Perhaps I should say “Can you tell how we made this image?”, because there is more going on here than just my mind and hand. Sure, as far back as a decade ago it might’ve been possible for someone to make the same edits, but that person would need to be far more experienced than I.

To view the original, click below and hover over the image above.
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When comparing the images side-by-side, it’s easy to tell that the part of the picture that was filled in is lower detail and has a few errors, but unless you’ve worked with a lot of images in the past I’m guessing that it wasn’t apparent before seeing the original. My partner in crime here was a tool called Resynthesizer for the GIMP. This is the open-source version of the “content aware fill” that will be included in the next version of Photoshop.

The reason that I’m able to perform such a complex fill on an image is not because I am experienced. It is because the tools have knowledge and skill embedded into them by their creators. As AI becomes more successful, our tools will become more competent at doing complex things with little supervision. This will put people out of work. This is the future. We don’t need or want more capable people, we want more capable autonomous systems; systems that can mow lawns, shovel snow, cook, clean, write, watch, build, experiment, and teach.