To the devs working on AI, my thanks and congratulations on really important contributions to darktable. The AI masking feature is already so fast and helpful it is my default masking solution for every module and makes editing so much more convenient and quick. The AI Denoise work is progressing really well and I am often using it instead of DXO PureRaw, which is a testament to the calibre of the work.
Feature Request: Tagging photos in darktable has been made easier by the Quick Tag module, but it could be much easier with AI image recognition. RapidRaw, another open source photo editing tool, has this feature and it works progressively better as you use it, which I think indicates that it enhances its own LLM with your data to add image tags based on your classifications. This feature would be fantastic in darktable.
AI Culling. I often bring home thousands of photos and even with AI subject recognition in my camera, there are often quite a few out of focus shots. It could be great if a module could be developed to perform this task.
I am sure someone will object to these ideas. Fine. Some will also tell me to do what I ask for. Also fine. If I could I would.
Yes, they went badly, I agree. One of the recent discussions even “went” to personal attack on me. But I want to say that the culprit is not some mythical “AI” (I hate this term, it’s just a hyped marketing name, in fact in our case it’s neural networks). And the problem is also not in the discussions that somehow go in a bad direction by themselves. The culprit is always a specific person who puts their opinions above civilized human communication.
And if the thread just turns into fruitless and off-topic comments about how each of us feels about AI as a phenomenon… I don’t see anything bad with that for us as a community, except that it’s just a waste of time.
I understand that this is what you feel. I even understand perfectly well why you have such concerns. But what does this mean from a practical point of view? Should we shut up and not discuss the implementation of certain features in darktable? How long do we have to wait until the right time comes?
I quote a tweet from the official GIMP Twitter account:
“We have a no-AI policy: we need people who’ll understand the code they write - it needs to be maintained”
In darktable, in essence, we have exactly the same “no-AI policy” (although not yet formally published): we have to see that contributors understand the code they propose to add. This does not mean that it is forbidden to use AI coding assistants. Such a requirement would be as stupid as, say, the requirement not to use fragments from StackOverflow…
But I don’t know how you understood it… Maybe you read it as GIMP banning tools and algorithms that use neural networks - no, I don’t see any confirmation.