What the Kate Middleton photo scandal means for the future of photography
Thanks to smartphones, we’re all photographers now. We’re also all photo editors; AI-powered tools like Pixel Pro’s Magic Eraser and Facetune make airbrushing super easy. And, as we’ve seen over the last few days, many of us are pretty good at recognizing doctored photos. Kate Middleton, who posted a bizarrely edited photo of her kids with eerily cropped fingers and clothing, soon apologized for doing what lots of us do: lightly editing our photos so we look a little less bad. It’s the latest development in an abysmal PR cycle for the royals. Here’s a complete timeline of the weirdness surrounding Kate’s whereabouts; also, some funny tweets curated by pop culture connoisseur Brooke Hammerling.
Photojournalist and AI expert Thomas Smith sees the debacle as evidence that we’re losing trust in photography. The photojournalism industry solved this problem long ago, Smith writes, by “creating rigorous codes of ethics and only accepting images from trusted photographers who abide by them consistently over years or decades.” But those rules don’t apply to the rest of us.
The result: A future where every photo we see may have been edited somehow, and where realistic imagery no longer can be taken at face value. How might we verify an image’s accuracy in the future? Smith predicts:
- Digital signatures: SONY is collaborating with the Associated Press to test in-camera verification tech. In the future, digital signatures may help us track when and how photos were edited. Leica just launched the first digital camera with built-in e-signing technology.
- The analog revival: Maybe we’ll start using film again? The M series camera (with real film!), also from Leica, sold 10x better in 2023 than a decade ago. The analog photography trend parallels a vinyl revival: In 2022, vinyl sales of Taylor Swift’s Midnights outsold its CDs — that hadn’t happened since 1987. The less we trust in digital media, the more we cling to physical objects that are indisputably real.
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From the archive: Job interviews are nonsense?
Product leader Brad Dunn explains why he stopped interviewing candidates for senior roles. “Job interviews mean you hire the best actor on the day — not the best candidate,” he contends. A Harvard Business Review article claims that experience does not predict success in a new job, and neither does how well you talk about your experience. Dunn used this research and his own experience to ditch interviews companywide. Instead, his team created a system for candidate auditions.
We audition product managers (and Designers too for that matter) in the same way actors are auditioned for a movie. In our specially designed auditions, product managers perform real-world exercises to assess how they think about problems in an environment where nobody from the company knows anything about their experience, their background, or their formal education.
Here’s Dunn’s contrarian hiring process.
Your daily dose of practical wisdom about small talk
Short, frequent breaks for small talk are vital for boosting energy and productivity. Those first 3 minutes of every Zoom when people chat about weather? They serve an important purpose.
Written by Harris Sockel
Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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