Hello folks.

AI, an emotive subject at the moment across many fields and genres. But let us think about railway images. When does Artificial Intelligence become Altered Images?

More and more AI is invading our everyday life, and dare I say it the presentation of images, and in our case, particularly railway images. My view is that the images we see on line should be an historically accurate image that is not manipulated to add items or indeed take them away. So if the signal is in front of the engine that you have photographed, it should stay there as part of the historical scene. Similarly, if an annoying chimney in the background appears to be sticking out of the cab roof of the class 55 it should stay. To change the image would make it an "Altered Image"!

This is also applies to these fake images that are an abomination with extra rails, wrong tenders, junctions at right angles, wrong numbers, imagined name boards, head on shots of an express while standing in the running track etc, you know the ones. Have a look at "Timeless History" and such like. These are actually more that and altered image and are more of an imagination engineering project.

But, and it is a big but, what about applications that use AI to remove dust, repair a scratch, improve exposure or brightness, restore colour or sharpen. Well let us think about that. Isn't this the type of thing we have been doing for years, first in the dark room and then with Photoshop or similar. And to make this even more difficult many of the tools we now use to improve a print are AI driven. So what I am saying is AI tidied images are acceptable as long as we don't remove or add to the image. And what about colourisation of mono images. I personally am not a big fan as it often changes the image slightly, changing loco numbers and signage, but I have seen some excellent examples presented.

I also think that where AI has been used to manipulate an image strongly or an image is colourised this should be mentioned when presenting and image. (I know many of you do this already).

So my own view is:

Altered Images - No

Colourized Images - Maybe

Tidied Images - Acceptable.

These are the rules that TRANSPORT TOPICS will try our best to adhere to.

Anyway, as I said an emotive subject, and I know some of you will have a different view to me, and I can live with that, no problem. Perhaps one or two of you could add to the blog with your thoughts or experience of Artificial Intelligence or Altered Images.

All the best for now....

Martin at TRANSPORT TOPICS