Do GIMP, Krita, Kdenlive or Inkscape use AI? I did not think they did, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe I’m missing something about AI assisted compression and correction, which I admit I’m not familiar with.
Does this only apply to digital media used in mainstream sources or does it mean everyone who uses editing software is using AI?
There are AI plugins for all of them… but they’re optional for now (2025). Kdenlive is working on integrating correction and background removal generative AI. Main offender is Adobe, which is the “standard” workflow for most media processing, and is forcing AI everywhere, including something as simple as color curves… then slapping a tag of “made using AI” in the output file. Inkscape is foremost a SVG editor, but Adobe Illustrator already has generative AI to allow stuff like rotating vector graphics “in 3D”, it’s only time for Inkscape to follow suit. Even Windows Notepad got some AI features recently 🤦
AI assisted compression and correction
JPG compression itself is a sort of “AI light”, where it analyzes chunks of an image for perceptual similarity, to drop “irrelevant” data. Adobe has added a feature to do that, but using AI in the analysis, tweaking/generating blocks so there are more similarities. It’s likely others will follow suit: “it’s lossy compression after all, right? …right?”
Lossy audio encoding (MP3, etc), also has a perceptual profile to increase block similarities, they’re adding AI there the same way as in images.
Videos… well, they’re a mix of images and audio, with temporal sequences already breaking images into key frames, intermediates, generated, etc. Generatively tweaking some of those to make them more similar, within perceptual limits, also improves compression.
Does this only apply to digital media used in mainstream sources or does it mean everyone who uses editing software is using AI?
Main issue lies at the source: cameras
Unless you’re using a large sensor professional camera, all the “prosumer” and smartphone sensors, are… let’s put it mildly… UTTER CRAP. They’re too small, with lenses too bad, unable to avoid CoC, diffraction, or chromatic aberration.
Before it even spits out a “RAW” image, it’s already been processed to hell and the way back. Modern consumer “better” cameras… use more AI to do a “better” processing job. What you see, is way past the point of whatever the camera has ever seen.
They all use algorithms – that’s what software is – but equating what’s been done for decades in software with AI is disingenuous. By this definition of AI, that was baked into Quark 3.3 and Photoshop 5 (not CS5, just 5).
What used to be done for decades, is being turned up to 100,000%. Instead of clever algorithms written directly by people, black-box AI algorithms and generative AI are being used to modify content so it fits better to the expectations of the old algorithms.
I wouldn’t be surprised if new compression algorithms came out in the next years, openly taking advantage of generative AI to recreate the “original image”… “original intent/concept?”
Do GIMP, Krita, Kdenlive or Inkscape use AI? I did not think they did, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe I’m missing something about AI assisted compression and correction, which I admit I’m not familiar with.
Does this only apply to digital media used in mainstream sources or does it mean everyone who uses editing software is using AI?
There are AI plugins for all of them… but they’re optional for now (2025). Kdenlive is working on integrating correction and background removal generative AI. Main offender is Adobe, which is the “standard” workflow for most media processing, and is forcing AI everywhere, including something as simple as color curves… then slapping a tag of “made using AI” in the output file. Inkscape is foremost a SVG editor, but Adobe Illustrator already has generative AI to allow stuff like rotating vector graphics “in 3D”, it’s only time for Inkscape to follow suit. Even Windows Notepad got some AI features recently 🤦
JPG compression itself is a sort of “AI light”, where it analyzes chunks of an image for perceptual similarity, to drop “irrelevant” data. Adobe has added a feature to do that, but using AI in the analysis, tweaking/generating blocks so there are more similarities. It’s likely others will follow suit: “it’s lossy compression after all, right? …right?”
Lossy audio encoding (MP3, etc), also has a perceptual profile to increase block similarities, they’re adding AI there the same way as in images.
Videos… well, they’re a mix of images and audio, with temporal sequences already breaking images into key frames, intermediates, generated, etc. Generatively tweaking some of those to make them more similar, within perceptual limits, also improves compression.
Main issue lies at the source: cameras
Unless you’re using a large sensor professional camera, all the “prosumer” and smartphone sensors, are… let’s put it mildly… UTTER CRAP. They’re too small, with lenses too bad, unable to avoid CoC, diffraction, or chromatic aberration.
Before it even spits out a “RAW” image, it’s already been processed to hell and the way back. Modern consumer “better” cameras… use more AI to do a “better” processing job. What you see, is way past the point of whatever the camera has ever seen.
…and then, it goes into the software pipeline. ☠️
They all use algorithms – that’s what software is – but equating what’s been done for decades in software with AI is disingenuous. By this definition of AI, that was baked into Quark 3.3 and Photoshop 5 (not CS5, just 5).
What used to be done for decades, is being turned up to 100,000%. Instead of clever algorithms written directly by people, black-box AI algorithms and generative AI are being used to modify content so it fits better to the expectations of the old algorithms.
I wouldn’t be surprised if new compression algorithms came out in the next years, openly taking advantage of generative AI to recreate the “original image”… “original intent/concept?”