My parents discovered the wonders of ChatGPT and happily used it for everything they could think of. I’ve had “the talk” with them about the reliability of LLMs, but like most people, they indulge in social media fads from time to time. Whether using ChatGPT to turn you into an action figure or caricaturing you, they are now well versed in uploading photos to a chatbot as part of a message.
Looking at their Facebook post history recently, it seems like the last thing they can do is Give the AI some old family photos that are damaged.faded, or that doesn’t have much or any color, and ask them to “restore” the photo. The result is a bright, modern-looking photo, but there’s one big problem: those in the photos are not my mom and dad!
Grandma likes to receive likes
It’s no surprise that using AI to “restore” a photo has become very popular. Photoshop is difficult, and even with modern tools and a skilled artist, restoring a photo can take many hours. Instead, AI will show you a new photo in seconds, ready to share online.
After all, sites like Facebook feed on nostalgia, so posting shiny new versions of old photos is almost guaranteed to attract likes and fawning comments from your old classmates or extended family.
Restoration vs. Manufacturing: Where the Line Really Is
Close enough to be rare
However, there is a big problem here. Generative AI technologies do not “restore” anything; It involves creating a completely new photo using the original as input. At first glance, and many people won’t give it any more than that, it looks like the same photo. However, if you take a minute to examine the details, it is different in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Here is a historical Family photo taken from the Library of Congress.. To illustrate the problem, I ran it through ChatGPT with the message “Restore this photo to look like it was taken today.” People who do this online use similar messages or use AI “restore” tools that use a similar message internally, but hide it from the user.
Take a close look at the AI-generated image. The AI not only extended the frame to include details that were never there, but also changed details like the poster on the wall. However, the most What is important here are the faces and poses of the people in the photo. It’s as if someone hired a group of doubles to pose for the same photo. These are not the same people!
It can be hard to tell people you don’t know well, but when my dad posts a photo of himself that’s been put through the AI mill, it’s obviously (and disturbingly) not his face in the resulting image. Even worse, when he posts photos of himself before I was born, I can’t tell what his real face was without putting the photos side by side, because I have no real memories of his face during that time.
Why changes matter more than you think
It’s not just innocent fun
The further back you go, the bigger the problem will be. I never met my grandparents in person, so photographs are the only evidence I have of what they were like, or what my older family was like when they were younger. These photos are a link to my personal family history.
Now I see people on the Internet voluntarily replacing their relatives with creepy doubles in photos of places that didn’t exist. If I were you, I would destroy those AI images immediately and make a secure, unaltered digital backup of my family photos on various long-term storage media.
How to preserve authenticity while enhancing old photographs
It takes effort, but it can be achieved.
When you hire a professional to restore a photo, then, like an AI, that person cannot recover information that is not present in the original photo. However, a trained restoration artist knows how to preserve a person’s genuine features and will not alter anything in the image more than necessary.
Even when colorizing old photographs, color choices are informed through research to be as close to reality as possible. The typical AI tool doesn’t even attempt to do this.
However, does that mean that it is impossible to restore photos correctly without the use of AI? Not quite. For example, in this guide by PIXimperfect You can view a workflow using a combination of traditional photo editing tools and adjustable AI filters that allow you to keep the original facial features exactly and give you a way to compare the results to the original photo to check there isn’t a wrinkle or line out of place.
But of course, most people will just take the easy route of clicking a button and seeing a new photo appear a few seconds later. Still, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth erasing the real faces and places that make up your family history, and perhaps having your own children never know what their grandparents were really like. Personally I don’t think it is.
