The macro photography looks bizarrely uniform and the poses contrived. I feel like a sleuth trying to decide if this is AI generated or not. I suspect it isn't, but I'm somewhat distressed at how suspicious I am of cool things now.
As someone who has done some stacked photos, they always look suspicious! If it's any consolation, I recognize the photographer and they are the sort of person who would never use AI!
You know how some photos have super blurred backgrounds? The same effect occurs undesirably when you’re trying to do extreme macro photography (close-up photos of small things). The effect would be that face might be sharp but the body would get blurrier the farther away from the focus plane.
So a workaround is to take a lot of photos with the focus plane at different depths. You sweep the focus plane through the scene, snapping a lot of photos as you go. This can be automatic with nice gear.
Then you take all of those photos and combined them digitally, with the algorithm selecting pixels from the photo with the best sharpness in that region. So the photo you see is a combination of many photos.
You take multiple pictures at different focal points and combining together computationally because the depth of field at the magnification is very shallow. The resulting image looks somewhat flat, but highly detailed.
Plenty of worries if those images are AI-generated. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt as he's a macro photographer: https://www.nickybay.com/
Indeed, I saw the watermarks. It's clearly a testament to his skill that his consistency is so unbelievable. Maybe that's common in macro photography but I'm genuinely floored by it.
In my own experience, whenever I detect something AI generated I lose the ability to evaluate how much I can "trust" something. Compare an article on Medium with a published book on the same topic; both are human-originated but the substance of one implies authority, quality etc. Generating a website and pictures with AI requires very little effort and care, and I have no interest in carelessness. Like most humans, I can't help but evaluate the author alongside the art.
I don't mind it at all for decorational images, but in this case I would mind. I suppose I would mind the inaccuracy, the worry that the creatures might not look exactly like the real world ones look.
Not that it actually matters but if those images were generated it would feel pointless to me, even if I can't tell the difference.
This brings me back to when the internet was full of sites like this. Small artful projects that had no goal but to teach us a tidbit about a niche topic, just because someone cared enough to share it. The internet felt smaller and more intimate than it does now in this era of social media. Bookmarked, will without a doubt explore every inch of that site.
I'm confused. Should I be seeing something on this site?
From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Just empty boxes where say "Amber Ducky" should be.
If the photography was mediocre, nobody would accuse it of being AI, but because it's the flawless photography of a true professional, suddenly it's highly suspect.
I worked with a woman who kept isopods as pets. She had a little terrarium at work with all sorts of breeds of isopods. That's where I learned you could buy isopods online.
As much as the website looks nice, the design looks AI generated - image loading animations, or quotation marks for species names. (Both are needles decorations.)
Not at all! Decorations are needed for lots of things. For example, obviously decorations are needed for decorating. Successful sexual posturing in some birds requires large, decorative body parts like feathers or crests.
That is exactly what an AI Bot would say XDXD
So a workaround is to take a lot of photos with the focus plane at different depths. You sweep the focus plane through the scene, snapping a lot of photos as you go. This can be automatic with nice gear.
Then you take all of those photos and combined them digitally, with the algorithm selecting pixels from the photo with the best sharpness in that region. So the photo you see is a combination of many photos.
What would be so worrying about someone using AI to generate images for their site?
AI generated images are not appropriate for source or reference material.
Not that it actually matters but if those images were generated it would feel pointless to me, even if I can't tell the difference.
From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Just empty boxes where say "Amber Ducky" should be.