The internet is full of conspiracy theories that range from the absurd to the relatively believable. The latest of these theories revolve around the idea that Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock during the Oscars ceremony was staged. The last “data” that supports this theory is a kind of patch that Rock wore hidden on his face.
The theory assures that the attack was not only a montage allegedly orchestrated by the organizers to patch up the worsening audience figures for the ceremony. In addition, they assure that Chris Rock wore a concealed patch on his face in order to cushion the slap that was regarding to receive greater glory from the ratings..
A little patch isn’t going to do much to mitigate a slap in the face, but let’s give the theory the benefit of the doubt for a moment and examine the photos of the altercation. To do this, all you have to do is resort to the press photos of the aggression uploaded to independent agencies. such as AFP and whose metadata allows ruling out any type of manipulation to erase the evidence. This photo of Robyn Beck, for example, came from Getty Images (AFP).
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Basta hacer zoom pàra ver que Rock no tenía ningún parche sobre la cara.
Pero… ¿Es posible que AFP y Getty estén compradas por los organizadores y hayan subido fotos retocadas con matadatos falsificados. Examinemos esta otra foto de Chris Pizzello para Asociated Press.
Mismo resultado. Ni haciendo zoom se ve rastro de un parche, lo que significa que o solo existe en la imaginación calenturienta de los conspiradores o realmente hay mucha gente metida en esto, y ya sabemos for mathematics that the more people there are involved in a conspiracy, the more impossible it becomes to hide.
Where does that image of Rock come from with a kind of dressing of the same color as his skin on his cheek? There are two possible explanations. The first is that someone Photoshopped it in there. People create false images all the time. Sometimes he does it just for fun and other times for more sinister reasons.
The second option is that someone has tried to use an AI program to improve the image precisely in the spirit of looking for details hidden from the naked eye. Apps like Remini allow you to increase the quality of a photo. The problem is that many people do not understand how the algorithms that serve as the basis for these applications work.
What Remini and similar apps do is analyze a highly pixelated photo and try to guess what information is missing. It is not that the algorithms extract a hidden information in the JPG. It is that they invent what is missing. The result is that what they show is not a more accurate version of the original image, but a machine-made interpretation. In the case of Rock’s expression lines, an application like Remini can perfectly interpret that those lines had more detail and add it. We at Gizmodo have tried to replicate the glitch using precisely Remini to no avail, but the resulting image also has details and artifacts that make Rock’s face look pretty weird. This is the original photo:
And here’s the image following going through Gemini’s digital “upscaling” process to 8K.
Again, the photo that has given rise to this theory is the only one that exists in a sea of images taken by photographers.independent professional graphs that have not caught a trace of the alleged patch. Which leaves the possibility of Photoshop as the most real. Now you may have to ask yourself what is more likely, that an organization risks its prestige and credibility for a sad spike in audience or that a 17-year-old from some corner of the planet wants to feed your credibility to have a laugh.
As for the slap itself, we’re not going to go into whether or not it was justified. Will Smith issued a public apology on Instagram on Monday, although it has not been revealed whether the actor has privately apologized to Rock or if there has been an exchange of apologies for the joke regarding his wife’s baldness. In the end, the only thing left for the story is a resounding slap that took place within the framework of a gala in which everything is supposedly controlled.
