This is already present for the last decade. It's the foundation which makes "sports DSLRs" possible. AI here is not what we know as today's "AI". These are specialized models baked into DSPs to run at inhuman speeds. In Sony's case it's phase data, image itself, information from the lens, and sometimes the accelerometers on camera. This is not making something up from thin air.
AI assisted autofocus is smarter phase detect autofocus. Subject tracking is an educated guess for where the focus shall move, based on movements in the image.
My ~20 year old Nikon D70s has a 1004 pixel "scene detection and metering" sensor "trained" on thousands of images to make educated guesses in full-frame metering mode to exposure correctly. This is in no way helping or altering the image in any way. Same for faster autofocus and object tracking.
Exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR et al can be all achieved with deterministic and traditional algorithms as well. Some of these processes have history in film photography and carried over to digital from analog. Some photographers are famous for their darkroom treatment of their shots during development.
Processing an image with deterministic algorithms using the data in the raw photo is fine. This is how darkrooms work as well. However, guessing things, altering images by adding something which was not there and claiming otherwise is not acceptable. This can be a new element inside the scene or pixel details which was not resolvable by the lens/sensor/film to begin with. Both are "photomanipulation", not photography.
Errr… not that long ago using the zone system (during shooting, developing and printing!) to got a good negative and print. Your 20 years old D70 is doing a lot of heavy lifting you are not even aware of!
Even ~20yo lower tier digital cameras still required understanding what light meter meters and correcting for it.
I know. I cut my teeth with a Pentax MZ-50, so I have experience with understanding the camera, its light meter and how to compensate for it.
I probably shot less than 100 frames in full auto mode with that D70s, rest was apeture priority or full manual. The reason I still love my D70s is it behaves like an analog camera very much, from its light meter correction needs to ISO response of the sensor.
When compared to it, shooting with A7-III still feels like cheating sometimes. Maybe I should get the Pentax fixed or start playing with the Canonette 28 I have.
If the point of a competition is to show a photographer's skill, it sounds like providing deblurring or similar by educated guess would help quite a bit to win?
I guess the key point is that use of features needs to be adopted slowly in competition so that it doesn't turn into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
Edit: moot point; it's object recognition to find the auto-focus target, not applying digital refocusing.
It's not deblurring, there's no post processing. It just selects where to autofocus, and commands the lens to focus to that point, that's all.
AI assisted autofocus and object tracking doesn't alter the image after capture. It just moves your focus point and tries to keep the object optically in focus during the half-press phase.
The most expensive equipment doesn't give you any advantage in composing, exposure, etc. If you're shooting birds, you need some tracking capabilities and fast focusing lenses. These are not expensive because they post process the image, but they have expensive glass, fast motors and powerful DSPs to track that bird in that frame. If you can't frame the bird and press the shutter the right moment, you're toast.
Nobody is using relighting tricks like Nikon D-Lighting in competitions, it'll disqualified anyway. I'm not sure my Sony has similar post processing options, even.
None of them are post-processed with AI tools. Heck, AI is in today was not even a dream when I processed these. Pocket Tiger has been denoised using Profiled Denoise feature of Darktable if I remember correctly. It's taken at Maximum ISO of D70s, which made it a colorful mess, recovering that image in post-processing was a miracle of its own.
> into a materials sport where it's just the most expensive equipment winning.
It's easy to take bad photos with good cameras. Also it's easy to take good photos with bad cameras, as well. It's a squarely skill sport. Equipment can't help you beyond a certain point, and you need to be able to demand that from your camera first.
> AI photo editing is surely a competition-worthy art of its own.
This is already present for the last decade. It's the foundation which makes "sports DSLRs" possible. AI here is not what we know as today's "AI". These are specialized models baked into DSPs to run at inhuman speeds. In Sony's case it's phase data, image itself, information from the lens, and sometimes the accelerometers on camera. This is not making something up from thin air.
AI assisted autofocus is smarter phase detect autofocus. Subject tracking is an educated guess for where the focus shall move, based on movements in the image.
My ~20 year old Nikon D70s has a 1004 pixel "scene detection and metering" sensor "trained" on thousands of images to make educated guesses in full-frame metering mode to exposure correctly. This is in no way helping or altering the image in any way. Same for faster autofocus and object tracking.
Exposure, white balance, noise reduction, color correction, HDR et al can be all achieved with deterministic and traditional algorithms as well. Some of these processes have history in film photography and carried over to digital from analog. Some photographers are famous for their darkroom treatment of their shots during development.
Processing an image with deterministic algorithms using the data in the raw photo is fine. This is how darkrooms work as well. However, guessing things, altering images by adding something which was not there and claiming otherwise is not acceptable. This can be a new element inside the scene or pixel details which was not resolvable by the lens/sensor/film to begin with. Both are "photomanipulation", not photography.