it. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely right. And it I think taking taking photos of like scene of scenery or also landscapes or if your subject is a landscape or you're not a person and it's not about capturing the emotion.

9:10exactly in a scene, unless you're doing something a golden hour, I guess. But, um, you know, for me, like the, the emotion for me is like human emotion when I'm taking photos of groups of people. Um, those are the ones where, um, I'm not, I absolutely agree with you. So I'm not trying to capture every pixel perfect representation of what the scene was like, cause I'm only just in capturing the emotion of that person. And.

9:37And I find the best photos that I take are the ones when people don't realize that I'm taking the photo. Now, I don't mean that in a creepy way, but I mean that in a way that that's not staged, you know, right? That's those are the those are my favorites. But in any case, um, all right. So I also, however, did get a panorama adapter and a tripod leveler, which is, uh, I'll put photos in there. Yeah.

10:02In the edits that people can see what I'm talking about. You probably know what I'm talking about anyway So it's like the so the tripod level is just like a two little metal triangles and they've got little Turning wheels on each of the points and you can use that with the bubbles to just make sure it's perfectly level So you turn one left and right or whatever else and just levels the two plates so that the the cameras perfectly level And then the other one's a panorama adapter, which is a three axis panorama adapter. So it's got an Arca Swiss adapter for attaching and detaching. So you can just put that onto the bottom of your mirrorless and you can then.

10:42There's like a pin and you can move the pin around so you can do settings for every 15 degrees every 30 degrees every 45 degrees and it literally has a ball bearing on a spring inside it So as you move it clicks from position to position to position so you get exactly the right Spacing between them and if you've levelled it properly then everything will be a nice perfect series of photos for a panorama And I know that my iPhone can do it, but the quality of the photos are better on my Z6-2, thank you very much. So, there you go. Anyway. Absolutely. Do your, that lens does have a tripod mount as well or? No. The, okay. No, the only lens that I had, and this is past tense because I sold it, I had a 200 to 500. 5.6. Yeah, that was their 5.6 constant aperture. And that was a beautiful lens. I did took a lot of beautiful photos of that, but it was an f-mount.

11:40And I had an FTZ adapter on it and I sold those in part to fund the 28 to 400. And I was actually a little bit sad when I sold that. I don't often get upset necessarily when I sell like the old lens here and there, but that particular lens, I've taken a lot of really nice photos with it. It's a beautiful lens. And yeah, I was a little bit sad when I sold that one. Cause yeah, one of these days I might get a nice like really good prime, you know, 400, 500 mil lens maybe, but yeah.

12:08I got a trip over a bar of gold first thing. But the thing is that the thing is that time as time goes on that. that lens might actually pop up on the use market for you know you might every now and then I pop up and I see things not not in the store but like if you go to Facebook yeah marketplace right you might see someone who is selling it for half what is the worth and you know every now and then you think this is too good to be true and actually you talk to them and you find out actually this isn't stolen and this is not too good to be true they just don't they just don't want to sell it for as much as everyone else isn't you know.

12:45Yeah, it's not stolen, hasn't been dropped and it's not full of mulled and fungus. So yay. Winning. Yeah, actually I saw a Z mount. It was these Nikon Z, I think it was a 600 mil one. Trying to remember the exact lens it was, but yeah, it was selling via Ted's cameras here in Australia anyway. They had a second hand one with a warranty and everything for $7,000 and those are $12,000 new.

13:15Australian dollars. So don't make me convert that into US dollars. But still, it's still a lot of money. But anyhow, more money than I'm prepared to spend on the lens right now. But anyway, yeah, so that's my gear. So since we last caught up on the show, what else? What have what have you been playing with in photography land? I'm not sure if I've had the same a seven or for I have other cameras that I picked up in between but my main camera is my a7 r4 I do have a pocket riko gr3 that I take with me every now and then but yeah main camera if I if I want to take you know pictures that I can have a lot of control over it's going to be the a7 r4 nice and either it's either my 35 2.8 or the 50

14:06The 51.8 is like it's not as good a lens. It is it is it safe is going to be darker and I don't want to bump my eyes so too high. I probably will opt for that one. But if you know if I want a better quality lens at the 3.5 35 2.8 is a better lens. It's interesting that the 35 2.8 so so you wouldn't go for do you have a 35 1 1.8 or Uh, no, I actually I've been thinking about buying one. The thing is that I don't shoot 35 as much, especially because I have, um, I have the, um, I have the Rico GR, which is like a 28. And to me, it's like 35, 28. They're somewhat similar. So if I, if I sometimes what I do is I take the GR, um, as my 35, even though it's not a 35, and then I take the Sony as my 50.

14:59Yeah. Okay. Cause yeah, I remember us talking in the past, you're a big fan of the 50th street photography. Yeah. Yeah. 35 is really nice though. Like you, but sometimes, um, if you're out there with the 35 and I say you're at the beach, um, you do, you really do have to, if you want to get the picture of that person just, you know, doing their thing, you do have to get a little bit closer than you, than I like to. Yeah. That's, that's, that's a good point actually. So, um, Yeah, because I've got to admit, I do have a 50 millimeter Z mount lens, but it's actually a macro lens. And it's, it's great. It's the one to one. I think so. I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember. I think so. It's, it's the MC 50. So, and I've got the slide mount adapter kit. So I've been going through some of my father's old slides that we've come across as we've been

15:54As we've been tidying up and stuff and yeah, so I got the the slide mount adapter and everything for that and It's a great lens, but macro lenses I Don't know it gives it's an f2.8. It's not a I'm pretty sure it's that 2.8. Damn I put myself on the spot here. I want to make sure I'm not telling you I believe I believe it is a I know they used to be a 50. Yeah Yeah, no, it's 3.5. No, I'm not mistaken, but this one is f2.8 up. Yeah. Right. Yep. Yep. It is f2.8. I was my first answer was the correct answer. So, uh, and it's, it's a perfectly fine lens for macro photography. And I've done a whole bunch of macro work, but I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't feel weird using a macro lens when I'm doing street photography, which I don't do often. Well, the one thing that I, so I had, I don't, I have a macro 90 and I love taking that one out.

16:49The only issue is that, like, if I do want to take a sort of more intimate portrait, the person is really far away. I like the ability of it being a macro just because I could turn a street session into something like, okay, snap, this is a beautiful coin that fell on the floor, right? And I have a macro right then and there. So that's for that reason, I wouldn't mind getting a 50 macro, actually. Okay. Interesting. All right.

17:16I hadn't thought of it like that. That's a good point. I did actually try some street photography. We talked about this a while back now. She's quite a while back, actually, and different techniques for doing street photography without looking like.

17:33You're some kind of, I don't know what person, but anyway, you know, and anyway, so I did try a little bit of that and it was a little bit of fun, but I also found a little nerve-wracking like everyone was watching me and I felt a bit weird, but I don't know. It is nerve-wracking. But right, so, you know, we spoke about the public speaking thing that, you know, I absolutely freeze, right? I mean, you were talking about how you, you know, how you conquered that beast.

18:03You know, it's almost the same, same pathway, right? Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah, I guess the more if I did it more, I'd get more used to it and less, less, I'd be put off less by it. And yeah, I should probably do more of that. Anyway, cool. We should probably move on to our main topic actually, if that's okay. And okay. So there's, there's a reason that I wanted to do an episode about this. I I listened to an episode of Dakota with me like Patel. And cause I do listen to Dakota, not every episode cause some of it's a little bit, um, not just not interested in some of the topics. So it depends on who's on, but this particular one, they were talking about what, uh, some of the challenges with flagging metadata on photos and saying if they're real or not. Because the problem is that.

18:58The world we live in right now today and the right now today for those listening in the future is the middle of March of 2026. So here we are in the middle of March 2026 and AI generated photography is real. It's getting better all the time. Sometimes if you know what to look for, yeah, it's quite scarily good and it makes it possible to generate an absolutely fake photograph of something.

19:26and say, this is absolutely a cross between a zebra and a monkey. And it actually is a real animal that we've genetically engineered. And the photo is going to look so real. And well, that's an absurd example. But you know, so I guess what I wanted to do is let's break this down into pieces because I actually really didn't didn't like the Dakota view of things because the problem was that they were simply saying it's an it's an insurmountable problem.

19:56Like it can never be resolved. And I don't think I agree with that. I actually think that there are things that we could do. So are they saying, because I didn't get to listen to that. Are they saying it's an instrumentable problem right now or it will become an instrumentable problem? Oh, okay. They didn't use the word instrument or maybe they use the word intractable, but either way you slice it, it's a problem that they believe cannot be ever solved. Like as of right now, it's not solved and in the future it cannot be solved. Okay. So my problem with that defeatist attitude is that they're just not, I just don't think they thought it through enough. So okay, what am I going on about? So the episode was talking about how there's a metadata system that's designed to contain a whole bunch of metadata for different things about photos and they're going to load it up with like, this is a genuine photo, this is a fake photo, whatever else. And it's like, well, who gets to decide

20:53what's flagged for what, and we'll get to that. But they were simply saying, oh, it's just not possible. But I actually think it is possible because let's start with how do we know for sure that this is the fundamental question? How do we know for sure that a photo that you look at is what it is? So if we're going to start at the very basics, we've got to start at the very beginning. And the very beginning is the raw file, the raw image captured from the sensor and It doesn't matter what your sensor type is, right? If the CMOS sensor or not, whatever sensor it is, does not matter, that raw data should be unprocessed. Now, if your camera does, like most cameras these days, will have a JPEG version and it'll create its own version and you can just a whole bunch of stuff. You can say, right, well, I want it to look black and white, even though it's not black and white sensor, whatever. I want to make it vivid and I want it to

21:50The colors to be brighter and pop. I just want maybe I just want sepia colors for some reason. I don't understand, but that's okay. It's an artistic choice. I'm not across artistic stuff from fully clay. And I don't mean to do disrespectful to people that like sepia, but whatever. It's fine. Okay. It had his time. Quick. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, it did. Thank you. And that time is gone. Yes. Get over it, people. Anyway. So my point, my point, what was my point? Yes. My point is that.

22:17As soon as the JPEG has done something to the raw to create what it believes is, you know, the photo, technically, that has been modified. But it's been modified not necessarily by AI, but it's been modified by an algorithm. So to me, AI and algorithm, they are subtly different. But in some ways, there's still a modification.

22:46So the JPEG that you look at in your camera has probably also been sharpened. It's been denoised probably. And it's not that raw image. So I guess my first point is if you were going to certify and say this image is an accurate representation of reality through that lens. Oh, through the lens. Yeah. Like a great podcast that I once heard of. Anyway.

23:14But yes, so that's a genuine representation of, and for the list is an arching the joke, obviously, that was Clay's podcast through my lens. So it was a good podcast too, I missed that. Anyway, yeah, you should do more episodes at some point. Maybe, yeah, just not true anchor. Anyway, no, because you can't. Nevermind. All right, sorry, I'm derailing us, it's my fault.

23:42Anyway, so if you were to send that raw file around, the challenge that I had about the whole Dakota conversation is that they're saying that it's not possible for you to then so anyone can flag that data is anything so therefore you it could be flagged as being AI generated when it's not or it could be flagged as not AI, even if it has been generated by AI.

24:05But if you've got a raw file that's been captured from that sensor and written directly to the to a file and you actually were to encode it and in like get a check some based on that encoding. Why? How is this like this surely should be possible to then have a manufacturer and say, you know what, all of the sensors and all these cameras, they're going to be accredited as being if you extract a raw file.

24:35It's unmodified format here is a checksum. You can validate it is audible. It's auditable and we are a reputable company that is regularly audited. This image is reality. That is something that is absolutely possible to do, but yeah, it's good. Oh, no, you know, but I want to hit it, but I want to hit it, but but no one's talking about that. No one is talking about it. So like to me, that's like that is that is.

25:04base one of where you start. I'm curious what you thought. I mean, yeah, I'm curious what you think about that before we get into the next level down. No, no, I agree with that. And the thing is that so if we if we put standards in place, and I know there are a few open standards, I believe that are probably not being accepted, not being adopted yet by all the companies. I think Sony is one of them that that adopted the basically it's almost like a rubber stamping of of the raw file.

25:33And if something comes out of the raw file, like a JPEG, there should be a signature that that raw file has been stamped. And the JPEG should have the signature of that stamp. So there are, you know, like, like two-factor authentication, right, is a thing, right? I mean, you know, you can confirm or you can, you can verify by having multiple signatures, right?

26:02multiple identification signals. Something like that should be, and is being worked on right now, something like that is the only way that we will get ahead of it. And so if they're saying that it is a problem that is not going to be solved, I'm not so sure if I would agree with that. If it's something that isn't solved at this moment, there's work being done on it. We have, we don't have enough information in terms of having deep fakes out there. We don't have enough data out there, right? So like as time goes on, we're going to have a harder time confirming or verifying that something is a deep fake because we have a time, there's a cutoff, like if you look at a picture of Bill Clinton, there's a time

26:59where we know this picture has been on the internet at XY amount of places. But as time goes on, we are entering a time now where a picture of you is on the internet, but another picture could come up of you on the internet and you're, you know, sitting in a whiskey whiskey bar and you say, well, I've never been in a whiskey whiskey bar again since 2025. But the picture of you now shows it. There's you're going to have a hard time.

27:28Verifying that something like that hasn't happened without something like a digital passport or some sort of rubber stamp that that shows that this picture actually was not generated from a true camera, but. Created from a I itself. Yeah, something to that effect. Yeah, so I guess what I'm what I'm thinking is that if you had a system that was. Every CMOS or I keep saying CMOS, but you know me every camera sensor that you've got has a unique.

27:57number that is that is encoded with it. Yes, you encode the file against that number. There's a manufacturer code as well. That should create a completely unique traceable thing, traceable image in that raw format. Yes. So if you were to do that, and you were to get all of the manufacturers that made these sensors and made these cameras to sign up to this and say, all right, so could a computer theoretically could it create a raw image. Well, of course it could create a raw image if you feed it enough and say here, make another raw image. But it's like, okay, so, but you're encoding it with an actual number from an actual camera. So the next question is, okay, so well, I guess you could probably clone the manufacturer number, you could probably clone or create another number. But then with the time and the date stamp would also need to have to line up to when a real photo was taken. It's extremely

28:54Difficult and I would suggest it's my problem is that this requires a little bit of cooperation between these companies. But then if you think about domains and domain registrars and the chain of trust in domain certificate certificates, you know, like root, root certificates and all that stuff down to, you know, the certificates you might get through something like let's encrypt or whoever. It's like there's a hierarchy of trust.

29:20you should be able to achieve something very similar using photos. If you were to actually encrypt it properly at the source and get not encrypted, get to check some of the source that if anything was changed, you would know. So let's assume that that is better to do than to not do it to at least have some basis in reality. So this is what was taken in reality. So the first challenge for myself against this is what if I use a filter?

29:49You know, what if I put a red light filter of ultraviolet filter, you know, obviously not a neutral density filter, but you know, maybe even if I don't know, like if you using filters on front of that lens, is that still reality? So I'm going to tap out of the argument at this point because as soon as any photographer does this, you could argue that that's not reality because people don't see that. But then the sensor sees things that human eye doesn't always see. Absolutely.

30:17And sometimes it sees things that we do see that it doesn't see. Yes, exactly. So ultimately, I think that I have to draw a line there and simply say, you know what? I'm going to ignore the possibility that someone's put Vaseline on their lens and hence that that's not reality anymore. But you know what I mean? It's like, let's just accept that that is artistic license. However, once you have it in a digital format, if it becomes a JPEG and you are in camera adjustments, There is nothing stopping you from having, I would suggest two systems, like two mechanisms. The first mechanism is, here's the raw, it's the original. Here's the JPEG that's been created. Here are the settings that were changed. So you could flag it under a category of in-camera adjustments if you want to and add that metadata. And then you show the image history and then that becomes auditable.

31:10So a human can then look at the raw file, they could look at the JPEG file, they can look at in-camera adjustments, you know, sepia tones for whatever reason. Adjust it, denoising, you know, like whatever was applied and say, right, is this photo ever a representation of reality? And this is the problem. As soon as you do that, it's like, okay, well, what qualifies as modifying an image?

31:34When what qualifies it because if you're changing that color to sepia tones while you're modifying it and maybe that's okay because that's not the deep fake AI generated photos that people are worried about. But you got to start here and think about it like this before we get to the AI generated stuff. So I don't think that that's too big of an ask because most cameras will take both you have an option to take raw plus jpeg. So you can encapsulate that in a common file and you can have metadata doesn't matter how it's stored metadata that says I applied the following filters. It's been denoised at this level like here's everything that was done to the photo that is now traceable and auditable. And so far, that's not hard. So then what the next problem now we get into Photoshop and things start to go to the next level down. So let's just say we want to get out the the the Band-Aid tool and the

32:32and the patching tool and the magic eraser tool depending upon what software you're using has a slightly different name but you know whatever you want to call it you you draw a circle or a box or you click a circle or a pattern over a part of there's a defect on the wall there's a crack on the wall you know what that crack showing up in your perfect photo so what you do is you drag this tool over it and it erases magically the crack from the photo.

32:59So that is now using an algorithm or potentially AI driving an algorithm potentially. They call everything AI right now. It's because it's both right. But I know it's so irritating. I know it's not AI anything. It's just an algorithm, but whatever. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It gets annoying too. But yes, it does. But the question is, as soon as you start doing that.

33:26Now if I take a crack out of a wall and the photo is of a person with the wall behind them, getting rid of that crack in the wall, that's not really modifying the intention of that photo. Like that photo is just of that person. The wall is a distraction. By getting rid of the crack, you're drawing the viewer to the person in the portrait as opposed to, oh, look at that crack in the wall. It's like, don't look at a crack in the wall. Look at the person's face. What are you doing?

33:55Are you trying to tell the Doctor Who story here? That's not a crack in the wall, because if there's no wall there, there'd still be a crack. Anyway, wow. Now that's in reference. If you're not a Doctor Who fan, you're never going to get it anyway. All right. So yeah, so what was the point? The point was that if you make that kind of a modification, then you could argue that is not changing the intention of the image.

34:22But I mean, you could easily then take that tool and take that person's nose and erase their nose. It's like, if the subject is like Voldemort, who has no nose for those that like watching Harry Potter, he has a snake like nose because reasons asked JK Rowling. Slytherin. And hope they're Slytherin. Yeah. Slytherin guy, whatever him. But point is that's not reality because like that person in that portrait had a nose.

34:52and now you're saying they don't have a nose. So that is substantially changing the content of the photo. The problem that I've got with tagging is there are certain modifications that are going to change the intention of that photo. And that is the argument that they were arguing about with AI is that how do you flag it because it comes down to personal opinion. So you can store all the metadata in the world. It doesn't matter. But I mean, there are other things that you could flag that I think you could probably get away with and people saying, well, that's a fair use. That's okay. That's not open to debate. It's totally fine. Like if I'm taking an out if I'm changing the white, the white points and all the white balance in a photo, if I'm tweaking my colors and my color histogram, if I'm blurring certain things to draw attention away from them, or if I'm sharpening them to clean them up a bit, if it's not excessive, then that's probably not going to change the intention of the photo. So

35:51I kind of feel like you can't really, and I don't think we should ban image modifications in this manner. And we're going to get to the AI stuff in a minute, but it's like, you want to be creative. So you shouldn't ban modifications to images. I mean, good luck trying to ban it anyway. I just think that tracking the metadata of what's changed and potentially why it's changed, you know, might be valuable. And if you actually store a history of each of the stages that it was modified, that becomes an auditable traceable history. And then you can track back to what is reality. So I mean, this, yeah. So the thing is that, okay, if you're, if you're talking about tracking modifications that someone has done, we, you might get pushed back from someone who is, you know, you know, high selling artists, right? The photographer who decides, well, you know, my, my, my.

36:50photography is worth, you know, to $20,000 a frame, right? Having a record of their modifications is having a record of the secret sauce, right? Of course. So the pushback might come from those in the actual practice of it. Now, I would submit my tracing.

37:18just so that people understand that well what was captured actually was captured by my sensor and modifications were done by me rather than rather than you know some algorithm or AI. Do we get to a point where you can have AI do the edit for you by giving it instructions and saying hey you know modify this picture for me in this way to mimic you know you know another artist's look.

37:48Do we like do we actually want to have that be flagged because it isn't modified by your hand. It is modified by instructions, right? Yeah. So yeah. So I guess my, okay. So there's a few things in there. So let's, let's, let's start with the, let's start with the, is it modified or the selection made by human versus an algorithm or by AI?

38:17Those changes were made. It kind of, to me, it doesn't matter quite so much. Maybe not this point of the conversation, but it matters. But it's like, what is the intent and who did it? I think if you flag this information, then someone can decide. I absolutely see what you're saying though.

38:42Because what you could say is, well, if I'm a professional, I've got these really dreamy body settings that make all my photos look amazing. And that's proprietary. It's like, fine, you don't have to submit it. You don't have to. So what I'm trying to suggest here is that is there a mechanism for us that we could try as a, you know, from the photography sort of a, I don't know, we can call it a community, but whatever. Is it possible for us to agree that there would be a methodology? And the methodology would need to be, is it traceable from what you submit back to, from this is reality? Gotcha. And if it's traceable, then you can submit, you can say this is reality. And why that's important is it to me, okay, this is why

39:30I want to talk about this is because I think this is crucially important in the world that we're in right now because what's happening is that people are taking photos of real things that are happening and then they're being told that's fake news. That's not real. That's been generated by an AI. Dangerous. There is no absolutely and because there is no chain of trust because there is no authenticity of this is reality. Has it been modified? Yes. The color was adjusted. Has it been modified again? Yes. Well, You know, this particular photo had a crack removed from the wall. These things are not auditable. These things are not traceable. And therefore it's easy to label them as saying, well, that's not true. That's not real. So if someone were to just, just so I understand, if someone were to have the steps recorded in, let's say the metadata. Yeah.

40:22or baked into something like a dng right yeah which doesn't have it's a sidecar but like it's actually built in um let's just say um you know they don't want to share it but it's there if there is a question then they could they could submit it absolutely i think that would be totally fine and okay got you yeah and i also think that the i think We're sort of jumping around a little bit, but that's okay. I think that if you wanted to be, okay, so let's say you're Shutterstock or 500PX or let's say you are a major photography website where photographers can submit their work and get paid for it. If people want to get paid for something, then those websites would need to be absolutely certain that what they flagged in there is being modified or not modified.

41:15Real or not real was traceable because their credibility is now built upon the fact that that chain of trust exists and it's auditable because if it's not so for example I can foresee a future that's not that far off if we don't have some level of chain of trust in our images in our videos saying that this is real and this is not then we're gonna reach a point where news organizations who are practically now barely trusted or if they're not probably shouldn't be. You know, and you can't trust what people post on YouTube. You can't trust what people post on social media because you have no idea if it's real. And so this is a massive problem because it means that we've lost our ability to trust anything that we see or hear unless it's our own eyes. So in other words, all of the everything that we've gained in the last 40 years of internet.

42:13and being interconnected, news, media and all that, maybe even for even longer. Mind you, if you're believing the newspaper 100 years ago, you're probably just as much of a mug as you are today, but never mind that. You know, it's like, if there is, we will have lost massive ground because now we're down to, I only trust what I see, smell, taste and touch myself, which is therefore limited because I have a limited scope of movement. I cannot observe what is going on in other countries unless I am in them.

42:42So if I have no trust, I have no ability to assess. If I can't assess, then I can't actually have an informed opinion. And fundamentally, that is where this is all coming from, I guess. So yeah, yeah. So my suggestion is that it is okay to modify images. That's fine. You just need to have a traceable chain and examples of what was happening at key points in that transformation. And I think it's probably problematic to have a scale.

43:11but it might help with a scale because it's like, okay, what I mean by scale is, let's say you're making a modification. Well, you could say, let's start, let's go on a scale of one to six, just because it doesn't have to be one to six, but let's just, for John's example of John's proposed random like attempt at fixing this problem. Okay, first of all, one, a modification level one, no modification from original. And you know what, that should actually be a, scale of zero, to be honest, but whatever. Okay. Two, a minor level of balancing. So for example, you know, balancing out colors, histograms, that sort of thing. Maybe three might be removed elements without impacting the content. So that'd be things like minor airbrushing, removing extraneous stuff in the background. There's a chair in the background. I don't want a chair in my background. So you just delete that by by chair, right? Good. It was distracting anyway.

44:07Didn't even realize it was there when I took the photo. It's fine. Like a level of four, things are getting a bit more interesting now. So I've either added, I've moved, or I've modified an element. So this could be things like background changes, modifying the appearance of an individual, starting to modify the content in some way that may impact that context. So then we go to a five, which would be like things like I've merged this image or image elements.

44:37There's more than one source image that's created a compound image and the content of it now no longer matches the originals of either a source material. So let's say so what about a panoramic if you were to have panoramic stitching panoramic stitching is a good point. I didn't think of that.

44:57This is why I'm talking to you about it because I mean it is it is a scene that's in front of you It's just that you your camera wasn't capable of you know unless you did some weird cropping you camera wasn't capable of capturing it in one frame I don't have an immediate answer for that one. I want you might need to have a separate section for stitch together drawings of the same scene with that one Yeah, the one that I was thinking of when I wrote this though was I'm because as a photographer for the cricket club for seven years now. I think, I think it's probably even my last season because I'm, yeah. You know, you know, you said this your last season, 20 seasons. Yeah. If you're, if this is your subtle way of saying, John, I'm not sure I believe you, you're probably right to be skeptical. Let's see what happens. But for the moment, it's my last season anyway. But okay. So what happens is, you know, like.

45:49Stuff happens kids get sick they don't show up their parents car runs out of fuel or electrons or whatever the hell happens they don't make it to photo night. So you take a photo of the team and the team has eight players and a junior grade but you've only got six kids there now I'm not gonna say sorry six people that were able to show up you don't get a photo I'm not gonna say that so I take a photo of them and I have two empty spots where I will digitally splice in the other two people.

46:18other two kids when they show up subsequently. I'll take fighters of them in those rough spots and I'll stitch them together and you will look at it clay and say, that's terrible. The majority of people will look at it and say, Hey, they were all on the same. Yeah, my kid was in the same room and I'll be like, no photographer would look at this and think it looks fine, but that's okay. Anyway, but that's, that's what I had in mind when I thought about that one, but I'll have a thing about the panorama. That's a really good point.

46:46And then I think the last one is a six, which is it is a fully generated image. So it is AI created. It's entirely from a range of images ingested into a system and it does not represent reality. So you could grade a photograph roughly on that sort of a scale overall and get a sense for I'm looking for photos that have not been modified at all. If that was embedded in the metadata of the photo, it was respected by the manufacturer of the camera, the manufacturer of the sensor, and by the photo website, then that should be something you can search for. So the problem, of course, is the flagging and tagging and definition of these things. Like, because you could say, like you point out a perfect example, panorama, it's an exception to this list. But I mean, going back to number four, where I add move or modify elements.

47:40It's like, okay, so let's say instead of deleting the chair in the background, I want to move the chair. So the left or slightly right. Does that change the intention of the photo? What is the intention of the photo? Because it's like, mm, okay. A more extreme example might be I've got this photo of somebody who's holding a gun to someone's head, which is, you know, like purely artistic.

48:08just not getting at anything at all. And it turns out this person is actually just a normal person. But if someone adds an element, like a badge, a formal badge of some kind of some insignia onto that person's shirt, and that person is just a normal person, they're not actually representing any kind of official body or anything. You just completely change the content, the context of that photo. So suddenly a person who should perhaps not be doing what they are doing is now doing said thing, even though they are not one of these people. Photo goes viral and it's like, but it's not real. Yeah. That's not what happened. So is it traceable? Can it be made traceable? So any software that you've got that can modify an image should be adding some basic set of metadata of saying, well, the following things were changed. Repair tool was changed on a cloud in the sky. But the problem is,

49:06And the same repair tool could be to reduce some, remove someone giving a rude gesture with their finger. Or they could add a rude gesture that they're not making. The problem is that the tool, the software tool can just say, well, I use the repair tool. I don't know what the human did. And if it's the AI making the decision, it has even less ID access than AI. So it's like, here I have, I can flag the data that yes, a change was made, but the judgment.

49:36of what on earth that change does in the context of the photo, has to be a human judgment. It has to be a judgment based on before and after. So because you can't, this is kind of the conclusion I've reached. And this is one of the reasons why Neely and friends got so tied up in knots with it is because they were just focused on that part of it. It's like, you can't automatically classify and images content or the changes made to it. It has to be a human judgment. And then second problem is how on earth do you like police what's AI and what's not. If you don't know where the image started from. So that's why I started this this this idea this proposal from starting at the source. So yeah, I said I foresee a time what I mean is.

50:28Let's say I want to be the world's first ever fully trustworthy fully transparent news organization. Okay. It could happen. Maybe someday you never know. Hey, it's possible. So I am like the world's most absolutely correct factual news organization suspend disbelief. We're doing this. I only want to get photos that I know are real. So how do I do this? Right now it is not possible.

50:56I cannot definitively prove that that photo that I'm using in my new story came from the real world at this point in time. So I would go to a reputable website like let's call it 501px and 501px like they have an entire section that they guarantee is real world imagery of real world raw data. They've got a full chain of change.

51:24a full chain of trust from the original sensor, the original camera serial number, time and date, everything. All auditable by human. You can look at before and after, see the modifications made and say, what I have is a representation of reality. I can trust this photo at this point in time. Then I use that on my news story and I have absolute confidence that what I've got isn't fake. So can AI defeat this? Can you use AI to create something going all the way back down to the bottom?

51:54I don't know. Probably maybe, but I'm, there's, there's a way you can do it. Sure. The thing is that, okay, so we had our film era. Now, you know, people always said, Oh, you know, film photography was captured as it was seen, right? You did your manipulations on the, you know, your, your, your, your choice of film, what aperture, what shutter speed, right? And your picture was captured. Now, yes, there are modifications. People pretend like we didn't modify film photography. We did. So manipulation of film was a part of our history. Now, let's just say if you take a picture with a camera that is part of the consortium of sensors that have a stamp, that the second picture is taken. So you do your manipulations before you click the shutter.

52:50Right. You have, we have the ability to, to gauge, you know, how bright, um, the actual captured frame will be, how, uh, how in depth, the, the, the, you know, separation from back to front. This is, if you do it this way, by the way, you, you will create as a class of photographers that will, will become sort of like elites, right? They're going to feel elitist. But let's just say.

53:20there is a picture that's captured, right? And let's say 501px has a section, a picture that's captured that has never been manipulated after it's been taken. The second that has been manipulated, that stamp fades. And so you have on and off because it's going to be hard for you to create a file where you have gradation, right? Because I mean, you know, in the digital world, right, is on off usually.

53:50I mean, maybe there's a way to do a gradation. Because then your, your frame, your levels of, okay, um, you know, you go to one from zero, zero is a full stamp. You go to one, it fades. You know, it becomes green. Yeah. And then you go, you keep going down until it becomes red. And red means you've actually completely manipulated it. Of course. So, so I, you know, on office is easy to do. The world isn't ready for that. Well, but that is easy to do. I I think the other fundamental problem with my proposal and I'm just gonna admit this upfront I keep saying this it is traceable is audible auditable but a judgment needs to be made by human and that is the fundamental failure of what I'm basically describing is it's gonna take a lot of time and a lot of effort.

54:42to prove and audited and say this is actually real. This is what happened. And most people are not going to invest the time and the money in the effort to make those judgments. But they're not going to challenge every one. So that's the counterpoint of the counterpoint of the counterpoint is, you know, I am not going to be constantly confirming the chain of trust is in place for every single image.

55:09especially if i have a website like 501px for example fictitious website that has no real it's coming it's coming yeah but but if you think about it. I think this is actually inevitable yeah because people are going to be so sick of it they can be like well. I can't trust anything anymore because we are already at that point now like yeah i think we are.

55:33Yeah, we've passed that point. So if you don't believe that this is a problem, then you haven't been watching any kind of media. I haven't been watching TV, radio, listening to radio. I mean, even podcasts are being like made with fake voices and so on. People saying things I didn't say. Right. It's like, it's, it's ridiculous. Yeah. So where is that chain of, and I've even started thinking through the consequences of, let's say just my voice. Like if someone claims my voice and say, oh, John Shiggy said that.

56:02The earth is flat and it turns out that Uranium 235 is actually totally harmless and you should have three spoonfuls a day. It's like, well, you know what? Yeah, I'm just saying, okay, everybody, dear listener, please do not ingest Uranium 235. One teaspoon is more than enough. Don't even have that. That's the end of this public service announcement. We're going to turn to our program now. Thank you. Okay, so it's like... You forgot about the flat earth though.

56:29Oh, that's fine. Yeah, just keep going off the edge and it's fine. There's like a big springy bed at the bottom or something. Anyway, thing is right. Command. Okay. Okay. I got to come. I got to bring it back. I'm sorry. Okay. It's just it's late. Yeah. So I think that the whole audio, how do you do audio is a little bit more diff is a little bit of a different problem, but it's still not insurmountable. So the problem I have fundamentally is.

56:58if we aren't thinking about ways of building a chain of trust, then why are we even bothering? Because it's like, if you and I were taking photos for posterity, for capturing the moment, capturing emotion, we are in so many ways, not the problem. The problem is when the photos that we may take someday are used in a different context to create something that didn't happen, how is it that we It's like I don't know if anyone ever trace photos back to what anything I've taken and said oh well you know John took a photo of this waterfall once turns out the waterfalls actually flowing upwards like really that's kind of cool. No it's not that's not real it's all John's fault John said that the photo that John took had water flowing up into the air I'll be like yeah that's the kind of some crazy stuff right there man I know surely that's not real anyhow but.

57:54Yeah, I keep on throwing out ridiculous examples, but it's like the liability is, is going to eventually be on the supplier of the image. So who supplied the image? The image was supplied by the news organization. Where did the news organization get it from? Oh, well, you know what they did? They didn't get it from the 501PX website. They got it from an AI generated image because they're like, they're too lazy. Because this is happening a lot in news reports. Like you scroll through a news website today.

58:22Most of the images that you see on there like the title cover image, whatever else. The beat, the ones that wants to click. Not most of them, not most of them, but multiple of them are AI generated. So it'll be like some generic like stock market crash. They don't show a photo of the actual New York Stock Exchange tickers and so on.

58:48Because that's been done, that's boring. So instead, they have some AI generated thing that's got an overlay of a graph and a big red arrow going bouncing, bouncing downwards. It's like, that's, that's an example. But I mean, a lot of the stuff they do iconography and artwork and images now as just AI generated, because it's quick and it's easy to just type it into your AI generated to chat GPT or whatever the heck. There's a whole bunch of different tools for this now where you can build images from text and say, give me this and they'll look at a few and say, yep, we're going to use that one.

59:18You know, yeah, so it's like so this is this is the problem. So you start with those the news organizations Okay, so it's your fault. You're spreading misinformation. You're spreading fake news. Where'd you get the image from? Oh, we got it from this other site called, you know 503 px and they only have AI generated rubbish We figured that was good enough. So it's like, okay, so you've broken that chain of trust I as an individual I'm now gonna vote with my feet I'm never gonna look at your stuff again because I know that you would just have fake news So I will go to the websites that have photos that I can trust, images, videos I can trust, and I can trust them because there is a chain of trust that is demonstratable. I don't need to see a demonstrator, but I need to know that there is a chain of trust there. And I actually do think that this is achievable. I'm not, I don't think it's going to be easy, but I don't think that we, I don't think we can't, I think that we must do it. And if not what I'm suggesting something, something like it, because if we don't, we may as well just turn off

1:00:16Every way of ingesting images that other people take and videos other people take so all your TVs or your smartphones everything just turn them off because you can't trust what's shown on them. Yeah, great. So What if the person let's say let's say you have a committee your news committee? Mm-hmm something happens, you know some bombing happens the person who takes the picture and it happens to die the file itself like i just just to think hypothetically about about this for a second like so if if the file was um on a memory card but it wasn't so the way something like this would work right is you'd have to have a trusted software that is that is registered to you or the camera and the file itself but let's say somehow the handshake doesn't happen because we you know where it's hypothetical but you know then something that that was captured right some sort of

1:01:12massive event. It was only captured by one person. Let's just say the person happens to die. The handshake doesn't happen. It's an extreme example, but we don't have now the submission of something to prove that it was actually an actual picture taken. That's true. That's why to me, in a way, the on-off is always on until it's been, you know, like the canary in the mind, right? It's either alive or dead.

1:01:41Right? If it's that, hey, guess what? It's time to bail or you're already dead. Yeah. Right? As soon as you make any modification, then you are essentially, yeah, you can no longer trust that that is an accurate representation of reality. If that's, is that what you're kind of, that's what, is that? That's, that's kind of, that's kind of where I'm going. Yeah. Yeah. And I absolutely see that and that's fine. And I, and I agree with that. And that's why I say, well, That's why we need a way of encrypting it not encrypting it guy keeps saying encrypt what I mean is getting a check some that is been encoded with the serial number of the sensor the serial number of the actual camera that took it as well as like manufacturer of information as well time and date. Yeah. So if anything changes at all then that checks some will change and that checks some is embedded in the original. So if anyone modifies it you know and this is

1:02:35Yeah, this is exactly what every, so if you want to go to download software, some software packages from people that are security conscious, they will give you, here's the file, here's the checksum. You download the file, you take the checksum, you run the checksum check against it, and if they match, you know that that file has not been modified. So this is exactly the same idea, but just for images.

1:03:01problem is as soon as you modify it then you are changing that you're destroying that chain of trust which is why I'm saying absolutely it's fine to modify images because you need to modify them you need to tweak the white balance tweak histograms you got to do some denoising you got to get rid of the crack in the wall yada yada yada that is fine so long as you have a traceable documented path and you can say right yeah I made the following changes this is what it looks like now but wrapped up in the same file is this is what it was At the beginning so you any human can look at the two and see what was done and say yep that's an accurate representation of reality so this is my proposal but then again. You know your point about film film is the closer to that because it's more difficult to modify yes you can. You had to jump through other hoops but yes yeah you do but i mean and what i call it dodge and burn.

1:03:56I can't remember the thing that you can do with film. I'm not a film guy, but I know you are, but still. Yeah, you can still modify those. But at the same time, it's a lot more difficult and you need to have a lot more talent and skill to do it. So in any case, Clay, I guess my problem is I don't have all of the answers. I never said I did.

1:04:17But what I do have is a reasonable amount of concern about the path that we are on as a civilization across, and I mean that across the board, everywhere in the world has this issue to varying degrees. So our world expands as we improve communication and as we are able to see more of the world happening around us from afar, we don't have to go there to see it. But as we erode the trust in what we see, Suddenly we shrink again back to where we were 100 years ago or more where there were no newspapers, no radio, nothing. Because in the end, even though we have all these amazing technologies, we've now made it possible that we can't trust them, which is hilariously sad. Yeah. Well, we're building, we're building cycles. Well, we're, yeah, I feel like what we're doing is we're dragging ourselves back to the Stone Age to an extent. Right.

1:05:12And we have the stone age of different silos. So you over there in Australia, you can't trust the stories you hear from here, and we can't trust the stories from there. It's like, wait a second, you're selling beef to the people who are again silos. Yeah, that's true. And if anyone told you that you can throw this stick in Australia, we have this stick, you throw this stick in Australia, and it comes back to you, you'd be like, what?

1:05:39That's be it. No way. That sounds like AI. I'll show you this photo. It's like, nah, man, that's fake news. And just for the record, boomerangs are cool. They are so cool. Is it cool if I hit you in the head? Oh, no, no, no. It hurts. It really hurts if it hits you. Believe me, because that's happened to me. So the first thing you do, okay, the first when you're learning to throw a boomerang, okay, from personal experience.

1:06:08The first half an hour you are angry and you are frustrated and annoyed that it will not come back to you no matter what you do and then there's this moment of elation as you see it arcing up in the air doing a lovely little turn and coming right back at your head and then you're like Frustrated and annoyed as it clips you in the side of the head and you're like Ow I am now annoyed that it hit me and it came back to me so you start with a boomerang hate hating it because you can't get it to come back and then you hate it because it comes back Comes back with a vengeance that anyway, it's fine. It comes back because remember what you the energy that you use to throw it out is a roughly the same energy that comes back so if you're given a good good good riff with your arm that's the same amount of force that thing's gonna hit your head with if you're not careful and yes, I did actually duck so that it wouldn't get me in the damn head and and all of the So

1:07:05Various names when I was growing up we were they were called we call them aboriginals these days they prefer either the first Australians or you know native Australians whatever. They were absolutely laughing it up they thought is most hilarious thing because I was eaten dirt because the boomerang came back and almost took my head off they thought it was so hilarious. I didn't think it was funny is that is that there was I guess sorry yeah is that their invention.

1:07:33Yeah, the Australian Aboriginals invented boomerangs. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, absolutely for real. Yeah, absolutely ingenious. And these things are kind of dangerous. Actually, there's lots of different designs for boomerangs as well. Like you get ones that have got a slightly longer end on one end that's heavier and they're designed for taking down like larger, heavier birds. So when it's more like a club on the end, like it's just thicker and heavier, but it still comes back if you throw it properly. Wow. I know, right? Very, very cool. But never mind. Never mind. So, all right.

1:08:03I just bring it back to photos and everything though. Yes. I don't have too much else. I boomerang it back to photos boomerang. Yes. Bring that boomerang back. My boomerang will come back to photos. So I don't think that all is lost. And don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I do believe that this is absolutely achievable. But if it's something that we're not working towards, it will never happen. Yes. And the easiest thing to do is to throw your hands up in the air and just say, oh, it's all fake news, which.

1:08:31There are people that I know right now today who are saying exactly that every single thing that they see on the news. Oh, that's fake news. Like right now there's a there's a war going on in the Middle East. It's like I've had a few people say to me randomly. Oh, that's that's all fake news. It's not actually real. Wow. And I'm like, OK, so because I have a friend of a friend who is living in Dubai right now. And they are sending video.

1:09:01of bombs exploding in Dubai. And it's happening. And it's like, I ain't fake. So, um, but you know, but this is where we're going. And I do not like where this is going. I can't fix this. But maybe I can help people who have more connections, more knowledge as to how this could be done. Maybe.

1:09:24If we're a little bit less defeatist about it, I think it's something that we couldn't achieve. And we need to be thinking about how we do this and work towards it. Otherwise, we're going to lose everything we gained in the last however long we've had transmissible media in my opinion. I agree. And then the fact that you're actually talking about it means that you actually do understand that I think a lot of people just put their head in the sand and just hope it will, you know, it'll just brush over.

1:09:53It'll pass us by but it's here. I think we do have to address it. Yeah, we do have to address it. I do think a lot of people are just feel helpless. They just feel like, well, there's nothing you can do. It's like, if I can flag any photo and say it's not generated by AI or it is generated by AI, that's not good enough because that can be easily gamed by anybody. So it can be gamed by people in both directions. So I can say, well, this is a genuine photo of my foot.

1:10:22And I can and someone can flag it. So now that's an AI generated image of my foot and I'll be like, hang on, man, you see my foot? There's there's some really bad tenure. There's like a couple of really bad bruises there and it's really ugly foot. So come on, this is actually real. Anyway, and then on the other hand, you could, you know, take a photo of get AI to generate an image of my foot or a foot and say that it's my foot and not flag it as AI. You can flag it as AI. You can not flag it as AI in either direction.

1:10:51and you have no chain of traceability, you can't tell what's true. So anyway, all right. I think it's absolutely crucial that we do figure out how to get traceability down or some sort of stamp to begin with. Yeah. All right, well, if you would like to talk more about this, you can reach me on the Fediverse at chigi at engineer.space or the network at eng net at engineer.space.

1:11:17And if you are enjoying Pragmatic and you'd like to support us and keep the show ad-free, you can by becoming a premium supporter. Just visit www.engineered.networks.pragmatic to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made. Thank you. A big thank you to all of our supporters. A special thank you to our Silver Producers, Mitch Buerger, Shane O'Neill, Jared Roman, Katarina Will, Chad During, Ian Gallagher and Jamie Russell. And an extra special thank you to our Gold Producers, Stephen Bridal, Kellan Fredelius Fujimoto, Steve Brannum, and our Gold producer known only as R. If you would like to get in touch with Clay, what's the best way for people to get in touch with the night? CW Daily at all of the social media places. All the medias. But only the real ones, not the fake ones. All right, all a special thank you again to our supporters and a big thank you to everyone for listening. And as always, it's always a pleasure having you on. Thanks for coming on again. Clay, I really appreciate it, mate. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

1:13:22We should do this more. Yeah, this is good. Yeah, I think we should do an episode on boomerang. No, you got me You want to do an episode of boomerangs? Honestly, I think in all seriousness boomerangs are one of the absolute coolest things that the aboriginals Developed but there's some other really Yeah, it is very cool. But there's lots of other things that they came up with as well that's really fascinating. So one of the things that has been good in the last few decades is that there's been a lot less of the stigma and a lot more of their history is being brought to light for people. Like when I grew up, we just weren't taught much of it and that's changing and that's a good thing. That's great. So it's a very deep, a very rich culture and it's something that

1:14:09That the whole concept of the dream time for example is unique in the world. And it's just yeah, I know it's kind of like it. I can't explain why just just yeah, it's kind of nice.