I'm not happy about this one, but I've run in to a brick wall so far looking for more info. So I'm going to need some AI-spotters to help me figure this one out, please. Unless of course I'm wrong, and both pics are legit. But I have my doubts...

In any case, this particular AV videotape station allegedly belonged to the US army, and in the 2nd pic, it's a PFC Mathesen who's the particular technician posing.

EDIT: Mystery seems solved thanks to a couple folks below. Evidently these are two genuine photos, likely shot the same day. I remain curious about the first person's uniform though, since it seems so different from the second person's.

He casts no shadows. Either AI stop or a vampire.

Could be like recruitment pictures? so multiple taken with different personnel?

Definitely seems to be slightly different perspective.

I remember this time—I was a kid. Goddamn those chairs weighed a ton!

Sorry but I don't know anything else 🤷

I hope they're legit, because these are really good if they're not. I was looking at the reflections on all the tiny knobs (is there a word for catchlights that applies to objects instead of eyes?) and they are all in the right spots and match the reflection in shoes etc. AI often messes that up, especially across classes of objects. The second thing was that the screen reflections are perfecto. There are some key details as well, like the wrinkling of stocking around an ankle.

The only thing that seems amiss to me is the cables behind the figures are a little different between the photos. If they were taken at the same time, which I think they were given the fancy lighting, why would they shift BNC cables on a patchbay between models? They are very close, so it just might be a difference in the angle, or maybe someone bumped into them and they moved a bit.

You sure? It looks like they cast approximately the same shadow, with the primary light source being to the left and forward. *shrug*

Nice comment, Dr. Bob. Thank you.

If they were taken at the same time

I mean... could be days, weeks or months apart? I guess my biggest suspicions at this time is: 1) the similarity in the red pen-paper placement, and 2) their wildly different uniforms.

Still, as Sgt Schulz famously said:
"I know NUTHing."

I had another look: The first image with the woman appears to have been made by AI from the image of the guy.

Here's why:

• Her name tag is blurrier than the rest of the image.
• There's no reason for poles to be on the left of the image. Also, if there were poles there, they wouldn't be so close together.
• The controls on the far left appear to be nonsensical.
• Her clipboard is way too long and the clip is cattywompus. I think the guy is holding a folio, not a clipboard. Whoever made the first image probably thought it was a clipboard and put "she's holding a clipboard" in the prompt.

Ahhh...

The poles could be further apart than they seem. The poles could be for a lighting rig for professional photos?

Her nametag might be blurred out for privacy reasons. Though it is not very blurred, might jsut be a problem with fous, after all it was purely manual back then wasn't it?

Now I am not saying you aren't right but there could be multiple explanations.

A professional photographer would never include their lighting setup in their images!

If her name tag was blurred for privacy it would be blurred much, much more than that. Nobody moves the slider to, "almost enough to read" 😁

Also, I've never seen a clipboard that long, have you?

I've seen folios that long. Usually the old school kind that you'd find at a lawyer's office. I think someone assumed that guy was holding a clipboard and included it in the prompt.

Unless they were planning on cropping it out like on the picture with the guy maybe.

You might be right, but I just think we can't say with any surety, since all of it might have a mundane explanation compared to six fingers or impossible shadows etc.

I would not want to say a clipboard that long has never existed, maybe they were a thing at the time of the photo.

p.s. look at the chair shadow, the light does seem to come from the left and possibly the height of those poles. It would make sense for those. (They are also brighter lit at the top, with a sharp drop of in brightness)
And a guy in the military taking professional photos might not have actually been a professional photographer, depending on what the photos were for.

p.s.
Oh an also they could be close together to form one light source to create better shadows.
It is a small room and if they were farther apart it might look weirdly lit.

I can read "Hicks" on her tag?

Poles appear to be flash stands, judging by light source.

Man, those old panels are wild, and can appear to be nonsense to modern aesthetics.

The clipboard looks like legal-sized to me. And those clips go crooked a LOT when used

The papers have shifted a bit, too. And, the chair is moved.

Maybe they did some shots with people sitting in the chairs and that's when things shifted a bit.

I'm sure they were. The reels are in the same position as are the knobs and levels that I can see. Lighting like that doesn't happen by accident, there will be all kinds of diffusers and reflectors outside the frame to get that look. I also counted videotapes and they match as well. As I said, if it's not real we should be scared because it's a great fake.

It is legal sized. I have one. And every clipboard I have had a fucked up clip from being thrown into the truck etc.

I can read “Hicks” on her tag?

Yeah, clearly at the present resolution. "HICKS!"

(if it proves fake, then maybe a tribute to ALIENS? 😄)

@riskable@programming.dev @technotica@lemmy.world

On the clipboard: It just looks to be legal sized ( like this one ). Growing up we had a couple of them (might have even come from the AF as my dad was in the service, and worked in Data Operations). The papers on the desk look to be legal (or some other non 8.5 x 11 format) as well.

And the smashed up bottom of the masonite leads me to believe that it's just well used, so the bent clip isn't unreasonable. It's hard to tell, but the guy could just be holding a clipboard backwards, since the bottom edge kind of looks like broken masonite as well (but could be bent folio paper).

Not saying that it's not AI, just that the clipboard doesn't look unnatural to me, having had some roughly that size.

Edit: On her nametag. it's probably just lighting. Those are engraved name tags, so the lights reflecting off of the plastic wouldn't be unexpected. It appears to have a name "Hicks" on it, where most AI I see just has jumbles that kind of seem like letters.

It's a low res copy of a photo. I was looking at the VU meter and the knobs etc. Everything is a bit pixelly.

I see his shadow. The lighting is front and to our left. Matches the reflections.

The nametag on the other image is blurry as well. I think it's scanning artifact since the photo seems to have good depth of field.

I'm going to approach this from a different angle. Both of these are from Alamy (and probably other stock images services, but I'm most familiar with Alamy). Here's the woman, here's the man.

First thing I'll note, as an aside, is that Alamy is known for a number of less-ethical practices k mostly involving improper crediting of the original photos). But one charge I've not heard against them is having AI in their archives. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I haven't heard of it. Back to Alamy's pages for the photos.

They're uploaded by different users; the users provide the captions. The woman's picture is captioned

A female U.S. Army audiovisual technician stands beside a videotape editing console.
Country: Unknown [meaning they don't know where this room existed]
Date taken: 30 April 1973

If you click on the link for the rest of this user's contributions, they've submitted approximately 5000 images in this account. All of the images that I looked at are military photos. At first glance, none of them look like AI. The photos range from the early 70's through to the 2000's, and cover a range of activities in a bunch of different locations.

[Oops accidentally hit submit, will continue in follow-up comment]

If you click on the link for the rest of this user’s contributions, they’ve submitted approximately 5000 images in this account.

Sorry, who is that, please?

Love your research so far, thank you!!

It gets all three networks, and PBS!

Haha... bonus pts for remembering Walter Cronkite!

If you look through the user's other submissions, all the photos are military-focused. While many of them are staged and lit, others aren't: a barbeque at night with flash photography, a couple of personnel at the far end of a long aisle of files, a soldier drinking from a flask in a truck.

I'll also say here that I have a belief that if someone is submitting one AI image, they're likely submitting a bunch of them, and a number will be similar in subject (thus the question of these two photos). Given this user's wide range of photos in a comparatively narrow field of study, the proper labeling and accreditation (as far as possible), the lack of discernable AI in the other photos I looked at, I believe it's a real user with a real collection of military photos.

The second user labeled the photo with the man as

1973 - A US Army audiovisual technician stands beside a videotape editing console.
Date taken: 1969

You'll note the contradiction between the title and the date taken; this is a less careful user. It also shows in the content he's uploading: a Dutch ice hockey coach, a man in a wheelchair near an intersection, barges full of trash, people marching in Germany in 1917. Jess harvesting photos wherever he can.

But that range also works in his favor. Again, I believe that people who submit one AI photo will submit more, and that some of the images will be similar. I didn't notice any signs of AI in the photos I looked at, and there's certainly a wide range of images!

Also (a later thought which could've prevented much of this research), when I ran the woman's photo through TinEye, their earliest record of the photo is June 22, 2013, pre-dating effective AI by a number of years. Their earliest record of the man's photo is September 11, 2021; that's certainly within the time that AI started producing semi-realistic photos - but it's also definitely within the era that he should have gibberish on his name tag and six fingers on all four of his hands.

IMO, both photos are real.

The photo with woman appeared on Reddit 8 yrs ago. We did not have AI images in that quality in 2018. Here

I believe they are both originals. The paper and pen on the desk have been moved. And that makes sense: someone touched it when they moved in or out of the scene.

Thanks!!