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The photos accompanying this article have been enhanced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Well actually – to be more accurate – they have been enhanced by Damen Naval’s Pak Cheung using Generative AI. Considering his job as an xR Solution Architect, it is not surprising that Pak also experiments with AI as a hobby. “I am very interested in emerging technologies,” he says. “And definitely those technologies that speak to my imagination, like AI and VR.”
Pak Cheung.
His interest in utilising Generative AI as a “post-production tool to reimagine existing content” took him to the Zeeland Archives, where he found a huge collection of archived photos from the early days of the Royal Schelde Shipyard in Vlissingen, going all the way back to the late nineteenth century. “These photos really show the shipbuilding heritage of this province but also the close relationship with the sea.”
Although GenAI software is currently maturing relatively rapidly, resulting in several applications with usable UIs like ChatGPT’s Dall-E, they all limit the parameters one can use to guide the generation process, resulting in significant less control of the creative process. Because of this, Pak uses the terminal in Windows as opposed to using readily made applications (with its limitations). “This approach requires much more effort and understanding of the technology, but simultaneously allows for much more granular control when generating images,” explains Pak.
However, even when taking the rapid evolution of the technology into account, GenAI still has a lot of maturing to do in terms of usability, efficiency, and capacity. For example, the technology requires so much computing power, that generating one image locally generally takes 15 minutes.
Check below for three examples of photos from the “Schelde collection” at the Zeeland Archives, before and after AI.
Pak is pleased with the results: “I feel like we can enhance the cultural value of these archived photos by bringing them closer to today’s reality; either upscaling some of the very grainy pictures that you find in the archives, and/or re-colourising them to make them fit a bit more into our everyday lives.” And, although he does this at the moment purely as a hobby, he is honest about his ambitions to eventually monetise these endeavours. “For sure! It’d be amazing if a side-hustle can be created out of this,” he adds.
Aside of enhancing old photos in his free time, Pak sees some potential for Damen Naval using AI. “Companies generally already gather massive amounts of data. Being able to parse this conveniently into information for the task at hand, allows engineers to make better-informed decisions using considerably less time and effort.”
The benefits of using AI over manual efforts are clear: data processing is time-consuming and not very exciting. Pak concludes: “If we can automate certain processes, then we can use our energy more innovatively. However, because of the client-confidentiality issues linked to Damen Naval’s data and the sensitive nature of the industry (in terms of security), this might be a far-fetched dream for the foreseeable future.”