This is not a hill I’d want to die on, but I do understand thinking this photo is fine. If I hadn’t been told it was from Playboy, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. It’s a conventionally-attractive woman in a hat showing a little shoulder. I wouldn’t be upset over Michaelangelo’s David either. It is less sexual than like 90% of modern TV or mass-market advertising. I suspect a similar image of “cleaner” provenance would not garner much attention at all, honestly.
But it is weird that an image from such a source was chosen in the first place. It is understandable that it makes people uncomfortable, and it seems like there should be no shortage of suitable imagery that wouldn’t, so…easy sell, I’d think.
On a related note, boy oh boy am I tired of every imagegen AI paper and project using the same type of vaguely fetishized portraits as examples.
Apparently the team making the first scanner needed a good test photo and that was the best they had on hand at that moment in terms of color variation and intensity.
Which is still weird.
Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California … along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague’s conference paper. … Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
Everything about the story sounds like it was a rush job, a decision made on a whim, after exhausting their existing catalog of test images. And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession? They don’t even say who it was, probably to protect them from any embarrassing professional consequences. To me, that’s probably the strongest reason to retire it: it’s unprofessional.
And who bring a Playboy mag to their university’s computer lab, and advertises their possession?
Probably a random grad student. They were just coming out of the “sexual revolution” of the 60s at that point. It’d be a lot weirder ten years earlier or ten years later.
That a similar thing did happen ten years earlier is the weird part, I think.
Keep in mind that Playboy had a reputation as more than just porn. A lot of really respected authors had work published in Playboy.
I not sure of its culture status when the event in question happened, but it would have been different then say, Penthouse.
There’s a bit more to the scan. You usually see the cropped version, but the full version has naughty bits. Not sure if it’s ever been published that way in journals.
No there’s not, the scan thats been used has cropped out the nudity, it’s in like the second paragraph,
Usage of the Lenna image in image processing began in June or July 1973 when an assistant professor named Alexander Sawchuck and a graduate student at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute scanned a square portion of the centerfold image with a primitive drum scanner, omitting nudity present in the original image. They scanned it for a colleague’s conference paper, and after that, others began to use the image as well.
I really don’t think the image itself is the issue. It’s the culture that would lead to brazenly sharing a porn magazine aroundnthe office, and subsequently using the image for a test photo. Then that same culture decided it should be standard because they liked looking at it. It indicates a culture of objectification of women. If an industry feels like sharing porn around is perfectly acceptable, you have to consider what else they think is acceptable. That’s what makes people uncomfortable (I assume, though I’m a straight man so not personal experience, just empathy).
What’s wrong with sharing porn around?
Absolutely nothing. But imagine you’re working with some people and everyone’s constantly posting porn in the group chat. You’re just trying to kind of exist and get your work done. You might start to feel pretty uncomfortable with that culture.
There’s definitely a line between sex positivity, and including other people without their clear consent.
Here is an uncropped version of the image: [NSFW] https://mypmates.club/1972/Miss-November/Lena-Soderberg
Considering this it’s more understandable that it’s controversial.
I don’t see anything weird here…
The weird part is in the mirror.
Some people are triggered by nudity. On another timeline the conclusion of this “scandal” would be to include a retro photo of a naked dude in the test image data set (and maybe also switch Lena’s photo if she doesn’t want it in there anymore).
I don’t think the reason this is an issue is because it’s pornographic. It’s because it indicates a certain opinion that some people in the field had/have. Even in professional academic papers they were using a pornographic image of a woman, which shows their opinion of women is just as object to lust after.
Yes and I’m saying in a more sexually open society we’d just admit that people lust after people of all genders, and include some others in the data set.
I disagree. I think in a more sexually open society people wouldn’t be treated like pieces of meat. They’d be treated like people. Their opinions about sexual content would be considered.
I think in a more sexually open society …their opinions about sexual content would be considered.
Like how I said in my original comment “switch Lena’s photo if she doesn’t want it in there anymore”…
So as you can see, I was already saying a sexually open world would be considerate, even though you’re phrasing it as if we’re disagreeing. Perhaps this is because you wish the conversation to go to an oppositional and hence repressive/aggressive place.
I think that would be a reasonable response if one felt subjugated and traumatized, injured and trapped by the current patriarchal systems of sex and power imbalance, and it might be difficult to see how sexuality, nudity, and pornography could be sociologically dealt with, understood, or theorised about outside of that framework.
Thus a dream of a better world can be stolen and held back be the pre-existing and persisting traumas of how we treat sex, bodies, nudity, and self-image in this one.
But there can be sex positive and body positive form of sex, sexuality and pornography that include being comfortable with nudity, and even taboo. I was proposing such a parallel world…
But you continue to cast it as the same as this world. That is your choice, but to continue to make that same choice is an act of killing communication and hence progress on the issues of this world.
The nature of fiction even in a passing comment, like the one I made, is to explore the possible and impossible. So beware what you make impossible.
It’s not just her opinion on the picture that matters though. Other women (and probably other people) don’t want it to be used as a standard test image.
I like that you’re making it out like I’m saying anything is impossible. I’m not. I’m stating that if people say they’re uncomfortable with something then they’re uncomfortable with it. It doesn’t matter how sexually open anything it. People’s opinions and consent are important, both that of the subject of the photo as well as other people in the field using this photo.
Yes, I’m saying in a more sexually liberated society, one that’s more comfortable with nudity and the human body, people might go: “Oh of course we can include nudes in the data set, here’s a bunch more!”.
You’re saying in a sexually liberated society one more comfortable with nudity, people would still be viewing this in a state of discomfort.
You came here to say this, regardless of anything I said, and so are yourself not interested in the consent of all parties in this very conversation (which is with a person by the way).
I am just a prop, and you simply don’t need to listen to me. Because you will say what you have to say and will mutilate whatever was being said in order to return to the status quo regardless of the comment you were replying to.
This isn’t about me, it’s about what you have to say. So I hope you feel better about having a one sided and belittling conversation.
I find you inadequate as an intelligent chat partner, so will block you now. I suspect that you will gain satisfaction from this, as a repressive. So enjoy.
Streisand effect in motion. Me and a million other people get to see this for the first time today.
But the idea isn’t to keep anyone from seeing it. The idea is simply for a lusty image not to be used in academic papers (probably also better that it’s not used in college classes too).
I love pictures of scantily clad women more than almost anyone. But even I can agree that the Lena image sends the wrong message to women joining the field.
A lot of people in this thread have a lot of really strong opinions without actually reading the article. The model was cool with it, but she herself also thinks it’s time to retire the photo from how it’s being used in image processing, where it likely isn’t even necessary in the first place. Respect her on that. I seriously doubt she cares if it remains accessible on the web for the pervs worrying about censorship. It’ll still be there if you desperately don’t want to lose your opportunity to take a gander.
There’s a value to having a standard image or images that are used to assess compression algorithms’ performance. It could just as easily be a picture of a bouquet of flowers, or a bunch of puppies.
There’s also value in not basing your image compression algorithm on a low resolution scan of a magazine from the 1970s.
Seems like this is a much more important than any of the other discussions going on. How many results were tainted by the fact that they were compressing a dithered print image.
Considering it was defined as the benchmark, none.
Yeah, there is, so do not do that and let others do that if they want.
Everybody can use whichever pictures they like as far as I am concerned.
FFS, it’s as if there could be only one way for everyone
Forsén is quoted as saying, “I retired from modelling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me.”
Since Lena herself decided she wanted to retire the image, I don’t have any qualms with them not accepting new papers using it. It’s really weird that her “big break” came from scientific papers, of all things.
I do wonder, however, if more recent papers (2010 and forward) using that image were doing so as reference to older papers, or entirely contained to their own research.
This is kinda interesting. I work in this field and have seen that image show up all the time in papers but never knew the origins.
I think it’s the right move to ban it and I’m surprised there’s so many people defending it. This isn’t about censorship or being a prude or anything like that. It’s just a bit weird that it’s from a playboy and if you can’t understand how that would make some people uncomfortable then you might be a bit lacking in empathy.
The 3d world has Utah teapots and Stanford bunnies and dragons which are all very neutral and don’t hurt anyone. Perhaps we can move on and use some less alienating pictures for image processing papers, too.
I think it’s nice to have traditions inside areas of research, and if somebody said “let’s retire the Utah teapot. It’s too simple a construct and has no bearing anymore” I’d be opposed.
Similar with “Lenna”. Is it a good test image? Not anymore, but if somebody wants to include it as tradition then let them. It hurts no one. Nobody is making money off it. Most people just know it as an image that’s been in many seminal graphics papers they want to emulate, but even if they do know it as being from an issue of Playboy, why is that a problem?
I’m not angry about it. I’m not going to die on any hill about it. I just see it as pointless and infantile for the IEEE to refuse papers over something so trivial.
I’m wary of the argument for any practice continuing being just because it’s always happened and is “tradition”. Similarly though I’m wary of the argument that a valid practice should cease just because it makes a few people uncomfortable. If the only thing going for the Lena image is “tradition” then there really is no argument for keeping it.
Just about anything can make a few people uncomfortable
The issue was that it did make some people uncomfortable, so it was harmful. You can’t just ignore the reasons stated and then say it’s pointless. The ban didn’t come out of nowhere.
That logic makes me uncomfortable, let’s ban you
Well said. I feel like so many people here are missing one of the biggest issues with the photo as far as I understand it, which is encouraging women into STEM. For many women I think this photo felt a bit like walking into a professor’s office to see they have bikini photos on their walls. It just cements the feeling that these sciences are boys’ clubs.
To end this, I will subject myself to being the test image. We’ll crop on my o-face while I’m doing your mom and your dad is a cuck in the corner.
What? Some people would call that art. And it will just be my face. We won’t see your dad with anal beads and cock cage in the picture.
If we only see my face in the picture what is the problem? Only you will know that the only time your mom could orgasm was with me.
You are strong enough to handle using this new picture, right?
Banning something harmless is censorship. It’s a test image of a beautiful woman, not glorifying violence or terrorism.
Utah teapots
Offensive to people who react bad to caffeine or whose relatives had been killed by a falling teapot.
Stanford bunnies
Offensive to people who think there’s a furry connection.
and if you can’t understand how that would make some people uncomfortable then you might be a bit lacking in empathy.
I can understand that and those people can use another image when making their own examples.
It’s not a bad thing to have more empathy, but there’s common sense.
Down the bottom there are some statistics about how many women experience sexual harassment and gender based discrimination in STEM positions. They also tend to have worse outcomes in general and fewer will go on to work in their field.
While this might seem like a small thing, ignoring these kinds of outdated and unnecessary boys club attitudes is exactly the kind of thing perpetuating these sorts of outcomes.
If you can’t see how using a cropped image from a playboy for no reason in an image processing paper is different from your made up examples and could make some people feel uncomfortable then maybe you’re lacking common sense and empathy.
It wasn’t chosen for no reason. It was chosen because it presents good test cases for image processing. Not great ones, just the best they had at that particular moment.
You’re right, I wasn’t particularly clear. That was certainly the case originally, I just don’t think there is a good reason for it going forward.
Historical reasons. I personally used it in a project around 2015 because of its history. And you’d need to use it if you’re comparing against anything else that used it, though given its age, that seems unlikely.
But like I said elsewhere, I’m ambivalent about its future use.
The thing is that those reasons are made up just like my examples.
While this might seem like a small thing, ignoring these kinds of outdated and unnecessary boys club attitudes is exactly the kind of thing perpetuating these sorts of outcomes.
I don’t think this is correct.
then maybe you’re lacking common sense and empathy.
Maybe I just don’t confuse empathy with doing what idiots want me to do.
People were surveyed about the image, there are articles about it, an entire documentary has been made about it with the support of Lenna. How you can just come along and say that’s all made up is honestly beyond me. And I’m pretty sure that the collective IEEE and the ethics researchers who have written about this aren’t idiots. I really think you are confused about what empathy is, but I don’t see myself convincing you of that. So uh, have a nice day.
I would be very surprised if the population of “people upset by the use of a teapot/bunny as a test render” was even within a couple orders of magnitude of “people upset by the use of a porn photo as a test image”
Saying the crop is a porn photo is like saying homeopathy has an active ingredient because “the water remembers”.
Huh, I am sorry, I feel too dumb but I don’t want to live with the doubt, I read the article and the Wikipedia links and I still don’t know how this is a thing, this is the first time I know about it.
What exactly was the meaning of this image in the tech fields? “What image processing tests”?
I understand the model is tired of it already, but this won’t disappear from the Internet, how is this article gonna benefit her?
Basically, people working on graphics-related algorithms needed to build a library of standard test images, so that when people published their work in an academic journal, they could easily demonstrate what that algorithm does, in a manner that is fairly obvious to anyone who is familiar with the image.
So someone, when they needed to pick an image that represents a person, scanned this photograph. And it could be argued that at the time, it was probably an interesting test image for a lot of reasons: person vs background, different textures, areas with soft and sharp focus, etc etc. If you developed, say, an image compression algorithm, those things are going to be headache in all photo portraits.
It’s probably not the best image by modern standards (being a low resolution scan of a photograph off of a printed magazine - not a photo print scan, not a direct film scan, and not comparable to digital photography). Also, it’s gotten overused to the point of absurdity. (Oh your hot new face detection algorithm works on this image? Well whoop-de-do.)
Here you go. A full explanation of everything.
i think i’ve seen it used to demo different image compression algorithms, things like that. it was used as an easy example test image, but this journal has now banned papers from using it because it is weird and creepy to be using cropped porn for that. this won’t benefit the model, but she was only pushing to ban it because she wants more women in IT fields.
If a sample image is “making some women feel unwelcome in the field” you may be too sensitive for life.
It’s the sample image and dozens of other things. For example: people telling them they’re too sensitive for life because they’re feeling uncomfortable looking at softcore porn while doing their work or research.
This is not porn; it’s an art. There is nothing creepy about it. Moreover, if this picture is the reason why women aren’t in this field, then there is definitely a more serious problem, but it’s not where you are looking.
Full picture (NSFW) https://mypmates.club/1972/Miss-November/Lena-Soderberg
It’s art, but it’s also porn. Those aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s from Playboy, which is a porn magazine. Look at it all you want, but it isn’t appropriate for research papers. There are plenty of alternatives.
It’s both. It’s artsy softcore pornography.
I certainly don’t think the full version would be appropriate, but I’m ambivalent about the cropped version.
I don’t think people should get their knickers in a twist about sex in the first place.
Everything about Playboy is creepy
Computers are dumb and need to be told how to take the data of an image (stored as a long series of 1s and 0s in memory) and draw it on the screen so you can see it. The people writing the software to do that needed an image to test with, just to make sure everything was working right.
Either because they were a bunch of lonely geeks in the 70s or they didn’t have any other good photos to scan in, they used a headshot of a PlayBoy model. They couldn’t have known that it would effectively become one of the first digital memes, meaning it’s still semi-frequently used by graphics programmers (professionals and enthusiasts).
I can’t claim to speak on the model’s motives, but it’s not hard to imagine that having their headshot used in perpetuity without consent would make someone uncomfortable.
My first PC with MSDOS 3 had some monochrome drawing app and this was one of the demo pictures.
For the curious, you can find the uncropped photo by searching Lemmy posts for “Lenna”. It was posted to [email protected] a few months ago.
Here’s a comment on said NSFW post
I won’t link the post directly as it’s NSFW
Right… Let’s eliminate every instance of nudity because religious zealots were offended by it in the past, and now leftist zealots are offended. Let’s remove the statue of David and all other art depicting the naked human body. Later, let’s remove anything from public view that could potentially offend anyone.
It does not seem like you heard the arguments presented in the article. It isn’t about being offended by any left or right wing politics, but because women engineers and scientists were uncomfortable about it for a variety of reasons. In a field which struggles to attract and keep female talent, this is a pretty big thing. The model herself spoke out and asked to be “retired from tech”.
So, I think the only somewhat valid argument is that Lena herself expressed the wish not to use her photo. The real issue is that ‘scientists were uncomfortable.’ Because if someone feels uncomfortable with the human body, it raises questions about their mental condition. Especially in this particular case, the picture is and has always been cropped, showing no nudity. The original source, ‘Playboy,’ has nothing to do with anything, and even if it did, this is still a very tasteful piece of art. Even if there was a man in this picture, I would say the same. This is just a picture showing a pleasing composition of the surroundings and a human female specimen. So, the question that remains is: Why would anybody feel uneasy seeing a woman in a hat? Those for whom this is a problem must imagine things (that make them uncomfortable) in their heads that are not in the picture. The problem is that our culture, including advertisements, fashion, and social media, distorts the perception of human bodies and how people, especially young ones, perceive their bodies. At the same time, young people often aren’t properly socialized regarding their sexuality and aren’t taught that the body is not subject to morality, and there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ body parts. They shouldn’t be reinforced in their erroneous thinking by canceling and censoring parts of reality. I’m not saying that those people are the issue. I’m saying that their behavior is a symptom of the real problem with the society that needs to be addressed.
Wait, you’re really pushing on this hard enough to advocate for child porn?
I have a friend who is a sex freelance journalist writing for everyone from the NYT to Playboy and she’s been outspoken recently around a neo-puritan movement by younger generations.
People aren’t having as much sex, have a lot more hangups about sex, are uncomfortable with sex depicted in media, etc.
This image didn’t even contain nudity - it’s a crop of the original that’s in question.
There are broader social impacts for seemingly innocuous efforts like these, and I don’t know it’s all that healthy for us to be constantly self-thought policing when it comes to sex. Those attitudes seem to be moving beyond the immediate focus and into general attitudes and behaviors around sexual hangups.
We’re seeing “purity culture”-like mentality infecting people who weren’t even raised in oppressive religious contexts.
I can see the same thing, and I couldn’t agree more. Do you happen to have an article of hers to share?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
On Wednesday, the IEEE Computer Society announced to members that, after April 1, it would no longer accept papers that include a frequently used image of a 1972 Playboy model named Lena Forsén.
An uncropped version of the 512×512-pixel test image originally appeared as the centerfold picture for the December 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine.
In 1997, Playboy helped track down Forsén, who appeared at the 50th Annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science in Technology, signing autographs for fans.
It is also a sexually suggestive photo of an attractive woman, and its use by men in the computer field has garnered criticism over the decades, especially from female scientists and engineers who felt that the image (especially related to its association with the Playboy brand) objectified women and created an academic climate where they did not feel entirely welcome.
The comp.compression Usenet newsgroup FAQ document claims that in 1988, a Swedish publication asked Forsén if she minded her image being used in computer science, and she was reportedly pleasantly amused.
In a 2019 Wired article, Linda Kinstler wrote that Forsén did not harbor resentment about the image, but she regretted that she wasn’t paid better for it originally.
The original article contains 732 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
First learned about that image on this video https://youtu.be/yCdwm2vo09I
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/yCdwm2vo09I
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s a woman looking over their shoulder
It’s a cropped image of a naked woman looking over her shoulder out of a playboy magazine. I think it’s reasonable to stop using it for academic papers. You can still look at it all you want though.
It’s an unlicensed picture of a woman who was previously fine with it being used like this, but who recently changed her mind and thinks it’s time to stop.
That isn’t the issue
Issue is she’s female
I remember seeing an interview with the model, who at the time of the interview was in her 70s or 80s, she apparently wasn’t enthusiastic about having become a common test image. But since she had technically consented to be in Playboy (which was only a magazine at the time), there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it. I think in this case it’s probably best to stop using her image specifically, as it does kinda get into a weird messy situation of consent, and how her consent to be in a magazine morphed through technology into something more “permanent” than she originally realized. There are plenty of other models who would absolutely be down for that, and given enough time, knowing how nerds are, there will be other test images of women. But I think it’s probably for the best that this one gets retired from this use.
And yes, there are people who have tried to use this instance as a “there shouldn’t be images of attractive/implied nude women a standard test images, because it can cause body image issues for women who go into that field.” Which on one hand, I can see where they’re coming from, but also people take pictures of people, and some people do look better than most of us, having more diverse test images would be a good thing, because we don’t all look like that. But some do, and they’re probably going to get more pictures taken of them than the rest if us.
For those, interested in an overview about more criticism, just head to the according section on Wikipedia.
If the subject is woman, the pronoun is her, not their.
The shoulder belongs to them, and they are a woman, so it really doesn’t matter in this informal setting.
Language is about being able to communicate, not whatever trip you’re on.
“Her” or “their” are both perfectly correct English grammar. “Their” has been gender neutral since before Shakespeare. It can be used to refer to someone or something gendered or not. Learn English before you correct them for something inappropriately.
Huh I had no idea!
I’m pretty sure I compressed that image in our computer vision class with some alogrithm we implemented for exercise. I though that was just some artsy over the shoulder picture, but seeing the full version the shoulder does seems supicious in hindsight.
I’ve seen more skin in a Sears catalogue in the 90s. Yeah I was a teenager shut up. People need to get over themselves.
people who are offended by images of other people are narcissists
The Lena image is (was?) featured quite prominently in the OpenCV docs and tutorials. Kinda weird it only now goes noticed.
It’s been noticed for ages. This is not the first time the issue has been discussed
