We had a comment from Tom Hinnebusch about the use of Photoshop and its potential effect on bird identification. The CBC report had a photo of the Chestnut-collared Longspur that had some vegetation removed to make it a more pleasing photo (one hopes). The current version of Photoshop has what they call “regenerative fill” (RF) and this is the issue. RF will erase what you tell it and then use artificial intelligence (AI) to replace the empty spots. The trick is that the replacement bits are generated out of thin air, using a library of similar photos in its memory. It also looks at the original photo to help it match up – perhaps the feathers next to the blank area will guide it. But, the important thing is the replacement bits are fakes, unreal, arbitrary. For purposes of bird i.d. one must be careful – if we get a question from The Committee the original must be used without alteration.

AI can do a really good job. Done carefully it might be impossible to tell there has been any alteration. Sharpening, denoising and other traditional editing is fine and need not be mentioned, but if a photo has been altered by replacing or removing original elements, that should be made clear. For anyone who is interested, here are the “before and after” photos. I think the field marks are OK in both, although the beginning of the black plumage on the chest in the altered photo seems to have been enlarged. I missed that.