12 Years Running a Photo Studio, Developing an AI Photo ID App
12 Years in the Photo Studio, AI Photo ID App Development
12 years running a photo studio, diving into AI development.
As a photographer, it's already been 12 years since I started running a photo studio.
At some point, AI appeared, and photographers were filled with fear.
I've already experienced two major transformations: from film to digital cameras, and then to smartphone photos. Now, I'm facing another era of great change. The previous changes were significant, but there was some time to adapt. They coexisted and overlapped before transitioning to the next generation.
However, I strongly felt that this wave would be different from the previous ones. The previous changes were more about the tools, but this change encompasses a philosophical shift in intention and need. Whether it was an analog camera, a digital camera, or a camera on a smartphone, I, the operator, remained the same, making it an objective change. But the AI era involves a subjective change in operating intentions and needs.
What does this mean? It means that the AI becomes the subject using the camera, and users only need to have the intention and need.
Even if I don't shoot as a photographer, AI can understand and shoot the necessary photos for the people who need them, and print them according to their intentions and needs. In other words, a replacement is taking place. This is fundamentally different from the automatic shooting and automatic correction systems of the past. AI is not just equipment that mechanically repeats a given process, but a subject that evolves and judges on its own.
However, while creating the AI photo ID app, I realized that there is still a lot of work for us to do. The experience accumulated in human society, the value of service that cannot be learned from books, and the realm of emotion that cannot be interpreted numerically – AI can immediately copy and imitate these, but our expertise is still important in areas where it is absolutely necessary.
People who have collaborated with AI to some extent know this: AI cannot give you the correct answer if it doesn't accurately understand your intentions. What I always feel while working with AI is that the results come out as much as I know and as much as I decide properly through conversations and research with them. So, working with AI is directly related to my self-development. It is very dangerous to mistakenly think that everything will be given to you for free if you just tell AI what to do. AI provides us with an opportunity to unleash abilities beyond what we already had. However, it doesn't replace us, but helps us grow so that we can do it ourselves. And the results appear as much as we grow.
That's how I continued to refine and modify the app so that all my processes as a photographer were included. At first, I didn't intend to expand it this much, but as I developed it, I kept thinking, 'How would I handle this?', 'What points should I give here to satisfy the customer?'
How can I guide passport photo shooting so that social problems do not occur and they can be issued normally even when taken with an AI app?
I tried to incorporate all the concerns and know-how I had while running the photo studio, so it took much longer than the initial plan.
Deep Fake Source Blocking
What is a photo ID?
A photo attached to official documents, etc., to verify a person's identity with the human eye.
At this point in time, is a person's identity judged by the photo attached to the document? Not necessarily. As various authentication methods become more sophisticated, the proportion of photos in identifying people has decreased significantly compared to the past. However, there are gaps in the IT infrastructure level of all countries, and even now, at window counters, airport terminals, etc., passport and visa photos are clearly the most noticeable data for people to distinguish people. Unless all counters are converted to unmanned authentication systems without people, there is still no country that operates a completely unmanned system in the global immigration process. Therefore, photos are information necessary for primary identity verification.
Therefore, submitting standardized photo IDs when applying for a passport or undergoing visa screening is a natural procedure. The standardized photo that goes into this is the 'passport photo', and the international standard (ICAO) is applied.
So, is a photo ID taken/generated by AI really safe?
Many countries and organizations are discussing banning the use of AI-generated photo IDs. In fact, there are already countries that control it by law. Why?
I'm curious. Does banning AI-generated photo IDs eliminate the so-called 'deepfake' concerns? Is there a realistic way to ban AI photo IDs? To what extent can AI be involved?
I think the direction of this discussion is wrong. It's not the AI involvement or generation that's the problem, but the intention is the key. How many photo IDs or official documents are there that AI is not involved in at all? Photoshopped or EVOTO AI-corrected photos are okay, but NanoBanana-generated photos are not? Why? What's the problem?
In my opinion, the key is how to effectively block Deep Fake, and setting a benchmark that EVOTO AI correction is okay but generated images are not is meaningless.
So, after much deliberation, I found the safest way I could think of. Isn't Deepfake ultimately an act of using the face and body information of someone other than myself to spread false information or use it for crime? Preventing that is not banning AI photo IDs, but blocking DeepFake at the source, or at least making it as difficult as possible. So, MONKOS AI's photo ID app does not have an image input window. Only real-time shooting input from a mobile selfie camera of an authenticated (Google O'Auth, etc.) account is allowed.
Unless it is an extreme criminal situation, the possibility that photo data taken in real-time with your own mobile through your own account is a deepfake becomes very low.
Instead, we created a separate Crop app to provide standard Crop services to general users, but the photo ID shooting/retouching app is set to only allow input of mobile real-time selfie shots.
I hope you understand this point.
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