algorithms

Instagram announced changes to its somewhat infamous algorithm, this time providing a boost to smaller, original creators.

Due to physical limitations, cameras can only become so small before they simply cannot shrink anymore. But a new lensless camera design could change that.

More than five years after the company did away with the chronological feed in lieu of an algorithm-based system, Instagram has officially brought it back after teasing its return yesterday.

Instagram may soon release the much-anticipated chronological feed, if a solution to a recently-posted word puzzle is to be believed. Instagram has already confirmed the feature is coming, making its appearance here feel like more than a coincidence.

During his State of the Union address on March 1, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass new laws aimed at protecting children on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

A new bipartisan bill has been introduced into the United States Senate that takes aim at algorithmic-based feeds like those on Facebook and Instagram. The bill would direct two government agencies to investigate ways to add friction to content sharing.

Image Color Transfer is a free, browser-based application that allows a photo to be color graded to match the color of another photo, similar to the "Match Color" feature found in standalone photo editing applications.

Instagram has announced that it has started to test the ability to switch between three different views on the app's home screen, two of which would give users the ability to see posts in chronological order.

Instagram famously ditched the chronological version of the feed in its app years ago and substituted an algorithmic-based one. But as pressure mounts on the company to make its app safer for young people, it is apparently bringing it back.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a new bill that would make it mandatory for services that use algorithms to serve content to offer a version that allows users to turn that feature off.

A new bill proposed by four lawmakers aims to strip Section 230 protections from algorithm-based recommendations like Facebook's newsfeed and hold social media companies accountable for what is fed to its users.

Apple has acknowledged that the way it announced its plans to automatically scan iPhone photo libraries to protect children from abusive content may have introduced "confusion" and explains how it is designed to prevent abuse by authoritarian governments.

Researchers from Germany-based AlgorithmWatch say that Facebook forced them to abandon their research project into Instagram's algorithm after the company came after them with legal threats.

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a new deep learning method that essentially creates high-quality cinemagraphs automatically. The team says the method can animate any flowing material, including water, smoke, fire, and clouds.

Google Photos has for some time asked users to verify its results for facial recognition or image content accuracy, but now the app is taking requests one step further: it's asking you to label all your images from scratch, not just verify results, to help train the algorithm.

Here's an interesting tidbit from the world of smartphone photography. Google is proposing a significant change to the Camera API in Android 11 that will prevent smartphones from using face altering algorithms that change geometry, skin tone, or apply smoothing.

The rise of social media has had a massive impact on the art we see, consume, and interact with on a daily basis. Some of that impact was positive, some negative, but one of the most radical changes has also been one of the most detrimental: the demise of the gatekeepers.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have created software that automatically averages hundreds or thousands of similar images to create the pinnacle of amalgamations.

Unveiled last month, AverageExplorer lets users see the average image that represents whatever collection of images they’re looking at. The idea is to break down the overwhelming amount of images given when searching through Google Images, Flickr or Bing and combining it into one visual summary of the result.

Instagram only just released Hyperlapse earlier this week, and already it’s amassed a cult-like following thanks to its dead-simple interface and amazing results.

But, as simple as the interface may be and as impressive as the results are, what happens between when the app is opened and the final hyperlapse actually involves a lot of incredibly technology at work.

Lytro came into the photography world not only to create a novelty product, but to fundamentally change how we approach image capture. Because despite light field photography being around for over a century, it’s only with the latest technology that the company is able to exploit what it is a camera is truly capable of doing.

We recently spoke with Lytro about its upcoming Illum camera a bit, diving into the technology behind the specs and revealing how Lytro's approach is allowing the company to not only step, but leap into the future.

This latest device from technology licensing company Rambus goes to show: when you combine information-gathering sensors with powerful algorithms, you can yield some incredible results.

Developed by research scientist Patrick Gill, this 200 micron diameter glass sensor is capable of capturing an image of remarkable quality for its size. Etched with a spiral pattern, the light reflecting off of whatever object is being "photographed" is transferred as a pattern, in the form of spherical light, to the CMOS sensor.