I have written about AI before as it pertains to my photography. I believe photographs generated by AI should be identified as such, and that disclosure should be obvious to the viewer.

If AI is your preferred way to create or communicate an idea, I have no problem with that. I just want to know that’s how you did it. To me, that is very different from describing the camera used, the type of paint or brushes an artist works with, or whether a writer used a typewriter or a computer. I have no problem with AI, as long as there is disclosure.

I don’t typically use AI to create photographs. But recently I used it to recreate a photograph that never existed.

I often tell a story about traveling from Gallup, New Mexico, to Albuquerque in the early 1990s. I had been visiting the newspaper there, doing Leaf Desk training. The Leaf Picture Desk was part of the transition to digital photography as we came to know it in newspapers. The original image might still begin as film or a print, but once scanned, the photograph became digital data that could be transmitted, stored, retrieved and manipulated to meet publishing standards.

On my way back to Albuquerque, I left Gallup under cloudy skies, heading east on Interstate 40. Near sundown, the clouds ahead of me disappeared, while behind me there was a break near the western horizon where the sun was setting. The sky behind me was brilliant. Above me was a bank of puffy clouds bathed in oranges, reds and yellows.

The cloud bank overhead was thick enough to block much of the remaining western glow, while the sky directly ahead had cleared completely. It had become dark enough that I could clearly see stars.

Behind me was sunset. Above me were glowing clouds. Ahead of me was night. The landscape itself was unremarkable at that point, but the way the light, clouds and darkness came together created one of the best light shows I have ever seen. Even today, I remember it vividly.

Oddly enough, I remember being glad I didn’t have my camera with me. I don’t think I could have done the scene justice. I’m not sure a single photograph could have captured both what I saw and what I felt.

But many years later, I realized I could at least try to recreate the memory.

I described the scene to ChatGPT this way:
“I was traveling on the Interstate toward Albuquerque from Gallup. As I was traveling east, I saw the sun setting in my rearview mirror. It was a spectacular sunset. Above me, a bank of puffy clouds bathed in oranges, reds and yellows. In front of me, a cloudless sky where I could clearly see the stars against a dark sky. The cloud bank above had blocked the light so I could see the stars, but the sunset behind illuminated the back of the view.”

And it produced a pretty nice image that does my recollection justice.

It isn’t perfect, and I went through several iterations before getting close to what I remembered. I asked that the picture be from the driver’s perspective so the driver-side mirror would be visible, reflecting the sunset behind me.

I also asked that the dashboard resemble what I remembered as a 1992 Chevrolet Malibu, a common sort of rental car for me at the time.

There was just one problem.

There was no 1992 Chevy Malibu.

Chevrolet had stopped using the Malibu name years earlier and didn’t revive it until later in the decade. I was probably remembering something like a Lumina or Corsica.

So AI managed to create a convincing dashboard for a car that didn’t exist. That may be the perfect little footnote to this story. Human memory is imperfect, and AI is perfectly capable of confidently helping us recreate those imperfections. Both occasionally need fact-checking.

More recently, my friend Vince took a photograph of Mary’s right-side mirror with the familiar warning, “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” We decided to have some fun with it. Vince had never used any sort of AI with photography and really wasn’t aware of what it could do. We had been out photographing horses from Mary’s Bronco, so we started experimenting with putting unexpected things into the mirror. That one was simply for fun.

On a more practical level, I have found myself using ChatGPT quite a bit for travel planning.

We now have a new national park, Chiricahua National Park in Arizona, which makes my “Park List” longer by one. So what was I supposed to do? Naturally, I asked AI to help me plan a weeklong trip.

It suggested breaking the trip into three parts: Bisbee, Portal and Chiricahua. Because ChatGPT has some familiarity with the kinds of places I enjoy, it steered me toward some more unusual lodging options. In Bisbee, for example, we have rented a 1953 Silverdome travel trailer at the Shady Dell Vintage Trailer Court.

That sounds much more interesting to me than another generic hotel room.

AI has also been useful in helping plan a much more complicated trip to Alaska next summer—one involving planes, ferries and automobiles. The logistics are complicated. Our schedules have to line up with the Alaska Marine Highway, commercial flights, air taxis and a guide who will take us into Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic National Parks. It has taken quite a few conversations with ChatGPT to fine-tune the itinerary, but it has been extremely helpful for sorting through the moving parts.

I still have concerns about AI.

Data centers are extraordinarily resource-intensive, particularly when it comes to electricity and water. Here in Utah, there is an ongoing controversy surrounding a proposed large data-center development near the Great Salt Lake, with Kevin O’Leary—better known as “Mr. Wonderful” from Shark Tank—right in the middle of it.

There are legitimate questions about how much energy and water this technology should consume and what the environmental consequences will be as AI expands.

But AI is clearly here to stay.

I find myself using it more than I expected—not to replace photography, but to solve problems, plan trips, explore ideas and, occasionally, give form to a memory for which no photograph exists.

My rule remains pretty simple:
Use it. Enjoy it. Create with it if you want.

Just tell people when you did.