No point in writing this really as many more educated minds than mine have already gone here, but for what it is worth, as much for myself as anyone else, here are a few thoughts.
The first stanza;
AI can quite often replace the actual reality of a physical (digital) image. It cannot however replace authenticity.
Real person, real place, real time.
An advertising company can make an image out of ideas, an artist also and for school projects it will be handy (if allowed). For idle imaginings, time pressed projects or to fix the inevitable problems that arise, AI is an ideal, creative and fast path.
Would you let AI “make up” your wedding photos? How about your children’s school play? Will a news service (ironically using fewer and fewer photographers) be ok with a “something like the actual event” image and would their readers?
In some cases unfortunately they may, but authenticity and trust will be lost.
Made up is made up, no matter how good it may be. It is not the actual thing in the actual place at the actual time, so it does not count without some deceit employed. For many uses this is not important, for many more it is all important.
The second stanza;
Imagination needs inspiration.
Nikon South America has been advertising the benefits of actual photographer’s work. Much of it is from nature and much of it only means anything because it is real. Some of it would be dismissed as the workings of a fanciful mind, if not.
Want a purple tree? Does it mean anything other than as adornment for a sci-fi movie or children’s book unless it is an actual thing. Is it amazing just because it is purple and beautiful, or because it is real.
Sure, we manipulate now, but whole-sale manufacture is surely different.
In this jaded world of contrasts and contradictions, advertising fatigue, normalised falseness and an increasingly less engaged and trusting audience, is authenticity going to be the next big trend?
What would be the point of faking these guys? Apart from breaking the one main tenant of news reporting, authenticity, it would simply be a pointless exercise. Removing the stack of chairs from the background? Well that is another matter.
The third stanza;
From nothing or from something?
Most AI needs more than one base image to work from. A blank page to AI is as blank as it is for us. You ask it to do “X” and it needs to know what “X” is, what “X” may look like especially if “X” has many variants and it needs a context to modify “X” within.
“I want a mountain with a sunset, a beautiful lake and autumn trees” means nothing to AI if it has no stock library to draw from, no terminology to reference, so somebody has to take the images in the first place, then share them with the AI tool.
Are you ok with someone else always taking the images?
Variety may also be the first victim if we all get too lazy to go out and freshen up the pot!
Ponder this also.
How much effort are you willing to give an AI tool to make up your image.
Are you going to spend days describing every minor detail to an artificial mind or just accept its version? If not much, then why not just go and take it, then manipulate from a stronger base. Maybe take up painting even, might be quicker. Artists often abstract fine details for this very reason.
Nature does a lot of the heavy lifting here.
We rely on the world filling in a lot of the blanks, happy that it does so with simple reality. Take away that solid base and you have a lot of details to worry about. Obsessive compulsives may be busy.
Stanza four;
Why?
As I said above, why do we do it?
I take photos because I like to document the real things I see. I avoid blatant manipulation, because of the same thinking. Nature, humanity, life generally are all amazing, more amazing than anything I could come up with without enormous effort, much more effort than return.
As soon as one of my images looks a little “fake” from processing, I ditch it or start over.
Would a good travel or street photographer be happy siting at home and making stuff up from other peoples work?
How about a portraitist manipulating increasingly generic looking, fake but “perfect” people? Might save on lighting, but an unsatisfying path maybe.
People it turns out are real. Just ask them.
Would your family be happy with some pretend family pics of ever absent uncles and aunts, or would they prefer to actually see them and take their images while together?
Yes the time pressed advertising or commercial shooter will be happy to work with little to make much. This has always been the case. Want a perfect banquet, then make one up. It will just be easier to do and cost less, more of a skill switch than philosophical change of mind for some.
I was there, it was real and I shared. I could have lifted a similar image from the web and manipulated it, but it would not have physically taken me there, so it would have been irrelevant.
If we ask ourselves what are we trying to achieve, sometimes the best path is the most obvious.
Is it possible to get where we are going authentically, because maybe the journey is important also. Like the search for the perfect mechanical dog, maybe a dog is just better by design even if you need to employ some training, which in turn gifts you with a feeling of accomplishment and helps you develop more skills.
The Finale;
Stuff changes, always and forever, but the important things do not.
Some deeper, stronger things need to stay the same in that flowing river of evolution, like a stubborn boulder, because we need anchors in our lives.
We need authenticity or we question our relevance in this world.
You only have to see the recent trend towards “retro” ways of doing things, especially from our young, to see that authenticity is still important even for IT (and soon AI) natives.
It seems we all want to believe in something real.
AI is a wonderful tool, but it is not by definition as powerful as the real thing (it’s in the name Artificial Intelligence).
Of course the big problem will be identifying the real from the fake, or more likely who will care?
I can see a time when third world artists and creators will be much sought after, because they will have untainted, authentic voices.
While we are at it, the music industry may be the big looser. Music is a finite collection of combinations and variants, very mathematical as it goes. Give AI a generation and real musicians may no longer be needed, just song “makers”. The next big hit may be Elvis or The Beatles, back from the dead.