The Problem With AI "Photography" | It's Worse Than You Think

AI is like breasts implants, I prefer natural ones by ethic, so I do film photography. It is a struggle against technology.

It's really not killing photography. It just seems that way to you because, personally, are just failing to adapt to the new technology while still justifying the expense of your, now retro, hobby.

Oh, yes. You came to this understanding right at the end of your video. You got this.

I am a professional musician in Japan. For 30 years my other passion has been photography. I started with a Pentax K1000. Anyway, it's a sad thing IMO. Music, photography, graphic design, video, video editing, and basically anything that an artist loves to do is now in the hands of all our uploads and taken over by AI. A long time ago, whale blubber oil was used to light homes. This is another turning point. It's just sad that artists get destroyed first.

Sorry, but if AI is killing your photography, you need to look in the mirror. AI generated images are generally easy to spot and usually look very fake. Maybe not landscape or architecture, that's easy to replicate i guess but wildlife photography isn't even close to being threatened by AI images.

Yup, what a dystopia we live in.
Humans work 40-90 hours a week.
While Robots make art.
Instead of the other way around. God I hate this reality.

Now, I’m going to be a little bit provocative and say this; Ai is the best thing that have ever happened to us real artists. Why? Because now we can truly stop looking for approval and money from our passion. We can never compete with the glossy Ai output. Instead, we now have been given the gift of being truly creative and explorative in a way we never dared before. Now when we have lost the audience we are being freed from the shackles of pleasing others and can delve deep into our own art instead. We no longer have to hang out on Facebook or Instagram. No one will notice us and our work anymore. We are free now to return to our intrinsic nature of creativity without ever being bothered by anybody. Happy days ahead!

git gud lmao

As with all advances in technology - the biggest impact will be when the methods and techniques are lost or only known by a handful of people. Navigation, for example. Google/Apple Maps are great and I use CarPlay quite a lot, especially when travelling to places I have not been to before. Now if the technology couldn't be used, phone battery dies/no internet etc - those that are so use to using maps may struggle to navigate. I can see this happening with Photos. Hopefully a long, long way off if it does - but one day people may ask "what is a camera? how do I use it? what an old fashioned way of creating an image".

AI can never replace product photography. The AI cannot know what your new product looks like if it has never been seen or photographed before, and all the descriptions in the world wont help it. At some point, someone will sue when the AI image isn't showing 100% accurately what these AI restaurant food images show.

Thank you, Nickolas, for this thoughtful video. I've had many of the same reactions as you. I detest when AI images are posted without disclosure, pretending to be real (and thrre are so many now). And I am dismayed by how many people are fooled by even obvious fakes. The other part that bothers me is that these AI generators have been trained by using real images by people like you, me and others, without asking and without any compensation.

I agree with most of your points. I would argue that authenticity still matters. People like vinyl, real books, and film photography. One could make a case that this resurgence is because people want authentic value in the art they enjoy. It being "real" and a physical object makes it valuable. So I'm hopeful that many genres of photography will maintain their value. However, food, product, real estate, and headshots might be the most threatened by AI right now.

Sooooo get better at generating awesome AI photos for stock and stop whining.

People were putting fairies into photos back in the 1800s. I'm not happy with the idea of ai which is odd because I make collage work myself, but using my own photos. I remember when I first started teaching PS users often created pretty awful stuff. It's hard to come up with good ideas. Once users started putting thought into the compositions it made a good difference. It will be the same with ai. If you just put a tiger in a grocery store, without giving some thought as to why, it's probably not going to resonate because it’s a trite idea. One still has to have something worth communicating and then do it well. But, with ai, it becomes more like conceptual art. With conceptual art, if the idea is good enough, and described well enough, execution almost becomes optional. I’ve seen worse ideas, like large photos of dust bunnies presented in a gallery.

New subscriber. Helpful tips. Still fuzzy on “intersect with” but I do use some of the other masking tips in the sky.
Thanks for sharing.😊

How do we adapt?

Synthography. That’s the proper term. It’s not “Ai photography”. It’s Synthography.

I tried to get Facebook to take down a fake picture of Valley of Fire. You can only site Politics, Health, or Safety as a reason for having something removed. I tried to call it a safety issue with the idea that if someone went to an extreme desert environment to find a scene that doesn't exist, they could get themselves into trouble. But Facebook did not ask for an explanation from my side, and just turned down my request. I would comment on it being fake, but (1) plenty of people are already doing that, and unfortunately (2) that just gives the fake image a positive ding with respect to the algorithm.

I wish I could block user names that ended in numbers.