AI fish???

[Magnum Man]

Mrs. is always watching video's of highly unlikely animal interactions... I'm really surprised we don't see more AI created fish effects, like videos, or new undocumented fish... hey, maybe a new barb, running for fish of the month... as it gets better at creating stuff, and with the man made creations like glo fish, it going to come to a point where we see it, and still can't believe it.... stranger than fiction

 

[GaryE]

I'm seeing AI enhancements on fish photos online - colour intensity and such. I can see the creation of fish that don't exist. It's going to mean we have to ground ourselves more if we like the newly found, not well known species because what we see may not be what we get. You know this is going to be a tech that lends itself to scammers.

We'll be destroying the only habitats of fish in order to finance a tech that creates false images of fish... you can't make these things up.

We'll have to fall back and defend ourselves with the rule of three. If you can find the fish or the info on 3 sites you already know are credible, then you can begin to trust the source.

Imagine if we have the old debate on the cory group and sand. So someone AI generates a video of rocky cory habitats to "win". But we still have all the research on how their bodies are adapted to sift sand - that's there. The problem comes when people don't bother to look at it. I foresee dumb times ahead...

But I also doubt AI creation will ever come up with the weirdness that evolution has. So we do have that.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

AI is the least of.our concerns when there are hobbyists who have the intent and opportunity to create Frankenfish hybrids.
Specific locales of fish will be lost to the hobby forever.

 

[GaryE]

There are really different philosophies and belief systems in the hobby - funny for a pastime that just seems to be a pastime.

A lot of aquarists just won't learn the basic science (what's a species? (tough question...) What are the habitats our fish come from? Why does the water matter? How do fish bodies work?) and I think that takes away from the value of fish to us. I worked in an industry where for the big players, fish were called 'units' and the differences between them could be simply prices. If you hybridize, you can demand higher prices. If you can reduce the number of species brought in from wild sources, then you don't have to deal with local fisher families and the infrastructures they create.

The hobby has also cultivated pain, for money. A balloon fish has compressed guts and a possibly painful case of scoliosis, but if we don't look into it, it makes them cute. The fish is ornamental.

All of this makes me very skeptical of any hopes for ethics with these new technological wrinkles. There will always be ethical people, and always crooks. And there will be great advances. In 2 weeks I'll be on a fish collecting expedition that will gather fish for study, which will probably end with AI application DNA work. It can help us learn about our world.

Someone will use it invent fake species. Fraud is just too tempting for some people, even if they use an app or two to make themselves feel smarter than the 'suckers'. You know that. But others'll use it to learn more about nature - something we are really behind on understanding.

 

[Magnum Man]

All hobbies are diverse if we dig a little... my wife quilts... you would think the act of quilting being the same, they would all get along, but they divide themselves into groups, based on the type of sewing machine, and some won't even talk to or acknowledge another, because they have a different brand of machine...

I'm also a "car guy"... I know guys that both have similar restored 1957 Chevys, but they won't talk to each other, because, while they both have new paint, one of them chose a "non stock" color to repaint their car with...

I'm trying to be more like Switzerland, and not be polarized by the brand of your filter, or what color is your "painted fish"

( OK, I try not to really like "painted fish" it was just a reference to the above )

 

[OldFishKeeper]

There are really different philosophies and belief systems in the hobby - funny for a pastime that just seems to be a pastime.

A lot of aquarists just won't learn the basic science (what's a species? (tough question...) What are the habitats our fish come from? Why does the water matter? How do fish bodies work?) and I think that takes away from the value of fish to us. I worked in an industry where for the big players, fish were called 'units' and the differences between them could be simply prices. If you hybridize, you can demand higher prices. If you can reduce the number of species brought in from wild sources, then you don't have to deal with local fisher families and the infrastructures they create.

The hobby has also cultivated pain, for money. A balloon fish has compressed guts and a possibly painful case of scoliosis, but if we don't look into it, it makes them cute. The fish is ornamental.

All of this makes me very skeptical of any hopes for ethics with these new technological wrinkles. There will always be ethical people, and always crooks. And there will be great advances. In 2 weeks I'll be on a fish collecting expedition that will gather fish for study, which will probably end with AI application DNA work. It can help us learn about our world.

Someone will use it invent fake species. Fraud is just too tempting for some people, even if they use an app or two to make themselves feel smarter than the 'suckers'. You know that. But others'll use it to learn more about nature - something we are really behind on understanding.

Mother Nature sorts thing out better then we do...IMHO.

 

[Magnum Man]

if AI enhanced photos are used to sell fish, that should be illegal... it's bad enough, that we are seeing centerfold model pictures, that may be highly filtered to look even prettier, than the fish you will actually receive... going back to my thread with the prettiest badis badis... unless someone has seen a fish that actually looks like this at maturity, I don't think it's ethical for a seller to use it to sell fish... are we supposed to believe anything a seller say's, if they are using "enhanced" pictures of fish, to increase sales...

has anyone ever actually seen a fish that looks like this, or is it highly enhanced??? that is the question...

 

[GaryE]

Mother Nature sorts thing out better then we do...IMHO.

And it's fun to chase around behind her trying to understand what she's done!

 

[GaryE]

I have seen it on the small scale of a Badis. Here's a thought for us. If I take a camera with an average flash and photograph a fish, it's possible I'll see spots and colours that won't jump out at me if I see the fish in subdued lighting. Is that enhancing?

I have a funny feeling that if I had looked at fish A when I was 17, compared to looking at it at 67, I may have seem more at 17. So there is the perception issue.

There was a famous fish explorer who died recently. He regularly released photos of super coloured 'new' fish in which his hands were bright pinkish orange. That was enhancement done about as crudely as could be. To me, that was cheating, and I never understood why it mattered to him.

That photo though - if you shrink the fish down to real size, put an intense light onto it and grab a magnifying glass, it's a good Badis badis shot. Look at it with your ordinary eyes at the size it really is, and you'll have questions. I loved my little blue Badis, but mainly because of their attitude at such a tiny size.

 

[Innesfan]

In a way this isn't exactly new. Technicolor movies presented a fantastical, saturated-color version of life. And in our own field, the glorious Timmerman color photos of the '50s and '60s did for aquarium fish...and aquariums... what Technicolor did for the likes of Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Gene Kelley and the lot of them.

 

[GaryE]

The difference is someone using AI can change the body shape, finnage etc as well, if they want to pretend they have something new. Colour enhancement goes back to colour photography, but this is a new game that'll be played soon enough.

I've already seen a number of reels that were clearly fake interactions between animals, mostly posted to get a laugh. There's a version where a big cat predator grabs the back end of a prey animal and gets farted off. It's available in several combinations.

 

[Back in the fold]

I’m glad to have my background in printing . So far I can spot a fake picture right off the bat . I see them on TV all the time . I used to work in the pre-press department and we routinely made composite photos from different elements . Movies are the same as that because all a movie is is a whole bunch of individual pictures repeated rapidly . There’s an ad on TV pushing pills for less than excitable men if you catch my drift and the women in the ad are too perfect . Modern airbrushing .

 

[emeraldking]

AI fish???​

On Facebook I do see a number of AI generated fish pics regularly coming in as a moderator. Trying to sell them on the groups I moderate. And according to our rules I'm obligated to decline those.

 

[OldFishKeeper]

AI fish???​

On Facebook I do see a number of AI generated fish pics regularly coming in as a moderator. Trying to sell them on the groups I moderate. And according to our rules I'm obligated to decline those.

Yet another reason I have nothing to do with them...