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Military videotape-editing station, 1973. and a small mystery (media.piefed.social)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/cassettefuturism@lemmy.world
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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...

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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.

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[–] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

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]

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago

    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.

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