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164 points thunderbong | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.4s | source
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albert_e ◴[] No.41855365[source]
Practically --

I feel hardware technology can improve further to allow under-the-LED-display cameras .... so that we can actually look at both the camera and the screen at the same time.

(There are fingerprint sensors under mobile screens now ...and I think even some front facing cameras are being built in without sacrificing a punch hole / pixels. There is scope to make this better and seamless so we can have multiple cameras if we want behind a typical laptop screen or desktop monitor.)

This would make for a genuine look-at-the-camera video whether we are looking at other attendees in a meeting or reading off our slide notes (teleprompter style).

There would be no need to fake it.

More philosophically --

I don't quite like the normalization of AI tampering with actual videos and photos casually -- on mobile phone cameras or elsewhere. Cameras are supposed to capture reality by default. I know there is already heavy noise reduction, color correction, auto exposure etc ... but no need to use that to justify more tampering with individual facial features and expressions.

Videos are and will be used for recording humans as they are. The capturing of their genuine features and expressions should be valued more. Video should help people bond as people with as genuine body lanuage as possible. Videos will be used as memories of people bygone. Videos will be used as forensic or crime scene evidence.

Let us protect the current state of video capture. All AI enhancements should be marketed separately under a different name, not silently added into existing cameras.

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jrussino ◴[] No.41855684[source]
I agree with your philosophical stance, in general, but this particular use case is one that I've been wanting for years and where I think altering the image can be in some ways more "honest" than showing the raw camera feed.

With an unfiltered camera, it looks like I'm making eye contact with you when I'm actually looking directly at my camera, and likewise it looks like I'm staring off to the side when I'm looking directly at your image in my screen.

A camera centered behind my screen might be marginally better in that regard, but it still wouldn't look quite right.

What I'd really like to see is a filter for video conferencing that is aware of the position of your image on my screen, and modifies the angle of my face and eyes to more closely match what you would actually see from that perspective (e.g. it would look like I'm making direct eye contact when I'm looking at/near the position of your eyes on my screen).

You could imagine this working even for multiple users, where I might be paying attention to one participant or another, and each of their views of me would be updated so that the one I'm paying attention to can tell I'm looking directly at them, and the others know I'm not looking directly at them in that moment.

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1. hammock ◴[] No.41861720[source]
“Eye contact” is not a monolith though. Typically we look at someone’s eyes when we are speaking but their mouth when they are speaking. And eye contact can be a pattern of crossing between their left and right eyes. And making and breaking eye contact are important parts of nonverbal communication. The typical AI “eye contact correction” will do none of this.
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2. redwall_hp ◴[] No.41861934[source]
It's also extremely culturally dependent. (Never mind that plenty of people in countries that obsess over eye contact find it uncomfortable as well.)

It's generally considered rude or an act of intimidation to maintain eye contact with people in Japan, for example. Not nodding occasionally while someone is talking is also seen as a sign that you're not paying attention. Are we going to modify videos to nod automatically too? Or maybe we can stop trying to fake social interactions and enforcing local customs on the world.