When Information Runs Out: How AI Fills Gaps and Why It Matters
What happens when the information runs out
I experimented with ChatGPT to colorize old family photos, only to discover it invents details like eyebrows that never existed on the original film. This revealed a critical truth: some information is permanently lost, and AI's default is to fill those gaps with guesses. The real human job isn't just supervising the AI, but knowing when to communicate certainty and when to accept that some gaps must remain empty.
The human's job in this process isn't to supervise the AI. It's to communicate certainty clearly — but also to put uncertainty back in.
- CM30
This reminds me of how a lot of older TV shows and movies had an 'enhance' button that could somehow magically take a tiny, blurred image and blow it up to a level of detail where even the most minor things could be seen again. Like a suspect's eyes in the reflection of a window that looked like it was maybe 4 pixels in size in the original image.
The AI examples and reasoning in the article are exactly why this can't work, and is so unrealistic. The info isn't just hidden away in the info in a way some tool can figure out what it is with another effort, it's simply not present entirely. Any tool that tries to enhance a low quality image or video is just going to be making up the missing data.
- lordnacho
But this is exactly what you expect when you ask intelligence (machine or human) to fill in missing information. It picks some plausible, middle-of-the-road filler. If you were a restoration artist with an airbrush (or photoshop) with just the instruction to make the picture nicer, that's what you'd do. If you got told the right colour, you use it, and if not, you guess.
- Bratmon
I'm genuinely curious what you thought "AI restoration" was doing if the fact that it added details that it thought were reasonable was surprising to you