Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from IEEE computer journals
Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from IEEE computer journals
Use of "Lenna" image in computer image processing research stretches back to the 1970s.
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.
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).
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.
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.
I don't see anything weird here...
The weird part is in the mirror.
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.
Yeah. I was originally thinking this is just more of typical American prudishness, but if the impetus came from her, that's a good enough reason to retire the pic.
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.
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.
I hadn't heard of this before this post, the pic is innocuous enough, i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people don't even know that's a crop of an old magazine photo.
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.
Banning something harmless is censorship. It's a test image of a beautiful woman, not glorifying violence or terrorism.
It's not censorship. They can choose to publish or not publish anything they want. Anyone is still free to publish the image in other journals that don't ban it.
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.
if you can’t understand how that would make some people uncomfortable then you might be a bit lacking in empathy.
I'm lacking in empathy.
The 3d world has Utah teapots and Stanford bunnies and dragons which are all very neutral and don’t hurt anyone.
Ooooh i'm sure someone, somewhere, somehow will feel offended. Better ban those too.
Yes, the provenance is "questionable", but it's a pic of a human wearing a hat, ffs.
The model being tired of it would be enough reason for me to stop using it (as you mentioned, there are plenty of alternatives); but American prudeness? No.
This isn't about prudishness. No one's offended by the picture. It makes people uncomfortable because it's from a playboy. The problem is that it brings the objectification of women to the fore in a male dominated field where women often face sexual harassment and aren't taken seriously.
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.
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
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?
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.
Just to add a bit of clarification, the image wasn't just a headshot, yes that's the part that was originally scanned and used, but it's a cropped in section of the centerfold, a 3-page fold-out image in the magazine. If I remember the story correctly, they needed a large image to scan, and several people brought in images to scan in, and one guy brought a Playboy.
Here you go. A full explanation of everything.
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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.)
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.
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.
In art class it's not uncommon to hire nude models to pose like Lena. Nothing suspicious except fuckin Christians imposing their prudishm
Are they published by Elsevier? Just tell them it's AI-generated and they'll be happy to publish it.
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
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Good. Sick and tired of seeing Lena.
I mean, since she wants the usage retired, I’m all for it. But even she is proud of the picture, and I’m definitely not sick of seeing it, few times though I have.
The Lena image is (was?) featured quite prominently in the OpenCV docs and tutorials. Kinda weird it only now goes noticed.
In a 1999 essay on reasons for the male predominance in computer science, applied mathematician Dianne P. O'Leary wrote: .
Suggestive pictures used in lectures on image processing ... convey the message that the lecturer caters to the males only. For example, it is amazing that the "Lena" pin-up image is still used as an example in courses and published as a test image in journals today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#Criticism
That's 25 years ago...
It's been noticed for ages. This is not the first time the issue has been discussed
It's been banned from Nature for a while now
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.
If we read articles, we'd have so little left to argue about...
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.
Oh I'd be interested in reading her work, there is absolutely some weird puritan thing in a section of those in their twenties but also an equal group that are kinda sexual obsessive.
I can see the same thing, and I couldn't agree more. Do you happen to have an article of hers to share?
Fucking jesus christ it only took 50 years for it to happen.
And people wonder why women don't feel welcome in these disciplines.
It's not like they were using the uncropped centerfold. There's nothing wrong with the headshot. It's a woman in a hat.
I mean, the model in question was quoted as recently as 2019 as saying she had no problem with it, so hardly 50 years.
She now supports its removal, and IMO that's the only reason it should be taken down.
As recently as 2019, huh... How does she feel about it since then?
Exactly the same, I'd assume by your phrasing here?
While that should certainly be a bright line, it's more that from the very beginning of computer graphics, the "perfect" image for testing algorithms and showing off and laboring over and analyzing is a Playboy centerfold. I don't imagine most of those computer scientists would have been nearly as accepting of a photo with "high contrast and varied detail" if it had been a naked dude hanging dong [EDIT: or cropped from such a pic]. It was used specifically because they liked it and thought that anyone who didn't feel the same needed to stay in their lane and STFU because this is "normal" and fine but any other type of sexual material wouldn't be.
Maybe the mousey girl in class might get uncomfortable knowing its from a porn mag when it's thrown up on the big screen for the class to see? Maybe it's about more than just Lena herself? Maybe women don't feel comfortable going in those spaces because they feel like they'll be sexualized or worse. Why wouldn't they expect that when the men involved think its totally appropriate to use the top-half of a nude photo of a woman?
I don't think it would be in humanity's best interest for scientific journals to be in the habit of quickly banning research just because someone has uncomfortable associations with a safely cropped photo (or a drawing, or a quote). Perhaps it makes sense in this particular case, after careful consideration. I hope it's an exceptional case. Censorship is a slippery slope.
IEEE have the right to decide which papers to accept. They aren’t obliged to publish anything they aren’t comfortable with. There are much harder conditions to get your research published in IEEE than avoiding the use of a single image.
Lena herself has also the right to oppose the use of the image.
If you’re unhappy with their decision you can find some other publisher.
Censorship is a slippery slope.
So I take it you think the Washington Commanders should have stayed the Washington Redskins because not censoring is more important than it being disrespectful to a large group of people? My eyes would fall out if they rolled any harder.
No one's censoring the history or saying it never happened, we're just saying "Maybe there's a better, less controversial image to use for this purpose." Which really shouldn't be a very controversial take at all.
It's not like you can't see the old Redskins logo on Wikipedia, or that the Wikipedia entry for the Lenna image would disappear. That would be censorship, not this. This is just "don't use this controversial image in professional documents like science research." Literally, specifically, IEEE journals.
TBH from article it seems that woman on photo (Forsén) decided that's enough of sharing her photo.
To me, that's a perfectly fine reason to stop accepting the image.
But that's not why they did it.
They did it because "eww female sexuality icky"
Yeah, you're right.
But I'm a little optimistic. The image being widely used for decades is a symptom, not the cause of women being unwelcome.
With it being finally banned, it seems like this is changing. Hopefully this means the root cause, misogyny in tech, is at an all time low.
Fully agreed, it was a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem itself. I hope in professional circles this trend continues.
They shoud use the picture of some ugly-ass motherfucker now in the name of inclusivity
GOATSE
Meanwhile women nurses doctors and teachers sell themselves on Instagram and onlyfans
Yes, let's just shove everyone into one drawer and completely forget that some do it for fun, some out of financial necessity, and let's also forget all the problems it can cause when using such an image in lectures, research and similar professional settings. /s
So? They can do what they like, just like Lena could for the original image. Hell, I applaud them for it!
I also think Lena looks beautiful in the commonly used image, and it doesn’t bother ME one bit that the image shows up in research.
But all of that is completely separate from whether it is appropriate to use a cropped playboy image in professional settings (it should be UN-cropped, am I right fellas? /s). However, if it genuinely offends the people around me, or makes them feel marginalized or less valued, well then it DOES start to bother me a little bit.
It’s OK to change the world in a way that doesn’t affect you but improves the life of somebody else.
And? If they were paid adequately they wouldn't have too and even if they are paid adequately its their body and their decision.
And I don't think any of their nude photos are appropriate for academic papers (unrelated to nudity research) either?