(Roughly) Daily

… a tendency with which Bjørn Karmann has some timely– and thought-provoking– fun…

Paragraphica is a context-to-image camera that uses location data and artificial intelligence to visualize a “photo” of a specific place and moment. The camera exists both as a physical prototype and a virtual camera that you can try… 

The viewfinder displays a real-time description of your current location, and by pressing the trigger, the camera will create a scintigraphic representation of the description.

On the camera, there are three physical dials that let you control the data and AI parameters to influence the appearance of the photo, similar to how a traditional camera is operated…

The camera operates by collecting data from its location using open APIs. Utilizing the address, weather, time of day, and nearby places. Comining all these data points Paragraphica composes a paragraph that details a representation of the current place and moment.

Using a text-to-image AI, the camera converts the paragraph into a “photo”.
 

The resulting “photo” is not just a snapshot, but a complex and nuanced reflection of the location you are at, and perhaps how the AI model “sees” that place.

Interestingly the photos do capture some reminiscent moods and emotions from the place but in an uncanny way, as the photos never really look exactly like where I am…

Want to memorialize a moment? Why take a photo when you can have AI just imagine the scene for you? “Paragraphica,” from @BjoernKarmann.

Try it here.

* Aesop

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As we point and click, we might recall that it was on this date in 1949 that George Orwell published his masterpiece of dystopian speculative fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and introduced terms like “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “Newspeak,” and “Memory hole” into the vernacular.

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