• GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    125
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    7 months ago

    This is not a hill I’d want to die on, but I do understand thinking this photo is fine. If I hadn’t been told it was from Playboy, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s a conventionally-attractive woman in a hat showing a little shoulder. I wouldn’t be upset over Michaelangelo’s David either. It is less sexual than like 90% of modern TV or mass-market advertising. I suspect a similar image of “cleaner” provenance would not garner much attention at all, honestly.

    But it is weird that an image from such a source was chosen in the first place. It is understandable that it makes people uncomfortable, and it seems like there should be no shortage of suitable imagery that wouldn’t, so…easy sell, I’d think.

    On a related note, boy oh boy am I tired of every imagegen AI paper and project using the same type of vaguely fetishized portraits as examples.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      Apparently the team making the first scanner needed a good test photo and that was the best they had on hand at that moment in terms of color variation and intensity.

      • HarkMahlberg@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        55
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Which is still weird.

        Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California … along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague’s conference paper. … Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner…

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

        Everything about the story sounds like it was a rush job, a decision made on a whim, after exhausting their existing catalog of test images. And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession? They don’t even say who it was, probably to protect them from any embarrassing professional consequences. To me, that’s probably the strongest reason to retire it: it’s unprofessional.

        • dankm@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          40
          ·
          7 months ago

          And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession?

          Probably a random grad student. They were just coming out of the “sexual revolution” of the 60s at that point. It’d be a lot weirder ten years earlier or ten years later.

          That a similar thing did happen ten years earlier is the weird part, I think.

        • million@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          Keep in mind that Playboy had a reputation as more than just porn. A lot of really respected authors had work published in Playboy.

          I not sure of its culture status when the event in question happened, but it would have been different then say, Penthouse.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      There’s a bit more to the scan. You usually see the cropped version, but the full version has naughty bits. Not sure if it’s ever been published that way in journals.

      • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        7 months ago

        No there’s not, the scan thats been used has cropped out the nudity, it’s in like the second paragraph,

        Usage of the Lenna image in image processing began in June or July 1973 when an assistant professor named Alexander Sawchuck and a graduate student at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute scanned a square portion of the centerfold image with a primitive drum scanner, omitting nudity present in the original image. They scanned it for a colleague’s conference paper, and after that, others began to use the image as well.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      7 months ago

      I really don’t think the image itself is the issue. It’s the culture that would lead to brazenly sharing a porn magazine aroundnthe office, and subsequently using the image for a test photo. Then that same culture decided it should be standard because they liked looking at it. It indicates a culture of objectification of women. If an industry feels like sharing porn around is perfectly acceptable, you have to consider what else they think is acceptable. That’s what makes people uncomfortable (I assume, though I’m a straight man so not personal experience, just empathy).

        • Dempf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Absolutely nothing. But imagine you’re working with some people and everyone’s constantly posting porn in the group chat. You’re just trying to kind of exist and get your work done. You might start to feel pretty uncomfortable with that culture.

          There’s definitely a line between sex positivity, and including other people without their clear consent.