Photography vs AI
Photography and AI (artificial Intelligence) is a particularly hot topic and has the potential to be an absolute game changer for all photographers. At the recent Sony World Photography Awards, German artist, Boris Eldagsen’s AI-generated image titled ‘Pseudomnesia: The Electrician’ won first prize in the creative open category. Eldagsen refused the award and said he used the picture to test the competition and create a discussion about the future of photography.
Many creatives are saying AI has the potential to cripple professional photography, Lets discuss the potential impacts and benefits of AI.
Photography and AI
I have studied the history of photography for many years and that moment when Eldagsen’s AI generated picture was entered and won I knew it was going to be a pivotal moment in the history of photography. I can tell you for sure that in 10, 20, 30 or 50 years we will be talking about that one moment, so thank you Boris, all photographers around the world thank you.
Now let's talk about what an AI image is. Quite simply you tell a computer what to create and it creates it. There's been a couple of interesting videos that I have watched over the past week, one in particular was a Sky News Report with a wildlife photographer called Tim Flack. He was Seeing if people can you tell the difference between two tiger faces. One was a real picture, and one was an artificially intelligent created one picture.
So, I got everyone in the office here, there's four of us in and we all looked at these pictures of the tiger's faces. Half of us chose one and half of us chose the other one. Now that clearly tells you that AI is brilliant at creating realistic imagery. Go back a couple of months and it was easy to tell an AI image, but it's not now.
I also watched another YouTube video from a YouTuber called Terry White. He does a lot of adobe product tutorials. It's very good and he was demonstrating Adobe's firefly, which is Adobe's AI image generator, and he had an image that he took of Horseshoe’s Bend in Arizona. The sky was not good on that picture, right now of course you've got Sky replacement in Photoshop, so arguably we've had AI for a little while, but not like this. What he did was went onto Adobe's AI generated image and he typed in the Horseshoe Arizona in April at 8:00 PM sunset and he got the exact sunset at that time of the year in that exact place and then he used Photoshop’s sky replacement to put that sky onto his image and when you think about things like this it’s mind-blowing.
© Boris Eldagsen, ‘Pseudomnesia: The Electrician’
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Historical comparisons Between AI and the Invention of Photography
I’m now going to discuss the comparisons. There are loads of people out there going, ‘oh it's just like the invention of Photography to painting’. No, it’s not let's think about this, in the 1840s photography was invented and you know painters of the time were worried it would take their work away.
Well, it's a totally different thing, a painting is different to a photograph and when we go back to that period, photographers were limited to a size, they couldn't do big paintings and they were black and white or sepia, they didn't have colour. It really isn't comparable to say it was like the invention of Photography to painting back in 1840.
There was a good hundred years of black and white photos vs paintings of colour, there was a clear distinction for a long period. I don't know the exact dates but you're looking at 1940 for colour photography and really before it became popular colour photography, you're looking at the 1970s, so you know you had all that time when it was a clear distinction between a painting and a photograph.
Another comparison that's been bouncing around is when digital photography took over. Again, it's not comparable because literally you went from capturing light on a film to capturing light on a digital chip. There is digital manipulation that's been going on for the last 10 or 20 years and that's a slight comparison because you know you can obviously change your images, retouch skin, but then you know when it even comes to retouching skin and adjusting images that was done for hundreds of years as well with film and dark room.
All that kind of stuff, so you can't even really say that that's comparable because you still need a picture to start with and then adapt afterwards. AI imagery is new it's not comparable with anything that we've had before. You tell a computer to generate something, and it generates it. You don't need a camera you don't need to go outside it will do it for you and it will look realistic. This is completely new hence why you cannot compare, artificial intelligence it is a pivotal moment in photography.
AI’s Impact on photography
Now let's talk about how it's going to affect you if you are earning money as a photographer. let's take the wildlife photographer that was on the sky news report as an example. People pay him for his Wildlife photos. It takes a lot of effort and skill, lots of practice a lot of experience goes into getting them.
You know brilliant Wildlife pictures, let's take the picture of the tiger face, there are companies out there that pay for that picture to put on magazine, to use for advertising. I mean that's the big one really that's where the big money comes in. well, they don't need to pay you anymore and if a company can save money, they're going to save money. They can now go on to an AI service, type in tiger's face and Wallop, it comes up and it looks pristine they can type in tiger's face at sunset tiger's face looking off into the distance, tiger's face looking at me.
All these things the computer will generate it and clearly, we've proved it in the office here that you cannot tell the difference between the AI and the real thing. That photographer has lost that sale they've lost that money.
Let's talk about just advertising, photographers in general, you've got companies that employ photographers to take pictures of things for advertising. I don't know let's take Arizona desert, now you can generate that image, you can generate that Horseshoe Bend image if you need that image, you can get it.
Like Terry White’s sunset, sunrise, this angle, up high, down low, whatever you can generate it on a computer, and it will look just as good as anyone taking the picture. So, why on God's Earth would that company pay a photographer to go to Arizona to get those shots when they can just type it in onto an AI service and get a realistic Image which will be exactly what they're looking for. Like I said at the beginning, it is a game changer for photography.
This is where things change. Now clearly when it comes to taking a photograph, what AI can't do is take the fun out of going and taking a photograph right so, I'd like to think that The School of Photography is safe because you know we teach people to go out and take photographs and enjoy that process.
However, then it might do because part of the process of enjoying photography is to post it on social media so that your followers can see it and they can appreciate the effort that you've put in to climb a mountain and getting that sunset image, at the perfect time perfect and conditions Etc.
You know, well we all know how hard it is to get. You do it you learn photography you go out you get that shot you put it on the internet, and someone goes is this AI generated? That is going to hurt you. It is going to hurt because people are going to think that the most perfect brilliant images are AI generated so it could well affect the learning photography industry.
The one industry that I think would probably be safe is portraiture because I'm sure if I typed in ‘create a lovely portrait of Mark Newton’, it wouldn't be able to do it well, actually you never know, but it might pull Mark Newton from somewhere in Australia or something like that but you know you'd like to think that the portraiture industry is safe.
I think it’s going to change everything, like I said it's only been a couple of months between when you could tell If it was an AI generated image to now when you're going ‘what I can't I literally can't tell’.
Dark side of AI
Now I want to talk to you about a kind of dark side of this whole technology and that is that they are using my images and your images without you even knowing. They've scraped the whole internet and all those people that have been good like me and added keywords to their images, you know London at night under Millennium Bridge, the keyword will help AI to scrape the from the internet and you will never know whether it's been your image or not it's been done to.
There is a lot of money now to be made from AI, you must subscribe to these services, and you know then you can generate the text that you want, you can generate the images that you want, you can generate movies now, little movie clips you can AI generate.
Conclusion
This all stems from this artist Boris Eldagsen winning in the Sony World photography Award. One of the biggest in the whole world. Eldagsen needs absolute massive praise for this, and I just want to reiterate that this is different to anything before. It can't be compared to anything.
This is a really important time in the history of photography. I've studied the history of photography for many years I can tell you now, I absolutely promise you, watch or read this blog and video in five- or ten-years’ time and you'll be going, he was right. This point now, right now this is the changing point, and it will go down in history.
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