Surprisingly good intro to how we make and re-make memory all the time, and how a photo is never "just reality". But in the end, it doesn't really catch its point. It only introduces AI as a tool we use to consciously change the representations of our memory, the photos. That makes it fundamentally different than the reconstruction of memory we as individuals normally (unconsciously) experience, because now, it has a conscious element. We willed it, and the whole point of constructing memory normally is that it happens structurally, to make a narrative fit, to align memory with other memories and frames we use to see the world. (the video has that line, "memory is what we want it to be! well no, exactly not. There is usually no "willing" this process.

This is the crux of the AI matter, and it never talks about this: now, we do reconstruct consciously, by telling the AI, "add a cottage here". That isn't all new, only that until now, institutions have done this much more than people have. States and also companies construct memories for political reasons all the time (Hobsbawm namedrop here, Invention of Tradition is a good read on how countries do it). People are, then, on the receiving end of this in schools and the media.

I guess the implicit question is, do we alter our memories of our vacations and personal past with AI-augmented photos? It never comes around to it, or to the deeper questions about it. If you changed the photo consciously, you'd now have to forget that. States also forget, but the people who constructed re-written history usually don't - they reconstruct this -for others-. Does the video imply that family history is changed -for others-?

This tiger set itself up and never jumped.

For me, this is the topic of the year - if not the decade