A New Zealand astrophotographer whose image of satellites criss-crossing the night sky has been viewed tens of millions of times is fighting claims that it was made with artificial intelligence, The Guardian reports. Brendan Larsen, 51, took 578 eight-second exposures over two hours above Mount Taranaki in September.
He then spent about 40 hours layering the shots in Photoshop and removing stars, leaving an image showing around 1,400 satellites and 14,000 trails. After he posted it in mid-October it went viral and brought him 15,000 new followers, but some viewers dismissed it as AI-generated. Larsen said he understood why, as AI images were becoming hard to tell apart from real ones, but found it frustrating, and he filmed his process to show how it was made. He said he had noticed more light pollution and satellites over six years of photographing the sky.
Source: The Guardian