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‘Insight’ by Megan Wofford
In this video I offer a perspective on photography and how it might be affected by the rise of A.I.
#photography #artificialintelligence #midjourney
Comments
37 responses to “Photography and the Rise of A.I. (a perspective)”
This what I've been trying to tell everyone freaking out about AI. Also, if a client comes to you for a project, that's because they believe in your work. If you start depending on AI your style will quickly be lost. What will these AI "artists" do if their client asks for a revision when they deliver something AI generated? They will quickly get caught in their lie and tarnish their own reputation. I do mainly real estate stuff and this industry will not allow anyone to misrepresent a property. You have to photograph it as it with minimal corrections so potential buys know exactly what they're getting.
Sorry Sean but you're being naive here. 'we're gonna catch them just like we've been catching people who used Photoshop for the last 30 years'… No you won't. You won't know the difference. The only thing you'll be able to do is limit yourself to reputable sources and hope they pay their reliable staff well enough to not abuse their (and your) trust. But judging an image from a new source to be true or fake based on the image alone, might become impossible in the coming year already. Hash codes or blockchains will only save you in strictly controlled environments, not in the general online space. I'm fairly confident that in at most 2 years from now you'll be able to give an AI program a set of photos of yourself and your (real or fantasy) spouse and receive a fully convincing wedding shoot that even an experienced photographer and editor like yourself will find impossible to catch as AI product. There's just too much source material available to train these AI models on.
Now ofcourse most people will want actuaal photos of the actual moment when it comes to their personal lives. But to convince yourself that you'll catch the fakes online in 2 year's time… I really don't believe that the telltale signs (flaws in the images, or even unnatural noise patterns that software could pick out) will still be there. And we're gonna have to find a way to deal with that. Personally I believe that citizen journalism will die because of AI, and only established news sources will be able to retain trust, provided that they're careful. And the same is true for any creative endeavour. If people want to trust the authenticity of any content in front of them, it'll have to come from an established party or be assumed to be fake.
No doubt that, for example, news organizations will act self-regulatory. The problem is that a large proportion of people (especially younger generations) nowadays find their "information" on social media. And there we have already seen quite a bit of deliberate misinformation and conspiracy theories using AI and deep fakes (Trump's arrest, the Pope, Emma Watson, etc.). I admire your optimism, but I really don't see the future as bright.
Come to Golden BC for GREAT outdoor photos
"No place is boring if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.” — Robert Adams
I dont know about the film, but Godbless the good night sleep makes any place amazing
My copy of the Magazine in on the way 🙂 the costing of shipping is quite step. Paid 8 pounds of shipping to Portugal. :/ still good value for money I’m sure. Great video btw. I’m part of a project named “A Barca das Imagens” here in Portugal and last month event was precisely about this theme. Personally as a photographer I love everything that has to do with the process. So for me, AI is something I try out of curiosity. As someone that works on the IT area for over 30 years, it’s natural to have the curiosity to test and try. While not my cup of tea as a process for myself, I do like the see some of the work and I recognize that there is a great deal of creativity in building proper queries and selecting the best results. And AI can be a starting point that can then be complemented by post processing and give the author even more artistic influence on the end result. Pretty nice work already been produced. As a consumer its amazing the evolution of the engines. As a producer, it’s all about the process for me, so I prefer the “traditional” way of writing with light :). Cheers
My biggest concern for photography is that we just get so fed up with images everywhere and all the time. We lose the appetite… But maybe it is all fine. The already endless stream of millions of images on social media, is so shallow. So hopefully photography will survive in print and books. Print your photos. Give them to someone who actually cares. That's it. And forget "fame" on IG, Facebook, Youtube … It's pointless….
Great video, very down to earth realistic point of view, love it.
Always a pleasure to watch your videos. 🙂 Althought I can't say I share your positive outlook. In particular in regards to journalism. News publishing giants have been know for having their political alignment agendas for decades. This tool will only strenghten their desires to pursue sellable content.
The A.I. is a creative entity that will generate images indistinguishable from photographs whether based on authentic photos or not, will provide a contextual narrative and a story (which so many people in the comments think A.I. is not capable of conjuring up) and will self improve upon its own output by monitoring consumers' engagement – look how many company departments or entire businesses we've just bypassed in one sentence.
The devaluation of the photography will not be there because there is one more image generator in town – it will be there because the A.I. pervades all aspects of deliverables (remember the goal of A.I. creators is to get to Artificial General Intelligence, not just to write better essays or create more emotion inducing images) and photography is just one part of it.
The comparison to desktop publishing, photoshop or mobile phones does not even come close: it is a gap greater than between a wooden stick and a laptop computer.
We've issued an invitation to Aliens to do our work for us. We already do not know how those aliens are coming up with the answers, but the better the answers they provide the less we know how they do it. We should be concerned just for this one reason alone.
I naively wish we will have the wisdom to at least certify "non A.I. content", however knowing human's historical thirst for power, profit and self indulgence I project this task will be delegated to A.I. take care of as well.
Thank you for this great video! I think as well the upcoming from A.I. is going to cost a lot of photographers their jobs, especially in the commercial industry. And maybe they have to find a new market or genre of photography. Which don't have to be bad, if they going to find a new style or genre of photography. I think it's very important to tell a story, of what our photography is about, and show our human characters. This is something A.I. can't do and will not be able to replicate! I wonder if analog photography is now coming more, because of the characteristic that it can't be manipulated this much….
Very insightful and on point, as always. I agree. AI will not replace but will stand alone as another tool. Just like photography didn’t kill painting in the late 19th century and early 20th.
Before I watch this I have some expectation and suspect that with your spiritual, monastic learning, that you might have a capacity to contribute to this topic in a way that other photography channels have failed to do or done so superficially that their efforts have been of no consequence.
Je pense que tu rêves. Demain ces IA seront intégrées à nos smartphones et tout le monde s'en servira sans même s'en apercevoir. Tout le monde deviendra un photographe à la place du photographe. Penses tu que ceux qui nous commande des photos n'ont pas de goût ? Si justement ! S'ils nous ont choisi c'est parce qu'ils ont le même goût que nous. alors ? qu'est ce qui les empêchait de faire la même chose que nous ? C'est justement la technique, la maîtrise de l'outil photographique, des logiciels et le temps passé ! L'IA supprime tout ça et donne la possibilité à toute personne de faire l'image souhaitée à notre place en quelques minutes car il n'y a plus besoin de technique et pourra la répandre sur les réseaux en un claquement de doigts…
Le photo journalisme n'envoie plus de Reporter mais accepte les vidéos des auditeurs lesquelles seront intrinsèquement déjà modifiées par l'IA intégrée.
Le Mariage ? Déjà tous les membre d'une même famille photographient avec leur Iphone et à tous les moments du D-Day.
La mode fashion, c'est déjà mort, parce que c'est ultra rapide de fabriquer un visuel pour une campagne de pub pour les réseaux sociaux et de le recommencer si on s'est trompé. Levi's a signé avec Lalaland.ia.
Peut être restera t-il encore de l'authenticité dans les photos scolaires jusqu'à ce qu'un professeur mette un Iphone sur pied…
Le corporate ? Rien de plus facile à remplacer qu'un photographe de Corporate par un Iphone.
L'IA n'est pas un outil mais la chose qui remplace l'outil et le technicien.
Seuls survivront les vrais artistes, les réalisateurs de film, les directrices artistique, les créateurs mais leur équipes mourront. Le public acceptera cette tendance trompeuse comme il a accepté de ne plus avoir de bois dans ces meubles avec IKÉA.
Dans un premier temps les photographes tenteront de survivre en se rabattant sur un secteur pas encore touché. Cela créera un choc d'offre et donc une baisse des prix. Et puis dès que ces IA seront intégrées dans les smartphone ce sera la fin du game.
Nous avons déjà perdu la chambre, le moyen format, le 24×36 argentique, le reflex et nous perdront l'hybride car il sera remplacé par un clavier. Dès lors pour quoi se former à "ces vieux outils " quand il ne faut plus qu'écrire ?
Thank you, Sean. I very much enjoyed the video and your balanced perspective. I like to create art by taking photographs at sporting events. I love capturing people doing something they love, and sharing this within the sporting community and more widely. I can sit down with midjourney and I can use words to 'create' an image which is already not far from looking real. I can even reference well known sports stars and the AI will work its magic to deliver something similar to my own work with sports stars I have never met. In your video you acknowledge how the different processes are not comparable. One is real (mainly – with some edits etc), one is imagined (less real). And, if I am correct you argue that the real 'seen' image will always be highly valued because of the greater level of authenticity. That does help me feel better. And, when sharing the work within my sporting photography community, that authenticity will be acknowledged. On the negative side, I do foresee that the value of 'real' photos outside a specific community, shared on social media, will be diluted by the increasing prevalence of AI imagery. People won't know and they won't be bothered to establish authenticity. That will undermine 'real' photography when it's outside its community. It's a serious change, and I think it makes the Photoshop change seem like small fry. I do know that good photography will also be valued, and survive. But our environment will be changing more than we can imagine in the next period. It's good for our community to debate this and understand each other's perspectives.
I agree and disagree at the same time. I agree with most of what you said, but I don't know if we can already make critical judgement calls on an industry that is barely a year or two old. I think our values of "AI Photography" are still to be developed and honed as the AI industry becomes more mainstream. For example, in twenty years will the "Instagram kids" who grew up as the AI industry developed, will they care if a photo was man made or artificial made? Just like a lot of us don't care if something nowadays is shot with a digital or film camera. Sure there will be the purists who want to know the difference, but mainstream society may not care about the instruments used in creating an image. And that's the issue. We still don't know how this is going to develop. Judging future society with today's parameters may not hold water. Or will it?
Always interesting, always thought provoking…many thanks Sean. As an amateur photographer I take pictures for myself and have used editing software to manipulate aspects of those pictures for years now…. Once they used to say a photograph never lies, but almost from the beginning this was never true! Perhaps we really are living in the Matrix……
Thank you. I appreciate your level-headed approach to the topics you discuss; it's a refreshing change from all the sensationalist opinions that rise to the top.
I agree with your points, Sean, but you seem to have left a very important point unaddressed: photography, Photoshop, and traditional CGI all required serious skills, taking years to master. AI doesn’t need those skills, let alone humans, so the supply of visually pleasing or attention-grabbing images has become virtually endless. We’ve seen a similar increase in supply: cheap phone cameras and free sharing platforms have devalued photography as a whole. Therefore, I expect something similar to happen with AI. Think about this: a child who grows up with a device that can generate images of whatever they imagine, will that child as an adult really want to see photos taken on a camera by someone else, or even pay for it? I doubt it. And when they do, they will expect you to touch-up their portraits with AI, just as retouching has become a business standard too. This is the adaptation that you are talking about, but I think it’s just a very small piece of the cake.
I love the perspective you bring into this topic, the photoshop was a brilliant example of what we as photographer cannot and can progress in the realm of technology advancing process. The need for real is not only a great point, but the essential need of what makes photography into what it is nowadays. AI surely is an interesting and useful technology, but we will have to go along the way more to figure how to utilize them in a neat and respectful way to benefit us as a whole. Love the video. Keep it up.
You remain as my favorite photographer of this generation, not for any silly reason. This video is another clear example why. Such a down to earth and human way of seeing things. Thanks for another great uplifting content. 😊🙏🏻
It's always [too] pleasing to see your own thoughts come back to you from an influential voice. Speaking of unscrupulous photographers, I saw an absurd article defending Michael Christopher Brown's photorealistic 'illustrations' of a period of Cuban history using AI. It was so ridiculous. No one wants AI to be part of documentation – and it's dangerous to blur the lines. When you think of photographers who've had their careers destroyed by even small digital alterations presented as truth. So this guy pivoting from an NFT grift to this latest grift should no longer have any credibility as a photographer to promote this stuff. But it takes fools like that to make everyone realise where the lines need to be redrawn.
The main problem between Photoshop and AI is that Photoshop requires at least idea and skill, AI requires only couple of words which everyone can write easily
Progress will always create an element of anxiety.
Nice one Sean. For all curious, look after the series Everything is a remix. There you will see how many from singers, movie makers and so on were copying old stuff too to make some other things. So what's the deal? History still matters.
I totally agree with you, the problem is that I start to see some organizations using AI generated images on articles about real facts, for example the case of Amnesty international and the protests in Colombia, quite a concerning fact
Perhaps photographers shouldn’t be giving their rights away to AI, from platforms like Facebook and Instagram!
I don't think, staying in front off one PC is evolution of photography, in my opinion this is computer science and taste. . It's far even from drawing, designing.
Thanks for saying this – a very important message especially when the proliferation of AI generated images is making people seriously think about the future of photography and photographers
Absolutely!
This video was made possible by Synthesia.
Sean was actually on a beach in Tahiti typing prompts on his iPhone.
🤣
Hmmm. "Wont be able to trust what they see anymore?" -our images are LS'd and PS'd, even Ansel Adams manipulated his images mercilessly. The real art is knowing how much, how subtle. I have dabbled with 4 AI programs, and agree it is in its infancy and there is much more to come. Until that day comes, I will continue to please myself, do what makes me happy. Thank you for the objective posting
This was a very positive and uplifting message, but in my opinion not a balanced one. What isn't mentioned here is that the vast majority of artists and photographers aren't going to become successful Youtubers sponsored by Squarespace and earning a good income from sponsorships and ad revenue. The vast majority of people who make a living from art, for example, selling stock photos, making art for book covers, graphic novels, concept designs and so on…most of those people are gone. Their careers are over.
The same will happen to musicians soon. Yeah, there will be demand for real musicians for a long time and a minority will be able to make a living, but businesses simply won't pay humans to make music for ads and games and online content when AI can do it for free in 45 seconds. So the majority of artists will be unable to find time to make art because they'll be back to stocking shelves for 45 hours per week.
I'm a videographer and music producer, but I've been making AI art for about 8 months and I understand that my career will be over soon unless I pivot to earning from making videos about the art like you do, instead of trying to survive just making the actual art.
The saying "those who fail to do, teach" will soon be true for more people than ever.
Being an artist as a job is about to be vastly more difficult than ever, as if it weren't already difficult enough.
Thanks for your thoughts on this, Sean. It will be interesting to see where this goes and how photographers negotiate these technological changes. One of the areas I work in is technology and ethics and I'm currently doing some work on AI. The generation of images is a very tangible way people can see AI's development and use and hence engenders many passionate opinions, not the least shaped by our claim that creativity is something uniquely human. Keep thinking and talking about this. It will be helpful for many, I think.
Very well said, sir. Great video!
Up load a snapshot of a face and the A.I. will produce any type of portrait you want. A.I. landscapes are limitless and sublime. We simply cannot compete
Photos are no longer accepted in courts of law as being reliable evidence.
Unfortunately, I believe the journalism environment is changing from truth to propaganda. This will open the use of of artificial imagery to support the needs of the media.