The debate of the week in our country has been started by Íñigo Errejón in a speech that has become almost as controversial as it is viral. The leader of Más País urged the government last Tuesday to pressure Instagram to show users if an image is retouched. The idea is to prevent the youngest from continuously exposing themselves to artificial bodies while using the social network. The intervention of the politician makes water everywhere, but here we love to talk about image and technology, so let’s get into the rag. Is it possible or not to detect if an image is retouched?
Can you detect if an image is retouched?
Íñigo Errejón wants Instagram to notify users when images of artificial bodies retouched by image editing programs are displayed. We could debate whether there are more important problems in our country to debate about, but we are not going to leave this topic and try to unravel, if possible, what this politician is asking for. Errejón says that Meta would not have a hard time doing it, since it immediately censors any image that contains nipples or is too explicit. What is true in here?
Common sense
With the naked eye, it is possible to determine if an image is retouched, simply because the same tools are almost always used to manipulate them. The liquefied , for example, serves to reduce and increase volumes. If not done correctly, it can distort the background, with lines that are not natural.
The same thing happens when a face has no texture , or when the contrast of light and shadow is exaggerated – although this can also be done with traditional makeup.
On the other hand, it could be possible to check if an image is retouched by the orientation of the shadows or even by the EXIF metadata of the image. Of course, if an image has a professional retouching , forget about hunting it down by this method.
with tools
There are also apps that are used to detect if an image is retouched. In fact, image banks often use this type of program to automatically reject images that are poorly retouched and thus prevent their workers from wasting time reviewing bad work.
However, almost all of these tools work the same. What they do is a separation of frequencies to analyze the texture layer of the image. If there are constantly repeating patterns, the image has been retouched with a clone stamp . And if there are texture sweeps into an area, it’s obvious that the ‘Liquify’ tool has been used.
A simple and free example is FotoForensics . However, there are payment alternatives such as Amped Authenticate, used even for serious research.
If you think the problem is the retouched images, you have it clear
At this point, it’s time to clarify a few more things. With the resolution of Instagram images, it’s not that easy to take advantage of tools like FotoForensics . The example that Íñigo gives of the nipple is not good either, since Instagram detects them using a GAN (an adversarial generative network). For that AI, detecting a nipple is very easy. In fact, such an intelligence can be trained in a matter of hours. However, training an AI to differentiate a retouched image from one that is not is not that simple, and would constantly give false positives.
And it is that, all this debate of mental health is very good, but it is ridiculous to blame only Instagram. Photoshop is not the only problem . We are not in the year 2003. Now there are much more dangerous things, such as filters that retouch faces in seconds —which even work in real-time video—, AIs that generate photos of perfect people who do not exist or even cosmetic surgery, that is sold as the ideal solution to end insecurity once and for all and is not pursued by governments.
The problem goes far beyond Instagram
Would Instagram have to take action in this regard? If we get very picky, we will also have to put a sign warning that the suitors of the Telecinco program on duty have swelled up on steroids. Giving your body a Cyberpunk style seems to be an essential requirement to work on TV. Would we listen to this same politician say that the audience should be warned that the weatherman has put on hair or that the presenter of a TV game show has Botox on her face to camouflage her wrinkles?
And all this, without entering into the debate that advertising has also been showing people who do not have the whites of their eyes naturally. The world was already disgustingly shallow before social media became popular. Putting Instagram at the center of the debate is quite absurd.
