The Photograph

A Short Story Based on A Twitter Exchange with Neil Gaimen

The young man stood on the Quai de l’Archevêché, his back the Seine, facing the Catherdral.

He lifted his left arm, reached across and on the back of his wrist inscribed an ‘i’.

A millisecond after the dash-dot ;

The ear-mounted smartphone had logged his location, orientation, the tilt of his head, the date and time of day, the weather and more.

The Cloud AI had ingested the stream of numbers sending a million tendrils out across fields of GPU servers.

Out of a million candidate images the highest scoring was selected. The AI adjusted for the man’s height, precise location and time of day, generating an image of the Cathedral as real and compelling as any taken in the real world.

But that wasn’t enough. The image sharing app took another millisecond to analyse the picture. Was it good enough to be posted by the user, to generate that serotonin-burst of interactions among his followers? Was the lighting stunning ? Did the colours pop ? Were the flying arches, jagged spires, and angry gargoyles pin-prick sharp? Was there an American spoiling the view, stood, head in the way of the Gothic? Enhance. Recreate. Remove. In-fill. Done.

Trained on the billions of images already posted by its millions of users the App’s AI adjusted and tweaked, adding details and colour that had not existed in any reality, removing the backs of heads, in-filling the newly empty pixels. Shadows became coal black without dimming the darkest of details. Highlights became star-sharp without blowing out. Made up sunlight through made up blossom with its made up but glorious Bokeh.

The young man looked at the picture presented to him via his retinal screen. He swiped to post.

“Nice Pic!” Smiley

“Sweet Capture!” Thumbs Up

“Love it!” Heart. Heart.

Shared. Shared. Liked. A thousand times.

It was time to go. It was getting late and he was hungry.

He lifted the headset off and set it aside. Brushed his hair back into shape and headed to the fridge.

A Short Story by Rob James based on a tweeter exchange.