This Lens-Free Camera Produces AI-Generated Photos

Cameras changed society in an interesting way, because they gave us a method to convey imagery in an objective manner. Prior to that, anyone that didn't experience a thing first-hand would have to rely on a subjective description or piece of art created by a fallible human. That led to a shift and society began to see photographic evidence as reliable. But now that AI-generated images and deep fakes are commonplace, we're seeing another shift. To highlight that, Bjørn Karmann created a lens-free camera called Paragraphica that uses location data to produce AI-generated photos.

From the user's perspective, Paragraphica works a lot like a conventional camera. The user can go to a place, point the camera, and press the shutter button. An LCD on the back of the camera then shows a photo. Except that photo isn't real — it is a complete fabrication created by an AI.

When the user snaps a "photo," Paragraphica (which has no lens or image sensor at all) uses location data to piece together a prompt to feed into the Stable Diffusion AI model. Paragraphica contains a GPS module to find its current location, then uses the Open Weather API to determine the local weather conditions and the Mappox API to look up information about the noteworthy things nearby, like geographical features and businesses. Dials on top of Paragraphica let the user adjust the radius to search, the noise seed for Stable Diffusion, and a parameter that influences how closely Stable Diffusion follows the prompt. The result is an original AI-generated photo that matches in reality in the same kind of subjective way as our own memories.

On the hardware side, Paragaphica uses a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B to create the prompt and receive the generated photo. It displays that photo on a touchscreen LCD, which Karmann specifies is 15". We think that is a typo and that 5" is more likely. Those electronics fit inside a beautiful 3D-printed enclosure with styling reminiscent of a vintage Leica.

If you want to experience Paragraphica for yourself, Karmann built a web app that acts like a virtual version of the camera. Traffic is high right now and load time may be slow, but you can use that to snap a virtual photo of your actual location and then receive an AI photo generated in the same way as Karmann's actual Paragraphica camera.