The trend of UFO sightings follows revolutions in photography. There’s been spikes in the amount of them when cameras became widespread and photos were easier to develop, when cameras became digital, when photo-manipulation software came about, and this next one will be because machine learning-based video generation is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

  • Hegar@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    I always heard that UFO sightings dropped drastically once cell phones became widespread.

    • 13igTyme@piefed.social
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      3 months ago

      Yes. OP is making stuff up. As cameras became better we started getting less and less sightings for UFO, Bigfoot, Lockness, ect.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Aside from that one time the Goodyear blimp in NJ took a 5 month break in 2020 and then showed up to the first Giants game and then people filmed the UFO.

      NJ also had a mass panic last year with “drones”. Absolutely a UFO rash by real definitions, not the UFO=alien version. Those people went outside at night and saw distant planes landing for the first time. There’s what, 4 major airports that put descent over the state? I’m sure there were some drones (something about [training for?] lost radioactive material) but it was definitely less than what was reported. Cell phone video was an awful option for aircraft at night but everywhere.

      • curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
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        3 months ago

        The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had approved the drones for research and many also belonged to people in the area, President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her first White House briefing on Tuesday.

        • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          The NJ MAGAs were big mad that even their donny couldn’t tell them it was “suv-sized drones” all along. And man, the people that saw actual planes, real planes, plain planes, and called them holograms… I ate so much popcorn watching that fiasco unfold. So many grainy videos, so many spooked people livestreaming, so many hobby drones, so many cgi/Ai videos, and the orbs! So many orb videos from people who’ve never focused a camera at night, so many existing conspiriscists finding their place in the limelight. That was a riot.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    I have just assumed any UFO footage that is more than a fuzzy light that may just be something very small and close to the camera is faked. I mean, the videos where you very clearly see an alien craft (or aliens) are obviously bullshit CGI. And since no real alien craft exists (or, at least no actual photos or video exist for an AI to train on), the AI’s shit will still look CGI or painted.

    • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
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      3 months ago

      Corridor on YouTube still make the best ufo debunking videos imo. Remember when they had REAL PROOF because even the smart US government couldn’t explain it and they released it. Even their super smart sky terrorists had no idea what they saw. Oh yeah, that’s a bug. Good job guys

  • Pechente@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    In addition to intentional manipulation, AI might hallucinate things that aren’t there when used in computational photography when it’s trying to fill in the gaps.

    Blurry cloud? Now it’s a weird looking airplane.

    • Ech@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      AI might hallucinate things that aren’t there when used in computational photography when it’s trying to fill in the gaps.

      So it’s putting things that “aren’t there” in when it’s…filling in things that aren’t there? This is why “hallucinate” is such a problematic term. It obfuscates the fact that this is what these programs do with everything - they were designed from the start to make shit up. It’s not “hallucinating”, it’s fulfilling its core programming function.

  • Davy Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    AI-made aliens of all kinds and sizes. I wouldn’t mind recreating the cantina scene from the original Star Wars trilogy by walking into a bar and, in real-time, using deepfake technology to transform everyone into a random alien species from Star Wars.

  • phorq@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I’m just waiting for Bigfoot’s OnlyFans videos directed by Tarantino to finally leak

      • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The study, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications by researchers from Hebrew University and Bar Ilan University, found surprising links between reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and macroeconomic trends:

        Counter-cyclical pattern: Within a given region over time, UAP sightings tend to increase during economic recessions and decrease during economic booms. Wealth correlation: Across different regions, sightings are more common in wealthier areas. Attention proxy: The researchers argue that these patterns align with traditional metrics of public attention and that during times of crisis or uncertainty, people may have more free time or be more inclined to notice and report unusual events, or perhaps focus on extraordinary phenomena to ease anxiety. Policy implications: The study suggests that this UAP metric could help policymakers understand how variations in public attention might influence regional responses to monetary policy decisions, such as interest rate changes.

        • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Thank you! These are fantastic details, and I appreciate it! The correlation between having extra free time, and therefore having more time to see and report UFO’s is really practical. Great study.

          Whats interesting is that result implies that there’s a fixed amount of UFO’s to be seen. If numbers go up or down according to the amount of time available in a population, it certainly implies there’s a fixed amount of UFO activity that we are or are not aware of depending on how often we’re looking. Granted, it’s likely this activity is explainable as false positives: drones in the sky, kites, etc have all been mistaken as UFO’s. So it could just be a fixed amount of human made things that are misidentified.

          But the same result would occur if it wasn’t false positives. And that’s facinating. I would have assumed the amount being reported would stay relatively fixed, or just vary greatly regardless of income.

          Thanks again!