Toby Ord: image models are like a lossy compression format for photos

tobyordoxford · x · 2026-09-09

Oxford researcher Toby Ord responds to a discussion on how much information a photograph contains: he doubts a model could reproduce a photo it has never seen, since the prompt carries too little information. He likens image models to a compressed image format that can't reproduce all the noise in a photo — part of a broader exchange on whether prompt information content can define artistic contribution.

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