this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Previous posts: https://programming.dev/post/3974121 and https://programming.dev/post/3974080

Original survey link: https://forms.gle/7Bu3Tyi5fufmY8Vc8

Thanks for all the answers, here are the results for the survey in case you were wondering how you did!

Edit: People working in CS or a related field have a 9.59 avg score while the people that aren’t have a 9.61 avg.

People that have used AI image generators before got a 9.70 avg, while people that haven’t have a 9.39 avg score.

Edit 2: The data has slightly changed! Over 1,000 people have submitted results since posting this image, check the dataset to see live results. Be aware that many people saw the image and comments before submitting, so they've gotten spoiled on some results, which may be leading to a higher average recently: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MkuZG2MiGj-77PGkuCAM3Btb1_Lb4TFEx8tTZKiOoYI

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[–] yokonzo@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

One thing I'm not sure if it skews anything, but technically ai images are curated more than anything, you take a few prompts, throw it into a black box and spit out a couple, refine, throw it back in, and repeat. So I don't know if its fair to say people are getting fooled by ai generated images rather than ai curated, which I feel like is an important distinction, these images were chosen because they look realistic

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, it does say "AI Generated", which is what they are.

All of the images in the survey were either generated by AI and then curated by humans, or they were generated by humans and then curated by humans.

I imagine that you could also train an AI to select which images to present to a group of test subjects. Then, you could do a survey that has AI generated images that were curated by an AI, and compare them to human generated images that were curated by an AI.

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[–] Zeth0s@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But they were generated by AI. It's a fair definition

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[–] popcar2@programming.dev 13 points 1 year ago

Technically you're right but the thing about AI image generators is that they make it really easy to mass-produce results. Each one I used in the survey took me only a few minutes, if that. Some images like the cat ones came out great in the first try. If someone wants to curate AI images, it takes little effort.

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you not check for a correlation between profession and accuracy of guesses?

[–] popcar2@programming.dev 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have. Disappointingly there isn't much difference, the people working in CS have a 9.59 avg while the people that aren't have a 9.61 avg.

There is a difference in people that have used AI gen before. People that have got a 9.70 avg, while people that haven't have a 9.39 avg score. I'll update the post to add this.

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can we get the raw data set? / could you make it open? I have academic use for it.

[–] popcar2@programming.dev 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Sure, but keep in mind this is a casual survey. Don't take the results too seriously. Have fun: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MkuZG2MiGj-77PGkuCAM3Btb1_Lb4TFEx8tTZKiOoYI

Do give some credit if you can.

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago

Of course! I'm going to find a way to integrate this dataset into a class I teach.

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If I can be a bother, would you mind adding a tab that details which images were AI and which were not? It would make it more usable, people could recreate the values you have on Sheet1 J1;K20

[–] popcar2@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Done, column B in the second sheet contains the answers (Yes are AI generated, No aren't)

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Awesome! Thanks very much.

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[–] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Something I'd be interested in is restricting the "Are you in computer science?" question to AI related fields, rather than the whole of CS, which is about as broad a field as social science. Neural networks are a tiny sliver of a tiny sliver

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 9 points 1 year ago

Especially depending on the nation or district a person lives in, where CS can have even broader implications like everything from IT Support to Engineering.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

And this is why AI detector software is probably impossible.

Just about everything we make computers do is something we're also capable of; slower, yes, and probably less accurately or with some other downside, but we can do it. We at least know how. We can't program software or train neutral networks to do something that we have no idea how to do.

If this problem is ever solved, it's probably going to require a whole new form of software engineering.

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[–] innocentpixels@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow, I got a 12/20. I thought I would get less. I'm scared for the future of artists

[–] CrypticFawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why? A lot of artists have adopted AI and use it as just another tool.

[–] innocentpixels@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure artists can use it as another tool, but the problem comes when companies think they can get away with just using ai. Also, the ai has been trained using artwork without any artist permission

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[–] cygnosis@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is an issue if those artists want to copyright their work. So far the US has maintained that AI generated art is not subject to copyright protection.

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[–] lenz@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I got a 17/20, which is awesome!

I’m angry because I could’ve gotten an 18/20 if I’d paid attention to the thispersondoesnotexists’ glasses, which in hindsight, are clearly all messed up.

I did guess that one human-created image was made by AI, “The End of the Journey”. I guessed that way because the horses had unspecific legs and no tails. And also, the back door of the cart they were pulling also looked funky. The sky looked weirdly detailed near the top of the image, and suddenly less detailed near the middle. And it had birds at the very corner of the image, which was weird. I did notice the cart has a step-up stool thing attached to the door, which is something an AI likely wouldn’t include. But I was unsure of that. In the end, I chose wrong.

It seems the best strategy really is to look at the image and ask two questions:

  • what intricate details of this image are weird or strange?
  • does this image have ideas indicate thought was put into them?

About the second bullet point, it was immediately clear to me the strawberry cat thing was human-made, because the waffle cone it was sitting in was shaped like a fish. That’s not really something an AI would understand is clever.

One the tomato and avocado one, the avocado was missing an eyebrow. And one of the leaves of the stem of the tomato didn’t connect correctly to the rest. Plus their shadows were identical and did not match the shadows they would’ve made had a human drawn them. If a human did the shadows, it would either be 2 perfect simplified circles, or include the avocado’s arm. The AI included the feet but not the arm. It was odd.

The anime sword guy’s armor suddenly diverged in style when compared to the left and right of the sword. It’s especially apparent in his skirt and the shoulder pads.

The sketch of the girl sitting on the bench also had a mistake: one of the back legs of the bench didn’t make sense. Her shoes were also very indistinct.

I’ve not had a lot of practice staring at AI images, so this result is cool!

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

does this image have ideas indicate thought was put into them?

I got fooled by the bright mountain one. I assumed it was just generic art vomit a la Kinkade

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[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Wow, what a result. Slight right skew but almost normally distributed around the exact expected value for pure guessing.

Assuming there were 10 examples in each class anyway.

It would be really cool to follow up by giving some sort of training on how to tell, if indeed such training exists, then retest to see if people get better.

[–] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like the images selected were pretty vague. Like if you have a picture of a stick man and ask if a human or computer drew it. Some styles aew just hard to tell

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could count the fingers but then again my preschooler would have drawn anywhere from 4 to 40.

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I don't remember any of the images having fingers to be honest. Assuming this is that recent one, one sketch had the fingers obscured and a few were landscapes.

[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Imo, 3,17,18 were obviously AI imo (based on what I've seen from AI art generators in the past*). But whatever original art those are based on, I'd probably also flag as obviously AI. The rest I was basically guessing at random. Especially the sketches.

*I never used AI generators myself, but I've seen others do it on stream. Curious how many others like me are raising the average for the "people that haven't used AI image generators" before.

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[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Having used stable diffusion quite a bit, I suspect the data set here is using only the most difficult to distinguish photos. Most results are nowhere near as convincing as these. Notice the lack of hands. Still, this establishes that AI is capable of creating art that most people can't tell apart from human made art, albeit with some trial and error and a lot of duds.

[–] blueberrypie@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

These images were fun, but we can't draw any conclusions from it. They were clearly chosen to be hard to distinguish. It's like picking 20 images of androgynous looking people and then asking everyone to identify them as women or men. The fact that success rate will be near 50% says nothing about the general skill of identifying gender.

[–] Chunk@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

I have it on very good authority from some very confident people that all ai art is garbage and easy to identify. So this is an excellent dataset to validate my priors.

[–] toadyody@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Curious which man made image was most likely to be classified as ai generated

[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)
[–] Fire_Tree@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the same image twice?

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My first impression was "AI" when I saw them, but I figured an AI would have put buildings on the road in the town and the 2nd one was weird but that parts fit together well enough.

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[–] squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Sketches are especially hard to tell apart because even humans put in extra lines and add embellishments here and there. I'm not surprised more than 70% of participants weren't able to tell that one was generated.

[–] rbn@feddit.ch 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for sharing the results. Very interesting to see the outcome after participating in the survey.

Out of interest: do you know how many participants came from Lemmy compared to other platforms?

[–] popcar2@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No idea, but I would assume most results are from here since Lemmy is where I got the most attention and feedback.

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[–] popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess I should feel good with my 12/20 since it's better than average.

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[–] crawley@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It'd be interesting to also see the two non-AI images the most people thought were.

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[–] Zeth0s@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I did 12 and I thought it was a pretty bad result. Apparently I was wrong!

I tried to answer by instinct, without careful examination, to make it more realistic

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