Is AI going to kill photography as we know it?

AI is a bit of a slippery slope as far as I am concerned, and I have already slipped. The use of AI to reduce noise in my digital photography has been useful. Even more useful, generative cropping in Photoshop that allows you to expand your image to fit a particular size. I feel guiltless when I do these things. I get it, some of this would likely get me fired from my previous job as a photojournalist. Would using AI noise reduction be a problem? I don’t know. We were always looking for ways to reduce the apparent grain in our images by using secret formulas to develop our film. My favorite was developing black and white film in HC110 (Kodak product) at the Astrodome. You put the film in the tank with the developer and let it sit. No agitation at all. We used the concoction all season long and did not ever mix fresh. It seemed to work and get better with age.

These days when I look at my feed on Facebook, I seem to get random posts from people like “Beautiful Something or Other.”

Usually there is something a little off about the “fantastical” landscape image with the rainbow and the lightning and tornado-like clouds over red rock landscapes that do not really exist. When I see these, usually one of the top comments is calling out the questionable nature of the image. That is, it is a FAKE, AI generated image purporting to be real.

I don’t waste my time on these. I don’t want to engage with content that is trying to represent reality without being upfront. I hide and block this content. I don’t want to see it or anything like it. I see so many images on social media that are obviously fake (six fingers on a hand anyone) and others that are more difficult to discern. I get it, people want to feed the algorithm and if AI visual content grabs someone’s attention for a moment and engages them, then they have been successful. I don’t mind the AI content. I just want to see it clearly labeled as such. This is a matter of trust and also of ethical behavior.

Part of the reason I make photos is that it feeds my inner artist. I like music, but don’t play an instrument and people would pay me not to sing. I cannot draw a straight line to save my life, and my crooked lines are not much better. Chicken scratching would be an improvement on my handwriting. Thank goodness for keyboards.

So I try to make photographs. I really believe with so much questionable content out there, do we need more guardrails on what we say and post? Some people have a hard time understanding irony or sarcasm. I am glad I don’t (get it). So it really makes me cranky when I see these phantasmagorical (hmm, spell checker did not even question that one) photos that are not honest about how they came to be. I know there are some trusted sources out there and I trust them at face value, but if I don’t know you, I want to know if the image is AI or not.

Should I be happy that there are now ways that I can take my inner artistic monologue and have it revealed through textual prompts to AI software. Could I have asked Chat GPT to write this blog? Well, actually I could, and I did. I will post that next week, clearly labeled. It was not a bad effort, but it is certainly not my more casual writing style. If it knew more about me, I could probably have it rewrite it in my style. Well, I could and I did. That is scary. I guess there is enough of my content from my blog posts at MerlinOne (now part of Canto) that it “knows” me.

My first effort at an AI generated photo. My prompts in Photoshop are: "The mittens at Monument valley. They should have snow on them with the very large full moon coming up behind them, centered, and illuminated by the late afternoon warm setting sun.” Imagine both my surprise at how much it looked like the actual scene and how quickly it was created.

When I first made some notes to myself about this blog, one of the things I noted was that “I would not ride this train” referring to AI generated images. But I guess I was already at the station because of my comfortable use of AI tools like noise reduction, generative cropping and the new remove tool in Lightroom and Photoshop. While fooling around in Photoshop (I know there are other AI visual tools like Midjourney but I already pay for Photoshop), in a matter of moments, I created other images. Can I still call them photographs? My neighbor was sitting with me and I showed him what I created, so we created one together. It was scary fast and really good.

For certain images, I don’t know how anyone could tell that it was not created in camera. I think other visual artists (non-photographers) have a similar dilemma. And then there is the issue of who gets the credit. It was my computer, my copy of Photoshop, and my prompts, but the images are built on the backs of all the other content preceding it that AI is aware of. How do those people get rewarded for their work? So many questions.

Should we be afraid? Maybe? I don’t know. Is this a new and improved art form; if you can truly imagine it, you can create it without physical tools or even being there? Does this replace the human experience of actually getting up early to catch the sun, or staying up late with friends to capture the Milky Way overlooking Butterfly Lake in the Uinta mountains?

Next week I will share the AI generated blog on this topic and some more AI generated images.

Thanks for stopping by. See you next week for Part II