The Hudson Bay in Newcastle – March 1962

This is a very dirty and heavily marked photo of the Hudson Bay in the dock at Newcastle that was taken on 14 March 1962. The location is easy to spot because of the iconic Tyne bridge in the background.

Because this is a very colourful image which has good composition, I asked ChatGPT to recover the base image from the dirty and fungus that has spoiled the original image.

At first, I thought this was a really good attempt at cleaning the image, but on second look it’s actually not very good at all. Although it looks clean, the actual base image has been changed considerably.

For example, the back of the crane is different, the people are completely different as is the detail on the back of the ship.

ChatGPT has created an image which is similat to the original – made to look the same at first glance but it couldn’t be used to analyse the original photo.