PhotoVogue Festival 2023: The Talks
This conversation took place on November 17th 2023 as part of the PhotoVogue Festival 2023 which centered around the theme “What Makes us Human?: Image in the Age of A.I.”
Racial bias has an extensive, well-documented history in both the medium of photography and field of technology. The explosion of A.I.’s popularity with tools like Chat GPT and DALL-E have also echoed the questions and concerns that scholars and activists have raised about how these biases might be accelerated in these new tools. Florian Koenigsberger is a photographer and technologist who leads Google’s efforts to make camera technologies that more accurately and authentically render people of color—especially with darker skin tones. During "Real Tone Imagining A.I. for Communities of Color" he will share the deeply interdisciplinary and collaborative journey of building Real Tone on the Pixel Camera, and explore imaginative possibilities—and limitations—of how else A.I. could serve communities of color in the imaging space.
Florian Koenigsberger is a photographer and technologist on a mission to advance representational justice for historically underserved communities. In the wake of Mr. Floyd s murder in the summer of 2020, he helped found See In Black, a collective of Black photographers whose two-week print sale raised over $500,000 for five intersectional, Black-centric charities. At Google, he built and leads the company s Image Equity Initiative, a cross-product mission to fight historical racial bias by creating camera and imagery products that work more equitably for people of color, especially those with darker skin tones. His leadership in creating Real Tone—Google Pixel s camera technology that more accurately and authentically renders people of color—was recognized with a 2022 Grand Prix Lion at Cannes Lions, and the 2021 ADCOLOR Innovator Award.
"Real Tone Imagining A.I. for Communities of Color" is part of day 1 “Charting New Territories: The Ethical Implications of A.I. in Image Creation” of the Symposium taking place at BASE Milano on Friday 17th November.
The event is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
Friday 17th November - Day 1 “Charting New Territories: The Ethical Implications of A.I. in Image Creation” will also feature:
- “Text to Image Prompt: The technology and science behind A.I. and what it could mean for image makers?” by Mel McVeigh
- "A.I., Photography, and our Futures” by Fred Ritchin
- “How the Content Authenticity Initiative Combats Digital Mis/Disinformation” by Santiago Lyon
- “Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Law: Can EU regulations protect humanity?” by Guido Noto La Diega
- "Multimedia forensics when digital photography meets artificial intelligence" by Paolo Bestagini
- "Navigating Truth in the Age of A.I.: Fact-Checking and Media Literacy" by Daniele Moretti
- “Addressing Ethical Dilemmas: Image in the age of A.I.”, Group Discussion
PhotoVogue Festival is a project directed by Alessia Glaviano (Head of Global PhotoVogue) and co-curated by Francesca Marani (Senior Photo Editor, Vogue Italia), Chiara Bardelli Nonino (Editor, Writer and Curator), Daniel Rodríguez Gordillo (Content Operations Strategy Manager, Condé Nast) and Caterina De Biasio (Visual Editor, PhotoVogue)
