Against generative AI

I believe there are strong reasons to oppose AI’s involvement in creative works, especially photography. This is a topic that’s very dear to me, and I hope you will also find it interesting and will want to share your opinion about it.

I will start with a brief mention of the marketing aspects and then move into the main issues.

All of the images in this post were shot with Nikon Z8 using a Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 and Nikkor 28mm f1.4

Marketing

AI has become the go-to marketing buzzword for many industries, applied to everything from trivial automations to advanced machine learning. Companies have been using the term for years in an attempt to sound innovative and trendy.

This strategy isn’t new—it’s as old as marketing itself. The term AI is often used to reposition companies and create competitive advantages in an artificial way. Software, in essence, consists of algorithms that solve problems, so all software essentially does the same thing unless it’s labeled differently. Instead of saying you use an advanced algorithm for detecting a sky or a subject, you declare it’s AI. Instead of simply stating that your noise removal is highly effective, you call it AI noise removal. And so on.

Companies offering amateur software have also discovered they can position themselves in this highly competitive market by claiming their app is AI-focused and uses AI for a wide range of features. Is it true? Is actual AI being used for something substantial? I doubt they ponder much about that, as long as someone buys the software or subscribes to their services.

And what is AI anyway? Some might say AI doesn’t exist, and I would agree with them. There is no Artificial Intelligence. There is machine learning, and there are applications that can mimic and automate some human activities, but that is not “intelligence”. The usage of the AI term is wrong and, again, just marketing. There is no AI. For the sake of simplicity I will use the term in this post, but what I mean by AI is just machine learning and similar technology, because, again, as of now in 2024, there is no AI.

This first aspect of AI is not the main topic of the article, but I still wanted to address it because it introduces us to the world of deception that AI has brought to us. Even the use of the term is often dishonest. Bear in mind, I am not saying all software that claims to use AI is wanting to deceive the users. However, let’s be honest: most are just slapping an AI label on their product to attempt repositioning or simply for an easy cash grab. Now, let’s move on.

In the creative industry, the term AI is generally used to describe two kinds of software features: automation and generative AI.

Automation

If, for instance, you open Lightroom or Photoshop, you’ll find AI features that identify the content of a photo and can create quite accurate masks based on what is found. No imagery is being generated; the AI’s output is intended to make some tasks easier and faster.

The thing is, you don’t need AI to create complex and accurate masks. We’ve been doing it for a long time, and the results from a skilled human are still better and more reliable than what the best AI can offer. The difference lies in the time needed to achieve results that are good enough.

Let’s keep this concept in mind: good enough. It will often come back later.

We also don’t need AI for understanding what is inside an image. We can see where the sky is, what the subject is, we can identify the skin tones. Again, a human can do it all, and probably do it better, but requiring slightly or much longer time.

Automation-based AI allows people with no skills to perform tasks they previously could not, and it enables skilled individuals to accomplish tasks faster.

Generative AI

The second kind of of AI we can find in our photography and creative endeavors is the generative one.

This uses complex and fascinating algorithms that are being trained on a very large number of images: the AI learns how to identify and mix the contents of these images according to a human prompt, with the goal of creating new imagery.

Another usage of generative AI is to interpret existing images and rebuild the missing parts if we want to remove a part or extend the canvas. Again, the AI will analyze the source, use some patterns for identifying what it includes and how to generate the parts “behind” or outside the existing ones.

As an architecture and real estate photographer, I often had to delete objects, fix issues on walls, add vegetation and so on. Villas are rarely perfect when I go to shoot them, and they need to look as if they were. For 20 years or so, I did all that in my photography by painting and cloning. Having a background as a concept artist, I always loved digitally painting and that has been a major selling point for my business over the years. I could paint everything that was needed and I was also quite fast.

Things changed with generative AI. People with no skills can now do most of what took me years to learn, and do it much faster than I could. Again, is the AI output perfect? Not at all, but it is good enough for most clients, especially if the output is only being experienced on small screens.

Using features like the AI generative fill and removal in Photoshop, someone with no skills nor talent can clean a shot, add props and do it fast and cheap. This has been quite an earthquake in the photography world and the consequences are still to be really understood.

The situation I have just described is causing two major ethical and practical issues, that are the main topic of this article.

A consequence of generative AI

First of all, people with no skills becoming suddenly able of taking the job from professionals.

Professionals set their price according to their offer compared to the market of reference. If I can offer something that is highly regarded and has few competition, I can price it higher. If what is being requested can be offered by every actor in the market, then a price war starts. And this is exactly what is happening in photography.

Since everyone can now offer similar high-end services for a good enough quality and extremely fast, we have clients requesting to pay less and have the job done much faster, all while photographers hurt each other by lowering the prices.

Photographers lower prices because they think that’s the only mean for differentiating among professionals. That’s not the only mean, but this would be a completely different article.

Clients are taking advantage of the situation, wanting to pay less and have everything done faster.  Most clients don’t care much quality, they just want fast and cheap. There is very few respect for photography and content creation in general. 

What matters is rarely high quality photography: what they want is something fast and bit expensive to spend on social media or their website, with a ROI as substantial and fast as possible. And keep in mind, I am mostly talking of my market, that is a luxury one. There is not much difference between markets, in this sense. The direction is the same.

That’s why generative AI is being embraced so fast. Photographers and other creatives see it as a shortcut for providing more services and being faster, while in reality they are shooting themselves on the foot and enabling arrogant clients.

Ai is a theft that allows clients to get content even faster and cheaper. Clients don’t care about the well being of creatives, because there will always be a new creative to exploit, once the current ones will be burned and retire. This is sad and it is the reality of things.

I have been working as a professional photographer most of my life. I work for all kinds of clients, from the average income to the celebrity to the extremely rich, up to the oligarchs. And while there are exceptions, with some people still understanding concepts like ethic and quality, the vast majority of clients are not caring at all about actual quality or the well being of the creatives. They just want things to be good enough, fast and as cheap as possible. I know I repeat myself, but this fact is really at the core of the issue.

It’s not uncommon I have a client saying something like “oh c’mon, AI will do all of this! Life became so easy for you!” and expecting a discount because of that. Or advancing a completely unreasonable request, wanting it to be done for very cheap, something like adding a Ferrari in the garage or changing the furniture of a huge terrace. They absolutely know it would require a lot of job and there is no AI that can do it perfectly, but they don’t care. AI for them means free for all, everything is suddenly cheap and easy.

Another consequence of generative AI

I previously called AI a theft. And this brings us to the second issue I have with this technology. Because AI is indeed the biggest and most blatant intellectual property theft in history.

All the generative AI tools are trained on existing imagery. There are huge databases of images and photos being created and sold. We know what is in some, we don’t know what is in others. As usual, we have no guarantees companies are actually doing what they say. 

That place is unbelievable and I never knew it existed, though it’s 30 minutes of car from my home! Amazing energy.

The imagery in the training databases was generally not paid for and no consent was requested. Look at Adobe, using the images in their stock service for training, even if no one in Adobe Stock actually did consent for that, and many started posting their photos long before generative AI was even a thing.

The work of millions of people is being used for training AI and making it better. Companies are improving their tools and selling them to creatives, while the ones that unwillingly provided the training material get nothing: even worse, AI tools will replace the creators that were robbed in first place. Oh, the irony!

Whatever we generate with web connected AI is being analyzed, stored, used for more training. Everything is part of the flow: generate, train, sell.

Some will say that companies swear they don’t train on unauthorized content, but this is wishful thinking at best. Copyrighted parts often appear in AI generated images. Even watermarks sometimes appear in the output of generative AI. Lawsuits are being filed and companies don’t care, because there is just so much money to be made, and the regulations in place are still rudimentary and leave a huge degree of maneuver for escaping legal battles.

To summarise this broken situation: AI works because it is trained on images that were never paid for or authorised. So, yes, it’s basically theft. Corporations train AI on imagery that has never been paid for or authorised, and their AI then creates imagery that steals the work of photographers, illustrators, video makers and so on. The same creative people from whom corporations stole the training images.

It is madness and it works because, as I mentioned in the first consequence, clients demand everything faster and cheaper and don’t give a damn about ethics and quality.

Putting everything together

We can see these two issues are strictly intertwined.

AI is trained on mostly stolen content.

AI steals jobs from creatives.

AI lowers the entry barrier of creative industries, causing a price war among creatives.

Clients take advantage of this and demand lower prices and faster workflows.

Creatives fall victim of this process and exit the market.

New creatives enter it, for even more mortified jobs, paid less, less respected.

Who will profit from this? Corporations involved with the creation and operation of AI tools, of course. And, marginally, the clients that buy the new AI made / contributed content.

In the end we will have a market with few lucky ones that can price decently because of some external reason (this is also a topic for another post) while most creatives will work for close to nothing, becoming simple users of AI software, until even the notion of “creative job” will become obsolete.

It’s no wonder that all of the CEOs involved in AI are promoting it as the next big thing: it surely is for them. People at openAI, at Google, at Microsoft, at Adobe, simply couldn’t care less about you and me, about creatives, about all the industries they are ruining only for their own profit.

If humans can do something, they do it. We never cared much for what is right or wrong. That’s why we are polluting and ruining this beautiful planet. That’s why we hurt nature and animals. That’s why we steal and kill and abuse. That’s why we make wars. Because we can, and we don’t care about consequences as long as we think they don’t directly affect us. So, AI happens and will happen and there is nothing we can do about it.

But at least, corporation guys, don’t treat us like idiots. Don’t tell us AI is good for us. It is not. It is only good for you.

AI is ruining industries, changing for the worst the lives of millions. It is polluting the planet because of all the crazy amount of energy it needs for operating. So no, don’t give us this bullshit.

AI is an act of deliberate and reckless arrogance put together by rich, careless, deranged humans.

What can we do about it? Not much. As I said, if humans can, humans will. The only thing we can do is being vocal about this. Make it clear AI is not welcome, it is not cool, and its drawbacks are evident. Boycott AI products. There are alternatives, for now. If we don’t support the alternatives, everything will then get awful faster.

Adobe is among the worst offenders. For years they gave tools to the artists for helping them create. Now they are building tools for replacing artists. And they are doing it with shady and unethical practices, as you would expect by such a big corporation. For this reason, I cancelled my Adobe subscription and removed Lightroom and Photoshop from my workflow. I will use other software instead, and if you want I can also write about that.

I stopped using all Microsoft products, since they are all infected by AI. Microsoft is betting everything on AI, and if you know something about their company, you know their DNA and how shady this is.

The Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 is a lovely lens. Easy to focus, beautiful rendering, and you can get crazy flares from it!

Saying no to AI means that from now on, I will have to say to clients: no, I am sorry, what you ask can’t be done in that amount of time and that budget. I will have to simply accept that I am losing competitiveness compared to the countless cheap new actors of the market. This sounds bad, until you zoom out and see the bigger picture: taking part in a price war is no way for making a living or growing. Everybody will lose except the clients. Well they also lose, but they don’t realize it because they are usually focused on budget more than long term strategies.

Saying no to AI means changing strategy and approach to creativity and to business. It means looking elsewhere for building our own strength and advantages. It’s a longer road, a riskier one, but at least there is hope for a reward and for joy, down the road. Being part of the AI fueled price war gives no hope for joy, only a future of frustration and humiliation.

A little note about technology: I am by no means against it and I am no stranger to programming and computers. I started programming when I was 6yo and I can decently code in a number of languages. I love computers and tech. This post is not about that. It’s about the fact that some of the technology that is being pushed on us is actually bad but sold as good.

The same goes for social media. Not everything new and modern is good. We must exercise our critical mind and look at things as carefully as we can, instead of believing what the CEOs say to us: they are enthusiastic because AI (and social media) make them billions, and they couldn’t care less they are ruining societies for their own benefit.

Conclusion

I know I left so much out, and this article could have been more streamlined. Still, I hope what I said resonates with someone and can be a little step toward a refusal of this dangerous technology. 

AI is not a friend, it is not enabling us to be better and do more. It is a destructive element that is altering already fragile balances. 

This and the next one were shot using an Helios 44-2 58mm f2 mounted on the Nikon Z8. That’s also a very lovely lens for portraiture.

As photographers and creatives, we are receiving nothing good from AI: our creations are being lost in a sea of AI generated images that usually seem better on small screens, and that took no effort.

Just look at what Instagram became, with countless profiles posting amazing AI generated images and trying to pass them as real photographs, with the average viewer not caring at all about what is what.

Our clients want and expect to pay us much less. 

We suddenly have countless new competitors with no talent and no skills that are causing price wars. 

Everything we do is potentially being weaponized against us, when used for further training AI.

AI is not good and is not our friend. That’s why I am against it and I try as much as I can to push it out of my life. I choose software that does not use it. I am changing the way I work, adapting to this new reality, without compromising my integrity and work ethic.

I don’t know if I will succeed, but I have to try. And I hope many of you will also do the same.

Your help is still welcome!

As many of you already know, I have been hosting a Ukrainian refugee family since the beginning of the war. They stayed here for more than 2 years and many of you helped them: I am very thankful to all of you.

They have just leaved to Ukraine, because the little baby needed to meet her father. The little one arrived here when she was 1yo and leaved when she was 3yo, and she had to meet her father, because all man are in danger of being called to war. It’s heartbreaking.

They are trying to stay over there, knowing that if things become worse again, they still have a place to run to, here.

If you still want to help, you can donate to the same link.

I will forward all the money to them. Keep in mind everything is much cheaper in Ukraine, so no matter how much you donate, you could still do a big difference in their lives. Especially now that finding jobs became much harder and everything is uncertain.

Thank you from the deep of our hearts.

2 comments

  1. I have tried “AI” in Lightroom precisely twice, to remove intrusive figures. The first time it was pretty good. The second time, to my amazement, it inserted half a person, who certainly was not there when I was, into my photo, blurring it bit. My conclusion? This Adobe “AI” is nothing more than a contextual high power image search engine, based on a huge trove of stolen photos. If it had even basic “intelligence” it would consider what I have marked to replace – a clearly recognisable human – and not replaced it with another one. Not only the concept stinks, but so does the implementation.

    I feel for your situation. I think amateur hobbyists like myself are less affected, because those of us that care about photography will just ignore this latest crapwave, as we ignored NFTs, and others will embrace it because there is undoubtedly a fun element for casual snapshooters. But for you professionals it is no less than a violation. By the way, I would have thought that most Costa Smeralda property owners didn’t need to worry too much about the cost of Real Estate photoshoot. Just shows what kind of people they are. Then again surely they just buy another Ferrari rather than clone one in? 🙂

    I hope you can ride the wave – the pendulum always swings back.

    1. Hi David! Similar situations also happened to me with Lightroom and Photoshop. They also have a very strict and silly censorship, so that if the software thinks you are operating on body parts, it will refuse to work, even if it is not a body part at all.

      Oh, don’t get me started with NFTs 🙂

      You would be surprised to know how cheap some extremely rich people can behave. I had to fight for prices with famous football players, movie stars, CEOs of companies, royals and so on. Not everyone is like that, luckily, but it’s very sad when extremely rich people call a professional for creating photography that will help them rent or sell their amazing properties, and they then try to pay as few as possible, and the same day they will probably go to a fancy restaurant and spend much more on a single dinner, or some design handbag, or for renting a supercar. I now got used to that, but years ago when I started, it felt almost surreal, as if I was living some black comedy. There is few respect for photography and for creatives, unless they are famous and also rich.

      Thank you very much for reading and commenting and for your kind words. I can’t complain, I am managing to work and stay in this business for now, but the revolution is happening and it is quite violent. Adapting to this requires patience and strategy. I would rathe focus on taking good photos, but nowadays that’s not enough anymore!

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