AI & photography: when is the human value necessary?

Last year I was interviewed by the King’s College London, for a report on cultural labour, creativity and copyright in the time of AI. It was a very interesting experience, and the final document is offering numerous insights, putting together the experiences and ideas of multiple artists in various fields. If you are interested, here is the report.

So I decided to write again about this topic, giving some kind of form to a couple of notes I took in last months. We got to the point where ignoring AI became impossible, and I think it is important to keep an eye on it and understanding how to fit it into our realities.

Since I am a photographer, I am especially interested on the impact of Generative AI, and I actually already wrote about it some time ago (here is the link to the post).

I think a major problem of AI generated imagery is that it becomes obsolete very fast. Some Midjourney images that looked unbelievably photorealistic one year ago are now looking dated and clearly made with AI. 

The same happened with CGI in movies. Think of a movie like Titanic: it looked so real when it was released, but today many parts of it look like an animated 3D cartoon. Few movies have CGI that lasted the test of time. But I digress.

When it comes to believable realism, I think AI could actually keep evolving and become truly photorealistic. Until then, what is being created with AI is destined to become obsolete very fast.

Another issues is that many perceive AI generated videos as animation, and not everyone is interested in animation. Similarly, “photos” rendered with AI are seen as illustration. Or at least, this is what I am noticing, observing the reactions of people and asking for their opinion on videos and images done with AI.

As soon as something is being identified as AI, the intellectual interest and emotional involvement drop. I verified this over and over again.

There are extremely well made AI videos, and even if they look photorealistic and have an immense creativity going on, the viewers aren’t really involved, and their judgment on such videos as an art form is usually low.

Some anticipate the advent of full AI movies, and I ask myself: who will want to watch them?

Let’s think of the least believable movies, like superhero ones: fans of such movies go to watch them even if they are stuffed with often awful CGI, because the CGI is part of something otherwise real: real actors, (partially) real sets, scripts written by humans about characters created by humans.

Would people want to go and pay for watching a movie where everything was created by AI on human input? And very probably on corporate input, by the way. Images, music, script, all made by AI following market researches. I don’t know about this.  But our sensibilities may very well change, if marketing is strong enough: that’s the sad reality of how our brains are wired.

I think at some point, AI will become a synonym with cheap, lower grade products. Well done human made content will be valued higher. The distinction between mediocre and good creatives will disappear, replaced by the one between artists fully committed to using AI vs artists doing everything on their own. Not for a sense of snobism, but for the will of adding a different value to the creation. Or to the product. Diversification and added value are the core of promotion. This reasoning can apply to a vast range of situations.

We won’t have anymore a range of differently skilled creatives, from the bad to the mediocre to the good and up to the master: we will have AI and we will have human, and the human will be valued on his skills, or his connections. We already see this today, many high-end artists are popular because of who they know and the circles they frequent, not so much for what they actually do.

It makes me sad to say this, but I believe creativite output will become a commodity. Polished junk food. Everything will be possible fast and cheap. It will be difficult to give true value to that flow of content. And only few lucky ones will be able of selling what they do on their own, uniquely because they are not AI and they operate in conditions that make that relevant.

Think of it, you probably already felt something like that, when reading a text and cleary realising it was made with AI: you may try to focus on the message and understand what it all means, but that realisation is stuck in the back of your mind: this is AI, they used a chatbot for writing this. It signals a lack of care. You end up thinking: I am spending my human time for reading it, but they could not spend the time for actually writing it. There is asymmetry. And this has social consequences.

Why should I care about this beautiful “photo” of an ideal beautiful woman in a wonderful forest, if the photographer didn’t spend time finding a location, if the model is not a real person, if there was no effort in lighting the scene or finding the right time of day for the shoot, if the outfit does not exist, the makeup artist and hair stylist didn’t have a say in this, etc etc?

AI can be an amazing tool for getting fast results. I do use it for some tasks. There are times clients ask me to deal with tasks that have very few creative value in their nature and content, but that would still require a lot of time. In that case I do use AI. There were many times in which Claude Cowork helped me save hours like that, allowing me to spend them on actual creative tasks, where my being human could mean something.

Of course, I am not writing this post because I think I can predict the future. Everything I wrote may very well turn out to be wrong. We are living through times of rapid innovation. Some are enthusiastic about AI, others hate it. Some require regulations. But I think the time for regulations is gone. AI were trained on stolen material, they already caused suicides and all kind of social issues. At the same time, AI also already started helping medical research and has potential to do good to humanity in many ways. Will we find a balance in this? Will one aspect overshadow the other?

It’s a fact AI is starting to show its effect also on my profession. Many real estate agents are taking photos of properties using their iPhones, and then asking Gemini or chatGPT to fix the photos. Results can vary, but as one of them candidly admitted, for a cost close to zero they get a full photo set they can use right away, and they prefer to call a professional for shooting only the high-end properties. This is somewhat confirming what I imagine will happen in the near future for all creative fields. I call the human if that’s needed for some particular reason, for everything else there is AI.

Dark times ahead? Financially, sure. The number of paying clients will decrease for basically all the photography categories. Once there are tools that allow everyone to take decent and usable photos, and to do good editing automatically without needing skills, then most of the reasons for hiring a professional photographer disappear. Product photography, real estate, even portraiture: if an iPhone and a good AI can provide results for free or for very cheap, why to even bother calling a professional?

Some might say that a professional can offer expertise that goes beyond the simple technical act of taking a picture. I agree. As an architectural and real estate photographer, I can attest I do much more than just taking a photo. I explore the property, look for the best framing for the scene, choose the right lens, plan and execute artificial lighting, decide for the right natural light and time of day, curate the home staging, plus all the social skills involved with interacting with the owners, the agents, the staff. Sometimes I have to direct talents on location, if the client asked for it. It’s all good and true. But if owners or agents can take and edit decent photos thanks to AI, for basically no cost, then a lot of this expertise can look nice to have but not essential. Unless you need to promote very high-end properties. Unless, again, the human added value is necessary.

So I think it will come down to that. When is the human value necessary? What defines it? What makes me necessary and better than AI? What can I offer that is more valuable than saving on costs thanks to AI? As professionals, answering these questions becomes far more important than choosing a camera or a lens. And the time for answering them is now.

I said financial dark times are ahead, but luckily no AI can take away the pleasure of taking photos. I love to look for good light and inspiring subjects. I like to experiment with different gear. Photography is a way for discovering the world around me, for meeting people, for noticing what I would have not noticed otherwise, and much more. AI has no say in that.

Doing photography is an intimate activity, connecting the subject to the photographer through a medium with many limits, and in those limits we find a way to express ourselves.

AI is changing the market and we can just adapt. But it will not change what goes on inside our minds. It can’t ruin the way we live and exercise our passion for capturing light. With this positive note — and yes, it is very positive — I end this bittersweet post. We are humans, we adapt. That’s our whole trick in the end.