Slashdot Mirror
Algorithm Seamlessly Patches Holes In Images
Beetle B. writes in with research from Carnegie Mellon demonstrating a new way to replace arbitrarily shaped blank areas in an image with portions of images from a huge catalog in a totally seamless manner. From the abstract: "In this paper we present a new image completion algorithm powered by a huge database of photographs gathered from the Web. The algorithm patches up holes in images by finding similar image regions in the database that are not only seamless but also semantically valid. Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labelling by the user."
Applications like this make me in favor of DRM if it can be used to protect the rights of artists to retain the creative content of their work. I'm getting more than sick of people that seem to think its ok to just go and copy an image off the web like it is nothing. If these images were so easy to make, then, why not make them yourselves! It takes work to make an image, whether it is a photograph, painting, or some other likeness thereof. This stuff on the internet, is not just yours to take.
This is my sig.
Or even worse pictures then that. What happens when some aspiring junior detective wants to close a case and they use this to get your face in place of the actual bank robbers and the partial image from the bank surveillance system.
I wonder if you could goto prison for an intentionally doctored picture presented by the cops? It doesn't matter the trial and accusations would destroy your job and life.