Generative AI and photography -- what will it mean for you?

[anwarp]

Other people are going to retreat into personal satisfaction. If you're already making images mostly for personal emotional and intellectual satisfaction, this is a fine strategy.

I’m in this camp. For me, photography is a hobby. It’s mostly my photography club and some friends that see my images.

I enjoy the process of taking the image. I’m printing more now as projectors are not up to showing off the detail from a high resolution sensor.

However on the AI front itself, I’ll keep my thoughts out of a discussion on a photography forum.

 

[pegelli]

Other people are going to retreat into personal satisfaction. If you're already making images mostly for personal emotional and intellectual satisfaction, this is a fine strategy.

I won't even "retreat" there, I've never been anywhere else . I do use the recent AI tools to correct technical problems with my photo's (mainly noise/sharpness) but never to create content that wasn't there at the moment I took my photo.

 

[Knorp]

+1 What Pieter wrote.
Occasionally I do like to venture into unknown (to me) territories, but never to create 'content', but then: never say never ...

 

[f6cvalkyrie]

I'm also an amateur photographer, and I have never earned a Eurocent from my photography ...
Thus I am not very concerned about AI content creation in competition with my "artistic" oeuvre , but I do sympathise with the young and next generations of photographers who will have to earn a living in a world of competition with AI generated images.
As long as AI content generation remains in the field of landscape, still-life, and other art-inspired disciplines, it is not going to be too bad, IMHO ...
But what will happen when we are flooded with AI generated images from war zones, showing horrible images from conflicts, where nobody can make out if they are real or AI generated ... and what -adverse ?- influence may that have on the public opinion and decisions to be made?

 

[rdeloe]

I think we are having a reality deficit. Everything is becoming stylized and contorted that our sense of reality is being skewed. This can be in simply ways like body image (removing perceived defects) or in darker ways with conspiracy theories. AI will continue to exaggerate that trend. Already in photography, AI is creating fake images that are perceived as are real and real images are being evaluated as fake (AI). As we get more saturated in these works, we are simply going to either be unable to evaluate what is real and what is not: are we simply going to accept these as real or we are going to be in a perpetual state of skepticism where we will not trust anything. And when no one can agree on a reality, we are going to find a disillusion that will end in a paralysis of judgement or a simply an anarchy where fact is simply what you say it is. But the good news is someone will make money from it...

Ultimately that is the source of the threat to photography that I was pointing at in the article. The argument that "People will value the real over the fake" is naive. People already value better looking false over reality with warts and all.

The Telegraph article I linked to earlier that discusses the Spanish "model" Aitana López is fascinating (and terrifying and nauseating) not only because of the astonishing veracity of the generative AI today but also because of the discussion of the implication of Aitana for influencers. What's the point of relying on fickle, entitled human "influencers" when you can make your own who works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will do whatever you want?

The other problem I see is going to be a skill deficit. Yes, AI can make works of art in a style of musicians, writers, artists, and photographers, but they are superficial. However, it gives the impression of being skillful without the burden of actually having skills. Yes, AI will take someone with average skills and polish the results to appear good, but the individual actually lacks the skill to do these things without the technology. So if AI polishes your writing, what do you learn about writing well. Where do you get the critical faculty then to evaluate that result and correct it? Camera technology is already pretty sophisticate and can produce technically constant images with little effort, but in and of itself, it does not result in compelling images. When the artist gives their agency up to a machine, then where does the skill building experience come from that moves that person forward to make more than a superficially "perfect" image. It is like we are doomed to endless Adam Sandler movies--good for a laugh, but little else.

I didn't get into this in the article, but I don't think we're a long way away from Internet connected cameras that use AI systems to "advise" photographers on the fly. Tell your camera the style of photograph you want to make, and it tells you what to do.

"Steve, you told me you wanted early Ansel Adams. I'm going to need you to put on a 35mm lens. Now move over a bit Steve. Crouch down. A bit more. A little more foreground. There you go."

No need to actually look at early Adams images and practice on your own. Your camera will tell you what to do.

 

[cunim]

This is a photography site and, in that context, I can't become too exercised about AI. Non-commercial photographers will adapt because what our hobby gives us is not what AI gives us. However, some of these posts conflate unease about photography with unease about media images and that concern is very real. We are seeing the repetition of a historical trend, the subversion of law and representation by the desire of weak people to be governed. That subversion has always used propaganda and AI is an improved tool of propaganda. Compared to that threat, what AI will do to photography is trivial. Sorry. Completely off topic.

No other political movement has understood the art of propaganda as well as the National Socialists. From its beginnings, it has put heart and soul into propaganda. What distinguishes it from all other political parties is the ability to see into the soul of the people and to speak the language of the man in the street. It uses all the means of modern technology. Leaflets, handbills, posters, mass demonstrations, the press, stage, film and radio – these are all tools of our propaganda. Whether or not they serve or harm the people depends on the use to which they are put.
Joseph Goebbels, 1931

 

[daz7]

In fact, it may turn out that, paradoxically, professionals will gain from the development of AI - AI will make owning a camera for landscape photography redundant for most people and this segment of the market will be taken over by mobile phones enhanced with AI to beautify mobile phone photos.
So a whole segment of semi-professional photographers (and many camera manufacturers) who simply won't be able to compete with AI will disappear. This empty space will be able to be then filled by professionals and high-end equipment manufacturers.

 

[AndereObjektiv]

The Future is here already:

Aresenal 2 - The Intelligent Camera Assistant

 

[AlanS]

Good grief! All we need now is a robot to position the camera and we can stay at home and drink coffee!

 

[Duff photographer]

Good grief! All we need now is a robot to position the camera and we can stay at home and drink coffee!

Been done, to a degree. The photo of a Snow Leopard that won Wildlife Photographer of the Year (UK) a few years ago was taken by a camera set up as a 'trail camera'. The photographer was tucked up in bed when the photo was taken. Doesn't say a lot for such a prestigious photo competition.

Duff.

 

[scho]

Generative AI -- think ChatGPT for text and Stable Diffusion for images -- is going to have a huge impact on just about everything. It's making one side of my job easier (e.g., summarizing masses of information into a few core ideas), and it's making other parts so much harder (fighting plagiarism in student work).

Photographers are already using AI tools in Photoshop and other image editing software. You may think those tools are a good thing or a bad thing, but they're here to stay. Something else that is here to stay is photo-realistic images created from text prompts. Anyone with an Internet connection can make images that already look an awful lot like the kinds of photographs I see in this forum all the time. The quality is low now, but the pace of AI development is incredibly rapid.

What is this technology going to mean for photography in general, and for your photography in particular?

If you like thinking about these things, you might enjoy reading an article where I explore this topic. I'd be happy to chat about the ideas in this thread.

Generative AI

www.robdeloephotography.com

This is really amazing, but frightening at the same time. I was curious to see how specific one could be in generating a landscape so I specified a detailed image of a well known waterfall in my area and it produced a reasonable facsimile. The prompt was high detail, Taughannock Falls, view from base of falls.

 

[rdeloe]

This is really amazing, but frightening at the same time. I was curious to see how specific one could be in generating a landscape so I specified a detailed image of a well known waterfall in my area and it produced a reasonable facsimile. The prompt was high detail, Taughannock Falls, view from base of falls.

It took me multiple tries to get it to produce the "Clearing Winter Storm" image I used in the article, but the one I used is a clear echo. There are quite a few sample photos out there from which it work.

The key is whether or not there are images in the training set. I did a Google image search for Taughannock Falls and there are an awful lot of images. Ditto Flickr. These images would have been scraped and included in the training set that was used by the generative AI tool you used.

 

[rdeloe]

By the way, if you find this conversation interesting, I started the same thread over at DPReview Medium Format forum. These two medium format forums are like Venn Diagrams where the circles only overlap a tiny bit. I was hoping two different conversations might start, to give me more insights. I wasn't disappointed. There's a lot of overlap in how people are thinking about my question, but also some different perspectives.

If you find the topic interesting, here's a link to that thread: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4738828

 

[Duff photographer]

Sashin (post 20) summed it up for me, so I won't repeat too much of what he wrote.

To me, AI is symptomatic of a larger problem, the apparent want or need for many people to live in a fictional reality. We have people immersed for days on end in computer gaming, certain types of people drooling over imagery of women or men they can't have, people who think that tv or cinema fiction is real-life documentary, that the fictional characters played by actors and actresses are their real characters, and so on. They're all based on reality to some extent, just as AI is, but it's bent, twisted, until fiction and reality are indistinguishable, and truth is buried. From the earliest times, dodgy literature, then television and now, increasingly, the internet provides them with all they need to keep their small brains distracted until they drop dead. Who needs a Dreams'r'Us where customers can be drip fed, piped up, and otherwise kept alive while they're placed into a dream state and a computer programme streamed into their neural pathways to live out their lives for them. We have it now, but in a more accessible form.

To some extent, I can understand people switching off from reality now and then as life is pretty poopy for a lot of people. However, it's gone from admiring a painting of a fictional landscape or watching one's favourite TV show to a whole lifestyle, and even business, and, far more dangerously, to determining people's real world thinking and decision-making. Forget bad advise like drinking bleach to cure Covid, think old school propaganda, but on a whole new genocidal level without frontiers. In this regard, we live in a very dangerous and frightening age.

AI's potential hit on photography will be very mild in the great scheme of things. As a photographer, I believe that cynicism will prevail, as it often does in life. Those that produce poor photographs will be ignored, whether they're genuine or AI generated fibs. Those that produce iconic images will be scrutinised, and I for one would welcome the attention if ever I fall into this group. Let's face it, there are some pre-AI iconic photo's over the last century that should be better scrutinised. I personally take no pleasure in deception, to the point where I will not take a photograph if there is an unwanted intrusion, even if it can be digitally edited out later. I want my photographs to be real, and that peace of mind and feeling of accomplishment cannot be catered for by an AI falsehood.

The only real threat to photography is the false documentation of reality (obviously), so genres such as photojournalism (where the consequences could be incendiary and fatal), nature, and to some extent landscape and street photography could suffer. However, that threat has been there a while and these genres have already suffered from photo manipulation/editing, along with false narratives to support them, and there are some well-known examples which most of us are aware of (the McCurry affair being one of the most recent). AI is just a continuation of that 'manipulation', albeit a very powerful tool, or weapon.


Cheers,
Duff.

PS. Just to be clear, when I talk of real photographs, I also include those of an artistic impression - long exposures, black-and-white, blurred, etc. I exclude only those where manipulation (other than basic editing for colour correction, spotting, etc.) or artificial construction has been carried out.

 

[Shashin]

Your camera will tell you what to do.

Already been done: the Minolta Talker

 

[tcdeveau]

It took me multiple tries to get it to produce the "Clearing Winter Storm" image I used in the article, but the one I used is a clear echo. There are quite a few sample photos out there from which it work.

The key is whether or not there are images in the training set. I did a Google image search for Taughannock Falls and there are an awful lot of images. Ditto Flickr. These images would have been scraped and included in the training set that was used by the generative AI tool you used.

As far as landscape photography is concerned, the training data has grown immensely over the last decade. Aspens in Colorado, any image of Iceland, etc. Lots of ppl going to the same spots to take similar images.

 

[tcdeveau]

Been done, to a degree. The photo of a Snow Leopard that won Wildlife Photographer of the Year (UK) a few years ago was taken by a camera set up as a 'trail camera'. The photographer was tucked up in bed when the photo was taken. Doesn't say a lot for such a prestigious photo competition.

Duff.

There’s at least a modicum of *something* there, even if just serendipity. Not defending the award, but capturing an image of a snow leopard isn’t exactly the same as a run of the mill image of Yosemite falls or the snake river.

 

[rdeloe]

The NY Times published an article about AI and photography. The article itself is worth a quick read, primarily to gain some insight into the perspective of "artists who use cameras". However, the real value is in the comments. There are a lot of posts from people who clearly don't understand how generative AI works. But there are also numerous posts from people who are thinking through the implications. I especially enjoyed the posts from working or retired photojournalists.

Opinion | A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?

A.I. generators can produce photorealistic images, which is either an extinction-level event for photographers or a fantastic opportunity. Or both.

www.nytimes.com

 

[jng]

The NY Times published an article about AI and photography. The article itself is worth a quick read, primarily to gain some insight into the perspective of "artists who use cameras". However, the real value is in the comments. There are a lot of posts from people who clearly don't understand how generative AI works. But there are also numerous posts from people who are thinking through the implications. I especially enjoyed the posts from working or retired photojournalists.

Opinion | A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?

A.I. generators can produce photorealistic images, which is either an extinction-level event for photographers or a fantastic opportunity. Or both.

www.nytimes.com

Indeed, this article provides great insights from artists (and others) with diverse experiences and perspectives. It's thought-provoking and worth the read.

John

 

[Ray Harrison]

The NY Times published an article about AI and photography. The article itself is worth a quick read, primarily to gain some insight into the perspective of "artists who use cameras". However, the real value is in the comments. There are a lot of posts from people who clearly don't understand how generative AI works. But there are also numerous posts from people who are thinking through the implications. I especially enjoyed the posts from working or retired photojournalists.

Opinion | A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?

A.I. generators can produce photorealistic images, which is either an extinction-level event for photographers or a fantastic opportunity. Or both.

www.nytimes.com

Thanks for the link Rob! It was definitely worth a read. Of the three categories mentioned in the article: alarmist, optimist, perspectivist - I feel I land most in the perspectivist bucket.