Can Data Die?
November 2, 2021 9:14 AM   Subscribe

Why One of the Internet’s Oldest Images Lives On Without Its Subject’s Consent By Jennifer Ding with Jan Diehm and Michelle McGhee. "When one of the only women this well referenced, respected, and remembered in your field is known for a nude photo that was taken of her and is now used without her consent, it inevitably shapes the perception of the position of women in tech and the value of our contributions." previously, previously, previously.
posted by bq (37 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Consent is absolutely important and the engineering world is absolutely sexist in ways that are both overt and hidden, but after a 20 year career in engineering where I've known about the origin of the 3D teapot and the remember the first webcam that was used for monitoring a coffee pot, the only place I can recall seeing this image is in articles and blog posts about how it just won't go away.
posted by mikesch at 9:21 AM on November 2, 2021 [26 favorites]


I've certainly used this image at the nascence of my Internet times - it was used in a Photoshop tutorial for like masking or something.
posted by alex_skazat at 9:25 AM on November 2, 2021 [4 favorites]


I remember it from a demo or something involving a progressive image display, doing that thing where the image starts out as blocks that get subdivided into higher resolution.
posted by rhizome at 9:41 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]


This piece doesn't overstate it: this image has been ubiquitous in computer vision research for decades, and only recently has seen a decline. In my experience, most people using the image weren't even aware of the playboy connection. However, it's only relatively recently that (some) (male) researchers have started to realize that using an image of a pretty woman as a benchmark is not in fact neutral.
posted by Alex404 at 9:49 AM on November 2, 2021 [6 favorites]


What's next, are they going to come for our Utah teapots?

(Just kidding, if she wants the image retired, her wishes should be respected).
posted by crazy_yeti at 9:50 AM on November 2, 2021


“To make sure we weren’t contributing to the spread of the Lenna image, the large Lenna “image” you see on this page is actually a collection of colored pixels.”

Isn’t that what all images are?
posted by lazugod at 9:53 AM on November 2, 2021 [27 favorites]


Or for a more horrifying take on the “can data die” question, here’s a short story that is explicitly titled in reference to the image in question: Lena
posted by notoriety public at 9:54 AM on November 2, 2021 [11 favorites]


the only place I can recall seeing this image is in articles and blog posts about how it just won't go away.

I'm not sure how you missed it.

The Lenna image is so pervasive in graphic design and desktop publishing that my first exposure to it was when it was included as a scanner calibration test image in the form of a continuous tone photographic print with color swatches and resolution grids when my dad's company bought a brand new ScanJet 2C from Hewlett-Packard.

It was placed right into the manual and software package included with the scanner. It wasn't subtle or hidden, it was front and center.

I remember seeing variations of the Lenna photo in a lot of graphic arts related software and tools. It was on clipart CD ROMs, packaged into shareware/freeware as a test and calibration image.

Later I remember seeing that almost every BBS, newsgroup and file sharing site had some variation of the image.

I didn't even realize the origin of the image was from Playboy or that there was any controversy about it until maybe after 2005-2010 or so.

Shit, I just learned something new. I didn't know the image has been around and in use in computer imaging circles since 1973. What the fuck.
posted by loquacious at 9:56 AM on November 2, 2021 [9 favorites]


lazugod - My first thought was that they rendered each "pixel" in their Leena image as its own file, making it viewable as a single image but not a single file. Then I went back to the link to confirm and discovered that their Leena image is in fact one file and not lots of little ones. It's reduced resolution with a white grid superimposed but still there as one file. In conclusion maybe they thought they were playing games but the result seems to be it's still one file.
posted by achrise at 10:01 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


I learned image processing in the 80s and this image was ubiquitous. A few times over the years, Lena Forsén even appeared at technical conferences as a guest, like this meeting of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology in 1997, when she didn't seem to object to her image being used. But times change, and people are allowed to change their minds.
posted by crazy_yeti at 10:02 AM on November 2, 2021 [8 favorites]


I believe the current state of the art is to use Fabio instead.
posted by cyanistes at 10:20 AM on November 2, 2021 [7 favorites]


Meh. Women can sign release forms, for the content and control of their imagery, even if they're only featured and don't own the image (-to a degree) men too! It doesn't always mean people will listen, but hopefully people are encouraged to try.
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:29 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


As an interesting aside, in the graph of prevalence by top-level domain it lists .com instances in 1972 and 1988.

I didn't even realize the origin of the image was from Playboy or that there was any controversy about it until maybe after 2005-2010 or so.

I remember there being a "who is that woman?" hunt that might have been in that time, but in light of crazy_yeti's story it was probably earlier.
posted by rhizome at 10:32 AM on November 2, 2021


Meh. Women can sign release forms, for the content and control of their imagery, even if they're only featured and don't own the image (-to a degree) men too!

It's not just a legal question though. It's also about how women are seen in tech.

I knew about this image in college because I had friends in computer science who loved it and spent time hunting down the origin.
posted by Anonymous at 10:37 AM on November 2, 2021


Lenna previously

CW: 2005 MetaFilter
posted by chavenet at 10:38 AM on November 2, 2021 [10 favorites]


What’s the current image that is used in place of this?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:38 AM on November 2, 2021


It seems obvious to replace it. Not only because Lena herself wants us to. But also it's not a very good image. It's a scan of a a photograph, for cryin-out-loud. 100 dpi at that, and only 512x512 in total. The colors are all super orange, I've always thought the color correctness was just wrong. Turns out I'm right: this site has a much better quality scan. But that's not the reference image. The lighting on her face is weirdly flat. It does have lots of nice detail for testing algorithms though, the feathery hat band is awesome.

Anyway it's not hard to imagine a better test image. Start with faces from people of several skin colors. I know a bunch of very smart image processing people have proposed alternatives, I was hoping the article was going to tell us there was one clear consensus replacement. (There's not). Now instead the discussion is a lightning rod for a bunch of dumb bros saying "don't tell us we can't have our Playboy model". Ugh.

The complicating factor here is that the image is actually owned by Playboy. Its used without explicit authorization, although as the article says Playboy decided in 1997 to be OK with it. With a remarkably on-the-nose quote
Says Eileen Kent, VP of new media at Playboy: "We decided we should exploit this, because it is a phenomenon."
Can't think of a better reason to stop using this image.
posted by Nelson at 10:52 AM on November 2, 2021 [11 favorites]


Wow, that old thread is . . . something
posted by flamk at 10:52 AM on November 2, 2021 [9 favorites]


What’s the current image that is used in place of this?

I don't think there's any single image that's nearly as ubiquitous in current research as "Lena" used to be. For one thing, the Lena image was scanned in 1973, when image scanning hardware was a lot more expensive. Nowadays, it's easy to just take a suitable test photo yourself, or head to Flickr or Wikimedia Commons and find a virtually unlimited supply of freely-licensed options.

Also, as the field of computer graphics has advanced, people have become more aware of the value of testing algorithms on a broad range of inputs. So there's been a growing emphasis on testing with collections of images, and using "objective", quantitative metrics to evaluate image quality.
posted by teraflop at 10:59 AM on November 2, 2021 [4 favorites]


Doesn't this also gets into the EU's "right to be forgotten" laws?

At what point does the data gets locked away so only the government or approved people gets access... and not the public?

In most US states, you can take "ticket school" to hide your speeding ticket from the insurance company so your car insurance rate doesn't go up. So "separate views of data" already exist.

Will the rest of our life data go the same way? Some goes into restricted access, while the more privileged see everything?
posted by kschang at 11:09 AM on November 2, 2021


She should absolutely have some say in her picture being used way beyond its original purpose. I would also note that characterizing it as a "nude photo" when the only exposure is of her right shoulder (in the cropped version of the image that's the actual subject of these repeated posts) is kind of disingenuous.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:39 AM on November 2, 2021 [6 favorites]


That he most difficult decision a techbro faces: his own convenience against the comfort, safety and sanity of a woman he doesn't know. [ slow intake of breath ] That's a toughie.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:20 PM on November 2, 2021 [10 favorites]


"What’s the current image that is used in place of this?"

I don't think there's any single image that's nearly as ubiquitous in current research as "Lena" used to be.


At least historically this close-cropped image of a mandrill's face was pretty frequently used. The Signal and Image Processing Institute no longer distributes the image of Lenna and a few others: "Although these images have played a significant role in the history of image processing, they no longer represent the best examples for future research."
posted by jedicus at 1:23 PM on November 2, 2021 [5 favorites]


I remember it from around 2000. A coworker had pictures of her face up on his cubicle, all slightly different versions of the same image printed out from journal articles. He also had a picture of himself wearing a wig and hat because he had dressed as her for halloween at some point before I started there (no idea what he wore below the neck, and I don't want to imagine it.) I thought she was an actress or something from the 70s, and only learned the full story from MF on one of those previouslies.
posted by buildmyworld at 1:38 PM on November 2, 2021


It's striking how much that article contrasts with the point of view she seems to take in this article from 2019.
posted by slkinsey at 2:31 PM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


brand new ScanJet 2C from Hewlett-Packard

Which was released in 1991. Mikesch's point is that in their solely 21st century engineering career they've never seen this image used in a professional context. I.e., it in fact has "gone away", except for people talking about its past use. Which is a perfectly reasonable point of discussion in terms of historical sexism in computer engineering, rights of publicity, etc, etc. But it is weird to act like it is a *current* issue.
posted by tavella at 2:52 PM on November 2, 2021 [4 favorites]


I believe the current state of the art is to use Fabio instead.

Or the reshoot that Lena did some four decades later. It acknowledges the history of the image, pays tribute to its subject's role in history whilst not being prurient, and the extra detail provided by age would make it more suited to evaluating image reproduction quality.

I wonder how Lena Forsén would feel about this.
posted by acb at 3:17 PM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


I wish I could say that I was shocked that a group of guys, looking for something to scan, settled on a copy of playboy for testing. Sure, different era all your want, but for fucks sake, the giant heaping piles of shitty boys club chauvinism that women have to traverse before they even have to deal with run of the mill shitty work conditions will never cease to appall me.

In my mind, pretty much every time someone has tried to trot out the “women just aren’t suited to the field of (x)” it’s because the men who dominate it are terrified they’ll have to stop acting like pubescent children and clean up their goddamn clubhouse.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:53 PM on November 2, 2021 [12 favorites]


All of this reminds me of something I haven't thought about in years: so-called leader ladies. One used to find them 'hidden' after or sometimes before the count down frames in commercially released films.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:20 PM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


I had the chance to play with a Xerox Alto at Living Computers in Seattle. Poking around on the disk labeled "Games," which was an original Xerox PARC image, I found something called "cutie.war." It turned out to be one of those 15-piece sliding puzzles that revealed the Lenna picture when solved. Clearly that image was readily available if it ended up on the first ever GUI machine.
posted by rouftop at 8:30 PM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


As said in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:

"It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists."
posted by AlSweigart at 2:24 AM on November 3, 2021 [7 favorites]


Sure, different era all your want

Not even that.
posted by acb at 4:26 AM on November 3, 2021 [7 favorites]


The woman in this album cover learned about her photo being used when one of her kids saw it. Vampire Weekend settled in court with her and sued the photographer for misrepresenting permission to use it. The photographer was dumped by his lawyer for not returning their phone calls. I’m glad the woman was compensated! Can you imagine?
posted by waving at 6:18 AM on November 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


so-called leader ladies

I have never heard that term before. I have only ever heard them called "China Girls". But, yes.
posted by Devoidoid at 10:21 AM on November 3, 2021


that website is AWFUL. i can't imagine trying to use a screen reader with that?
posted by misanthropicsarah at 12:00 PM on November 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


As a 21st century example, that image was used as an example in my linear algebra class in winter 2012, gross! I sincerely hope the grad student teaching the class just didn’t know any better and recycled an outdated PowerPoint.
posted by momus_window at 7:23 PM on November 3, 2021


There are hundreds of projects on GitHub using Lena.png or similar for their dithering/cropping/ML/etc. examples. It looks like a bunch of them have switched to other imagery lately, which is a start. Still, I’ve seen some very popular libraries using other offending imagery in their examples.

Not even that.

Oh man. Just blast off to Mars already and don’t let an asteroid hit you on the way out.
posted by romanb at 5:16 AM on November 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


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