A.I. has Destroyed my Trust in Photography

Love your realness......AI be dammed

I became an obsolete anachronism as a small computer shop owner. You’re next.

I instantly knew that was AI made

Photographers have been manipulating images for years. This is just the next step.

This isn't an AI problem, it's a person problem. The trouble is people just can't be honest. If it's AI generated, just say so. If it's real, then say it's real. But nooooooo AI creators want the credit of an actual photographer, with none of the graft. It's not good enough to simply tell people it's an AI image, because as soon as they do people just as skilled will be generating similar/same images. It's a lie, and that's the issue. Integrity? Honesty? Not on the net.....

AMEN! The further this crap goes, the more I revert to film. I just bought an 8x10. Really hard to call bullshit on an 8x10 negative or chrome slapped down on a Lightbox. And even if only you, myself and the 3 other humans with brains out of 8 billion wankers can appreciate it, I'm still satisfied with that. 👍 Galen Rowell said: "The integrity of the photograph is only as good as the integrity of the photographer." But these days you need proof too.

A friend showed me an image of a woman playing a guitar, and said he would...

I pointed out he wouldn't, neither would I. She only had three fingers on each hand...😅

In a year or so, nobody will be able to tell if a photo or video are "real" or not.

It is the same for ai images being put in painting groups on fb, it's not on. I paint, I enjoy ai as well, but would never try to pass it off as anything but what it is.

I understand the fear that photographers feel and it is in my opinion justified it will be abused by a large number of unscruplis people. However someone like myself who has very little money to join this a site, purchases works from a professional, subscribe to that dozen sites all wanting a chunk of my limited funds have limited options.
For myself learning how to make gorgeous if fake images is a godsend to my ability to create visual stories.

I do feel for the problems photographers is begining to face but I believe your dedication will be rewarded.

i think i posted a real image thinking it was an example of a very realistic ai image. thats how good the ai images are they have me thinking real is ai and ai is real.

Somehow, I can still distinguish AI-generated photography from the real thing.

I love this guy 😂

My photos are only my photos. I hate photoshop and the like. I have taken a lot of heat for calling out fake photos but we live in a world that needs replacing. Only the people that do some from their heart care and the rest are get overs.

People that generate images using prompts are not artists. People who don't care whether those images are real or fake are not worth your consideration.
Remember that half of the population is below average IQ, and that half ONLY knows that they like what they like.

"don't give me the bullshit of how hard it is to craft the perfect prompt" - WELL SAID. So many muppets lately are trying to tout themselves as a "prompt engineer". The new snake oil.

Yes...great vid.....
They all seem like fantasy pics to me?..... I don't know how it's gunna be stopped?...that's the scary thing!

Another philosophical treaty by jean baudrillard suggests we are well into the fourth stage of hyperreality. search for `hyperreality jean baudrillard 4th stage`

With analog film, you can always verify it is real.

I paint with watercolour and acrylic and have laughed my bollocks off at this.

Hidden digital watermarks might solve this problem, because a camera manufacturer's watermark with optional inclusion of device serial number could hasn't it tracers back to a specific camera, with other technical verifications interleaved.

This would be entirely separate from a personal watermark of the photographer.

This would begin to separate falsification from fact.

🅰️🅰️🍁💋💋💋👳👳💋💋💋🅰️🅰️🅰️🅰️🆎

This entire video is generated by A.I.

Well you say all that with a straight face, but I left my camera club after a couple of months when I realised how much in-post processing everyone was doing. I asked one lady about a lovely picture of a moody Whitby. She said she added the sky from another photo. Then she said she had flipped the sky so that the lighter part sat over the Abbey. I thought, so it’s not a real photo, it’s just a collage. When went to the club’s gallery evening, I no longer had any faith that I was looking at real photographs. Why is AI do different?

A friend of mine who owns a company which was dependent on photographs, illustrators and designers fired everyone and he’s building all his visual material by prompts. Even the programming is now done with chat gpt for the most part.
Well he never made as much money as in the last few months. No costs, just him and Ai and that’s it.
He claims that people couldn’t care less where the artwork or design comes from in a product and only care if they like an image or not.
As much as I hate to say it , so far “he’s right” because he never made so much money as he does these days. An app that used to take months to create now he does it by himself in hours and his clients don’t really care like he says. I’ve had several discussions with him and he keeps telling me his sales prove that people buy anything they like and the origin does not matter at al to the consumer when it comes to pretty pics “illustrations” , “graphics” or “photographs”.

One thing we must do is stop calling AÍ generated images, art or photos. They are just imagery and i here no doubt there’s already an alternative market for those as we can’t escape AI. But people keep referring to AI imagery as if it was really photos or illustrations and I think it adds to the confusion in the discussion, because calling imagery things that it isn’t only perpetuates the idea that an AI “photo” is real. Even the media fall into that trap.

As an illustrator with 30 professional years of experience I have yet to feel a blow on my client base or my projects, because my clients seem to understand fortunately for me that AI generated imagery although pretty it’s still in a total different market.
In the long run I think,AI imagery will bring more value to real artists in the same way everyone seems to have gone back to vinil records although they are way expensive than a cd or download.

The default background of Windows XP, the most recognized photo in the whole world. My reaction to that image from the start, was meh, rolling green hills. When compared to other drawn, or simulated synthetic imagery already appearing at the time the OS became prevalent in my backwater country the photo was bland and uninteresting. I feel you are lost in the craft and obviously biased. Obviously prompt engineers parading as a real photographers, must sting, but ultimately it is as you said. If all the skill and effoet ammounts to the weather being cloudy and making zero photos, I'd take the anime background version.

You may be talking about photography but I feel the same way about art that's drawn or painted or whatever. It's an absolute insult to the untold number of people who've dedicated an untold amount of time learning and perfecting their craft.

I've heard one person [who talks about selling things on Etsy] that AI isn't much different from something like using an art program on your computer. The difference, though is that, the entire time, someone is directing where all the elements are placed, using their own talents. If I drew something in, say, Procreate on an iPad, it's MY hand moving the stylus, causing an image to occur on the screen, using MY skills that I've developed over time.

Another person [also one of these sell on Etsy people] showing how to use MidJourney to create something in someone else's style. A style that was built up over years. I was angered then, and thinking about it now is angering me again.

And these are the people who'll tell me and you and anyone who actually cares about this shit that it's "art too".

A baboon could be taught to type in prompts. And I'll bet that I'll be told it's a "real artist" like me, you, and that lady who does pottery down the street.

Photo editing software, compositing, and several other things are the pre cursor to AI...

Whilst I absolutely appreciate your perspective & know you hate it as much as I do.

I have noticed the majority of comments (on every video regarding AI) come from people who are not artists, creative photographers etc. most come from people very into AI etc.

I can tell you most artists / photographers have very little interest in typing in prompts to create images - why would they?

The people who use AI are those who unfortunately weren’t gifted with natural creativity … ya know the types that can’t paint , can’t draw , don’t have a natural talent for photography etc. Those who never could even get into art school for lack of talent.

Just like art school , if you don’t have some natural artistic abilities you write art essays and take shitty images to support the text.

JUST LIKE AI CREATED IMAGES.

That’s AI, people who aren’t actually creative and have zero creative ability attempting to circumvent things via TEXT to create “art”.

Plus if your an artist , collectors want to see the marks , see the paint, see the individually fibre based print.

They want to see the provenance of an image… the negative, the RAW file, the brushstrokes, the marks, the sculptures soul in the object … that it’s real and created by someone who is an actual human artist and NOT an AI type that can write complex prompts into an application with zero creative talent.

Totally agree! But how about the modern AI assisted tools in PS and LrC?! They make working on difficult pictures a super simple action. Some of my less talented photo-club members think they are photoshop masters now. One push and a person is selected. And think that the selection is spot on! So there is the same degrading of craftsman ship going on.

It's funny we even have to defend human effort. People have become so lazy and talentless. Thanks for making the content and sharing your voice in this. Human effort 💪. Subbing.

I love how you went through the stages of grief. First denial, then anger, then acceptance

No such thing as an original image anymore with digital- the raw file is merely a canvas / the moment you start shifting the sliders, changing white balance , highlights, shadows using colour wheels etc etc it’s no longer an “original” photo but part of your artistic vision of the scene- even Ansel Adams dodged and burned his images to achieve his artistic vision - it was only back in the day if one was using slide emulsion that one had to use graduating filters, be hyper critical re time of the day with light - with regards the hike to locations and one is faced with a grey sky / let’s be honest everyone is beginning to use AI & creating a sky - anything can be achieved in photoshop

Oh man I hear you! 😅 I’m a pro but I hate to tell you, I think photoshop (or whatever) has been changing reality into fiction for a long time! Despite the original image being “real”, many final images leave little of that to be seen. The line has long been crossed and I’m a practitioner as are many others - take that out, add that in, fix this, replace the sky, straighten that, increase saturation, bump up contrast, etc etc. The truth is most people don’t give a sh&t whether it’s real or not because real was left behind 20 years ago - have a stroll through Insta. I think you’ll just have to have a rant, then roll over and take it up the jacksie, just like all us pros.

Let’s be honest, AI image generation has only just learnt to crawl, and a lot of it is scary good now, despite plenty of bad examples. Next year (literally) it will be sprinting. Photography as a career, as we know it, is dead for many. It will restricted to shooting specific people, specific events, ands some specific locations. Like it or not, everything else will soon be history.

Nice, funny, creative script by the way. Maybe you should change your career. : )

Old Man Yells at Cloud.

art form vs. tech tool. two very different fields.

Why not, biological men pose as real women and use women's restrooms, and some of them compete against women in women's sports. So now AI competes against real photos. Bring it on.

We know that AI currently in its infancy stage and our reactions are similar to digital & 135 film cameras at their early stages. But like the digital or computing era, changes will come rapidly and we need to adapt to it quickly.

Now, imagine liked minded programmers with decades of photography experience and a handful of masters getting together to feed inputs and parameters to AI, and then let AI & machine learning run on a quantum computer for a month or so 24/7, then the next proof of concept can be scary. Probably a decade later, it will be a new norm like photographers today expecting their camera's AF with AI processor to track everything, even smaller than a pixel or a shape shifter (OK, maybe a person turns around), while claiming gear doesn't matter.

As well, this story reminds me of the well known (urban legend version) of ROT that included intersections from the Golden Ratio. It isn't the original ROT and yet millions, including some pros believe in placing a subject at one of the four possible golden spots will level up their images instantly. Most of them don't even care about the purposes of the original ROT's horizontal or vertical thirds.

Yeah I don't care that it's fake. AI art and AI photographs are great in my opinion. They look good and just as good and sometimes better than the real thing. I don't understand this hate towards AI and photography elitism.

I wonder if the meta data is going to help to verify the location of the photo at least you can compare a landscape photo to its location as per the meta data and determine whether or not, at least it was most likely taken there

To me this argument is the same as the argument raging in Femail Sports. Artificial women should not compete with real women just like artificial photos should not be in competition with real "honest to God" photos.

"No graft and no craft. Soulless."
Nailed it. 👍

Pills or placebos. AI in photography is the nice end of AI. However technology changes everyone's idea on what is good.

Traditional photography isn't art - you're just waiting for the right moment and pressing a button, no paintbrushes anywhere. These lazy photographers just can't be bothered to learn paintbrushes.

Another viewpoint: AI-generated stock and other photography is exactly what the photo & design industry paved the way for. None of the "real" photogtraphs are real. They're all so highly retouched — especially the new generation of "influencers — it's hard to draw a line between those photos and AI-generated.

We are ALL guilty of improving the shot we take

Thank you!

It's interesting to go back in time to these posts and see how right you are/were. Here we are a year later with social media flooded with fake AI pictures. Each to their own, but IMHO, if the word "photograph" is anywhere then there's no place for an image entirely generated with AI (tweaking an original photo is a different debate). It kills me to see comment after comment saying: "awesome shot", or "great photo", when it was neither. By all means, generate AI images, but call them as such and keep them away from forums where actual photographers post.