Spelling it out for the people in the back:
This is a section of a photograph that appeared in Playboy, depicting model Lena Forsén. This image was for years used as a reference image for image processing software — comparable to a TV test pattern but for, e.g., the development of JPEG.
Lots of folks think these circumstances are pretty weird for various reasons. The model has requested that the image be retired: “I retired from modeling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too.”
BobbyBroccoli has a great 30 minute mini documentary about this image. If you like this I’d highly recommend all of his science documentaries!
I was going to link the same thing. My favorite video of his is the video on Victor Ninov (the guy who faked an element).
But it’s just a small and famous part of the full image.
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This was the standard image I used for all image processing in college. It’s like the teapot model in 3D modeling. Or “hello world” and “foo” and “bar” in programming. Or “lorem ipsum” in digital layout.
It was grabbed for use in testing image compression algorithms and became the de facto standard.
I don’t per-se have any issue with it on ethical grounds, but I do think that it was a bad choice in that it was copyrighted, even if Playboy, who owns the copyright, has been fine with it being used as the standard. I would rather that an image in the public domain have been used, whether of an attractive woman or no. Like, go out, get a high-resolution shot of an attractive guy and an attractive girl, put it in the public domain and then you’ve addressed both my concerns and the concerns of the people who feel that it doesn’t promote equality.
It’s not like they planned to make it the standard test image. Just a bunch of guys working on something looking for a quick test image and grabbing the first thing they found.
Such a small section of the original image and at such low resolution would be pretty petty to shut down for copyright infringement. Especially since it was not used for profit, but for scientific research.
