What is even the point? A typical phone can take a high res picture already. What is the AI supposed to be enhancing?

Random accounts on Facebook were using this for things like WW-2 photos and the result was confusing, as you ended up wondering if the photo was completely AI created or just an attempt at enhancement.

It's the latest Dumb Person Who Shouldn't Be Allowed To Use Technology thing.

Same type of person who posts one blurry photo of an unidentifiable item on Facebook Marketplace with a noun-free title and description.

Here's another one I found - this time a video card. Same hallmarks of AI modification. But what is interesting about this one is that the listing has been active for over 2 years (I've had it on my watch list forever now), so before any AI tools were available. The listing has 3 photos, and the AI enhancements only exist on the first one. So I went to his other listings. Sure enough, same thing. A couple sticks of ram. Again, at first glance nothing may look unusual, until you zoom in and look closely.

Is this a universal setting you can set in your account? Or is it something ebay is experimenting with and applying it without people's knowledge?

Whatever it is, it needs to stop.

bmwsvsu wrote on 2025-02-02, 01:55:

The longer you look at this, the worse it gets. OSw-v5njjL6/s-l1600.jpg[/img]

That's gross and funny at the same time...

Took me a while to figure out what exactly is going on here, but it is ultimately ebay's fault. What they're doing is upscaling lower resolution photos, but using AI in the upscaling process. Their main photos are upscaled to 1600 pixels wide (hence, why the image name ends in 1600.jpg). But if you simply change the direct URL of any photo to 800 instead of 1600, then you get an 800-pixel wide photo but without the AI scaling applied, so long as the original was at least 800 pixels wide (but less than 1600).

What it ends up doing is trying to add detail that isn't really there, and it is terrible at doing it.

Here are the direct links to the 2 image files for that GS 7600 video card:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pOMAAOSwn~pnjYo3/s-l800.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pOMAAOSwn~pnjYo3/s-l1600.jpg

Pay particular attention to the nvidia print and the print on that black chip. It looks more natural in the 800 image.

The sound card photo that I started this thread with is even worse as you can even see AI applied to the 800 pixel image - you have to pull up the 400-pixel image before it looks natural (albeit blury). So apparently the original was less than 800 pixels, thereby exaggerating the AI effect when upscaling it to 1600.

I guess the lesson here is, if selling on ebay, make sure your uplaoded photo is at least 1600 pixels wide or else incur the wrath of AI upscaling - something that it appears you cannot disable.

Okay, so it's just a shitty upscaling algorithm. That makes more sense than sellers trying to 'enhance' their photos.

Just another reason to hate this AI stupidity.

There's more going on here just a bad upscaling algorithm. Something very weird is going on when ebay converts your image from webp to jpg format.

To make the comparison fair - here are 2 direct links from ebay's image server of the same picture with the same scaling. One looks perfectly normal. The other? Uhhh....I've seen some bad image filters, but never anything quite like this....

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gRMAAOxymiVQ~bYc/s-l500.webp
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PdkAAOSwApZni5Y~/s-l500.jpg