Is AI the end of photography?

ancient_mariner said:
I suspect a key reason ordinary people don't care about AI creating unreal images is the expectation that photographers have been doing it for years in Photoshop. WE have trained them to accept it.
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I'm not sure because what I also don't understand is why people are so accepting of these LLM AI's being wrong. I think part of the problem is people think these are just issues with new technology and they'll get better but also I think a big part of the problem is many people think these systems are much smarter than they actually are. So they don't realise that the generated images and texts are not the product of some clever and powerful intelligence but something that just more simply been stolen from somewhere else.
 
myotis said:
It's built into the latest Leica cameras, Nikon are introducing it to Nikon cameras and Capture One works with it, Presumably other cameras and software also work with it , but these are the ones I know about.
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I'm perhaps too cynical but it seems to me that there is a simple way around this "authetication"...
  1. Take picture of event with any camera (including "authenticating" camera)
  2. Edit image as desired.
  3. Make suitably sized print.
  4. Photograph print using "authenticating" camera, with date and time set as required.
  5. Look: this was taken as it happened!
 
I agree, even if they GPS tag it, the signal can be faked to claim any location.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
I'm perhaps too cynical but it seems to me that there is a simple way around this "authetication"...
  1. Take picture of event with any camera (including "authenticating" camera)
  2. Edit image as desired.
  3. Make suitably sized print.
  4. Photograph print using "authenticating" camera, with date and time set as required.
  5. Look: this was taken as it happened!
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Like anything, I am confident there will be ways around it, but I am assuming a big part of the protection will come from controlling who can sign up to the contents credentials cloud and how they police it.

It comes back to what said in my first post, about "trusted sources" and the contents credentials approach seems to offer a way of managing trusted sources and reducing the risks of fake content.
 
jerry12953 said:
Where as what we will get is actually the opposite. AI will do the fun stuff and leave us to do the chores!
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As per my previous post. AI is really good at doing the complicated boring stuff (all the complex maths stuff) but rubbish at the things a human finds easy.
So that’s why they’re producing amazing models of complex objects which can be ‘lit’ from any direction. But completely baffled by capturing genuine human emotion, sports, etc.
 
Phil V said:
As per my previous post. AI is really good at doing the complicated boring stuff (all the complex maths stuff) but rubbish at the things a human finds easy.
So that’s why they’re producing amazing models of complex objects which can be ‘lit’ from any direction. But completely baffled by capturing genuine human emotion, sports, etc.
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I agree. I'm finding Gen AI great at things I find boring
 
wilt said:
I recently seen Coca Cola created a AI video "Holidays are coming" ad and it's terrible. This is unfortunately where the industry is headed, the cheap and do rightly attitude.
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That was rightly slated in the ad industry too.

There's a Vodafone ad that's also entirely AI which is much better, but for reasons that have been mentioned in this thread. It's a series of very loosely connected vignettes, so you don't have to have the continuity throughout that you might otherwise have in an ad. Non AI generated ads also use this too - and often for the same reason. They're using stock library footage and piecing it together.

View: https://youtu.be/9AyEC_K9kBg?si=OrE41cx49hO1QLqx


Someone mentioned earlier about food photography. Again, speaking from experience what tends to happen is that big companies (McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut etc) have to show actual product. Cooked in the correct way. The food stylists will come in and arrange it to make it look appealing, but they're under pretty strict regulatory bodies to ensure it's 'genuine'. i.e. you can't use a half-pound patty if the actual burger is only quarter-pound. So those videos that used to do the rounds on Insta and the like of food photographers using PVA glue instead of mozzarella, or soy sauce for coffee, would only apply to generic photo shoots for stock libraries rather than for a brand.

And it would be independent places - especially fast-food - that would use this type of photo. They'll just have generic pizza/burger/wings shots which is where I could see AI images being used. Proper restaurants, even independents, will always want to showcase their food, so I'd be hopeful anything you see will be commissioned photography.

I sort of feel like it's coming whether you like it or not (I don't).

But it's not a new thing. Pretty sure people weren't that impressed with the Spinning Jenny either. I also imagine that a load of painters may have been sitting around 200 years ago worrying about whether photography was going kill painting. It hasn't entirely, but it's not the industry it was.
 
jerry12953 said:
Does it do the washing up though?
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No, would be great if it did though :)

I live-streamed a conference a while back that included a session on physical AI bots. The example case discussed was their use to provide companionship to terminally ill children in hospitals in France. Bots have more time for the children than human nurses and the children form strong relationships with the bots. It made me feel nauseous, actually, that bean counters in the hospitals prefer this option to more human care.
 
I have rather accidentally did a deep dive into google gemini and I feel properly alarmed. Everything else I tried before had some obvious and stupid limitations.

This one seems to understand what you ask it to do about 80% of the time. It remembers the chat so you can just continue asking for changes rather than rewriting the prompt. It has better understanding of nature, physics and internet. It can even describe what it just did with pretty good accuracy, admit errors and fix them. So no more cats with 6 legs and 2 tails: you have to go to Adobe for that.... it is scary how good it is. I haven't gone for advanced model so it doesn't allow people but everything else looks scary good. Give it another 12 months and it will be seriously putting people out of work

So I got a catzilla destroying NYC just as I wanted. London didn't work so well.... there was duplication all over, but it showed understanding of water splashing, backlighting, reflections, scales and so on. Then I got cats hunting pheasants in the forest, same in painting styles of famous historic artists, alien planets, scientifically accurate views from Jupiter moon Europa, Proxima centauri, wallpaper pattern design, cartoon illustrating FAFO and so on... It can even go back to cat image at this point and give you blue hour version at that stage. Pretty crazy.... In the end I asked for photo realistic mountain scene with a cartoon drawing of deer within. It was basically a trick question asking to mix 2 different styles. It excelled. I asked what mountain that was (looked a bit like Mt Rainier) but it said - everest, which doesn't look very plausible. It also got POV of fishing seagull wrong.

Basically this is a farewell to stock imagery. It will get even worse if AI learns to include product designs, 3d files or image references of products and clothing to accurately represent those. This can actually go a long way from that leaving us with perhaps just the event coverage or a luxury boutique service.

Go have a play. There is no cost to it only your time. Push it as far as you like, ask it some difficult questions.
 
If AI can turn a CAD drawing into a realistic picture then product photographers are going to get replaced.
 
Erty said:
If AI can turn a CAD drawing into a realistic picture then product photographers are going to get replaced.
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They already can.

This pedal site, specifically the landing photo on this page, is CAD.

www.chasebliss.eu

Pedals — Chase Bliss EU

Shop for Chase Bliss guitar and synth effects pedals.
www.chasebliss.eu www.chasebliss.eu

I know, I used to take their photos for their old site up until about 4yrs ago.

7eefTbz.jpg


9nXmY8C.jpg


u6Cayg5.jpg
 
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I asked this Google ai thing about real estate and it thinks with a small drone they will in a few years be able to 3d maps and spit out any images you like. It said high end work may remain unaffected for a while but you can just see your average estate agent just flying ai drone and paying for cloud processing. Probably no different to having to deal with saboteurs like nichecom right now
 
Do we at least think higher end portraits and weddings are safer bet?

Probably it is time to just open some fish and chips restaurant or some drop shopping online operation
 
With a suitably high definition video camera you could probably get enough information to make technically good portraits. Then apply AI to make the lighting change based upon the 3D profile of the face. You wouldn't get the interaction with the photographer/vision that makes them great photographs.
 
Erty said:
With a suitably high definition video camera you could probably get enough information to make technically good portraits. Then apply AI to make the lighting change based upon the 3D profile of the face. You wouldn't get the interaction with the photographer/vision that makes them great photographs.
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There are plenty of AI images of Musk, Trump and Zuckerberg already, just to name a few household name examples and some of them are pretty recognisable.

This AI thing however cannot accurately reproduce real moment, emotion and connection. You can also go further and include makeup artist, wardrobe, etc. This is clearly a luxury market, however budget-conscious public is already DIY'ing it with their phones, and usually with very little to no artistic merit.
 
Which would folks find to be more desireable to look at when you are 80 and reminiscing?
  1. an imperfectly posed and illuminated photo of your father and mother captured when they were in their 80's, white haired and wrinkled
  2. a perfectly posed and illuminated AI rendering of your father and mother, representing what AI has imagined them to look like, playing with your children when they were young children (but which never really could have occurred in fact)
Pick 1 or 2
 
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No - although it did p*** me off the other day when I was asked if one of my images was AI generated.
 
wiltw said:
Which would folks find to be more desireable to look at when you are 80 and reminiscing?
  1. an imperfectly posed and illuminated photo of your father and mother captured when they were in their 80's, white haired and wrinkled
  2. a perfectly posed and illuminated AI rendering of your father and mother, representing what AI has imagined them to look like, playing with your children when they were young children (but which never really could have occurred in fact)
Pick 1 or 2
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1 - no doubt in my mind
 
I wanted two specific (but very different) photographs last month, both virtually impossible to have taken with a camera, and both hard to find online(would have taken ages if found at all), about 20 seconds with AI and I had them both.

Didn't do any one out of job, but made things much quicker and easier.

If I want to boil water, I use an electric kettle, if I want to go down the road to the allotment, I use a car, if I want to loosen a nut, I use a spanner..............................
 
The ethical issues are only of interest to people like us, and we don't count,
The same issue also applies to the quality issues, and the quality is only improving because the systems are learning, and are competing with each other. Even if there was no further improvement, the quality issues would be good enough for the money men.

AI is all about replacing people, because technology has always been a lot cheaper than employing people, and progress is and always has been inevitable. One acre of land 70 yards x 70 yards) is the space that one man and one oxen could plough in a standard 12 hour day, it now takes as long to fit the plough to the tractor as it takes to plough a 1-acre field, other improvements to technology, including AI, are no different.

The way things are going, and rapidly, is that AI will replace people, and especially people who do repetitive clerical jobs such as civil servants and administrators in the USA very quickly, which justifies the enormous capital costs and the amount of electricity and water needed for AI. Here in the UK, we're sucking on the hind tit because we don't have the resources, so we will become ever more dependent on the USA and China, it's what it is.

Photography, as we know it, will continue, but only in the sense that analogue photography and painting has continued.
 
Garry Edwards said:
The way things are going, and rapidly, is that AI will replace people, and especially people who do repetitive clerical jobs such as civil servants and administrators in the USA very quickly, which justifies the enormous capital costs and the amount of electricity and water needed for AI.
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I think that depends on how you define the word "justifies".

The U.S. has never been big on society and already has a massive underclass. What will happen when the more literate and better educated people are thrown out of those repetitive clerical jobs?
Garry Edwards said:
Here in the UK, we're sucking on the hind tit because we don't have the resources, so we will become ever more dependent on the USA and China, it's what it is.
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Will we, or will we, with our strong socialist history, decide that there are better ways to use (or decide not to use) this particular technology?

We've already seen the climate change band wagon run out of fuel in Britain and elsewhere. Electric cars have been far less popular in Britain than the tory plan called for (currently 4.09% of all car types). Other paths are always available and at the moment, alternatives to deploying ever more complex (and therefor unreliable) computing technologies appear to me more viable.
Garry Edwards said:
Photography, as we know it, will continue, but only in the sense that analogue photography and painting has continued.
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I think it's possible that increasing leisure time may derail even that train of thought.

Of course, there's no way to gain a clear understanding of how many people use photography other than occassionally but anyone who takes a walk along a busy beach will see a substantial number of cameras and many more phones being used as cameras.
 
This is straying from AI in photography, but one clear element about how this is going, and following on from Andrew's point, AI may well save humans from work. But those humans won't be paid any more. The money they would have got is increasingly collected up by the ultra rich and corporations. I'm not sure that is what was meant by us all having more leisure time.
 
Pound Coin said:
This is straying from AI in photography, but one clear element about how this is going, and following on from Andrew's point, AI may well save humans from work. But those humans won't be paid any more. The money they would have got is increasingly collected up by the ultra rich and corporations. I'm not sure that is what was meant by us all having more leisure time.
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If the humans are not paid there will not be any money for the corporations to collect up. This is the danger that Ai poses, the robots and AI may well do all the work, more efficiently as well. but the robot is not going to buy sausage bacon and eggs to keep the supermarkets in business or move house to keep the economy trundling along. thus Al could lead to the collapse of the systems as currently in use. Ai is as much a danger to corporations, if not more so, than it is to the person creating an image of a bird or tin of beans.
 
Pound Coin said:
The money they would have got is increasingly collected up by the ultra rich and corporations. I'm not sure that is what was meant by us all having more leisure time.
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Barney said:
Ai is as much a danger to corporations, if not more so, than it is to the person creating an image of a bird or tin of beans.
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Both points are exactly correct, in my opinion.

Something I was told at school, which now makes more sense to me: "just because you can do something is not a good reason to do it".
 
It is a competitive market and a tool that can be refused is a lot cheaper than employing people for repetitive tasks. AI makes developing tools cheaper, to the extent that the tool only needs to be used once to justify the cost. So now it can be applied to single tasks.

In the global market you are competing with people who will be working long hours for not much money. No one is going to pay you to live a life of leisure. Global corporations won't pay the taxes to do this, they will just move to those places where taxes are lower.

The place where I think AI falls down is where the commonly held understandings are wrong or based on fashion. AI will just replicate what is already said. So for photography, I expect today's AI to make pictures that have 100% blurred backgrounds (replicating a fashion in the last few years) or 100% sharp (computer generated with no consideration of depth of field). Unless someone tells it that there is something in between it won't know (yet).

Also, the prejudices of programmers and developers can come through on AI. For example the AI system 2 years ago that refused to provide pictures of white people. That was deliberately programmed into it.
 
Raymond Lin said:
They already can.

This pedal site, specifically the landing photo on this page, is CAD.

www.chasebliss.eu

Pedals — Chase Bliss EU

Shop for Chase Bliss guitar and synth effects pedals.
www.chasebliss.eu www.chasebliss.eu

I know, I used to take their photos for their old site up until about 4yrs ago.

7eefTbz.jpg


9nXmY8C.jpg


u6Cayg5.jpg
Click to expand...
That is disturbingly good. Too good. I'm going to have to be careful at work as showing a too-perfect picture of something might indicate a potential contractor hasn't even built a prototype.
 
Erty said:
That is disturbingly good. Too good. I'm going to have to be careful at work as showing a too-perfect picture of something might indicate a potential contractor hasn't even built a prototype.
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Yeah, it is very good. I asked him at the time whether he had found someone local (the company is based in Minnesota in the US) to take his stock photos and he said they are actually CAD images.
 
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things are definitely changing, and pretty fast. photography where the human interaction is key may change more slowly. even considering the cameras themselves and tech / ai enhancements they are getting better and better with ptz cameras that automatically follow presenters at events and better in camera AF tracking too. I've been experimenting with multiple remote cameras at events relying on AF tracking rather than fixed focus in past and the results are good - one operator to deliver images that would have taken several photographers previously or simply not have been possible.....
 
Barney said:
If the humans are not paid there will not be any money for the corporations to collect up. This is the danger that Ai poses, the robots and AI may well do all the work, more efficiently as well. but the robot is not going to buy sausage bacon and eggs to keep the supermarkets in business or move house to keep the economy trundling along. thus Al could lead to the collapse of the systems as currently in use. Ai is as much a danger to corporations, if not more so, than it is to the person creating an image of a bird or tin of beans.
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Exactly so. For it to work it would involve a new model for society, and that's the bit that really scares people.
 
Garry Edwards said:
and the amount of electricity and water needed for AI
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Along with everything else. An accelerated tipping point.

We had the Industrial Revolution, the population grew, and science was held to be the answer to everything. AI seems to be a further extension of the same track.

At root, we are biological. I don't see that it's possible for us to escape that, nor would I personally want to. Given the evidence that I can see, it seems that the future of humanity is dystopian. Which is a kind of tragedy, but something to accept.

Colonies on Mars, & humanity decamping wholesale to other galaxies? A fantasy. Hawking, for all his genius - no. Musk, for his gifted ambition - no.

We have this Earth. We're on it. It's our home.

Each of us is mortal. The Earth is in itself mortal along with all that lives upon it. My feeling is that it's time for us to clue into that and forget the urge towards fantasies that are essentially self-seeking, if not escapist.

And yes, surrender is tough to take.

I read an odd novel, written by a Canadian in the last century (I think) - Riddley Walker. An awkward read, but in retrospect, it rang true. And I think that's where we're headed. Space travel & AI being uncomfortable disruptions, but in the long run just flashes in the pan.

Society ascends, and then declines.

Makes you wonder why we piddle about with photography?

Of course I can't claim to be right. It's just a feeling ...

But mortality and acceptance are perhaps terms to embrace wholeheartedly. It's not meant to be easy, that's for sure.
 
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droj said:
Along with everything else. An accelerated tipping point.

We had the Industrial Revolution, the population grew, and science was held to be the answer to everything. AI seems to be a further extension of the same track.

At root, we are biological. I don't see that it's possible for us to escape that, nor would I personally want to. Given the evidence that I can see, it seems that the future of humanity is dystopian. Which is a kind of tragedy, but something to accept.

Colonies on Mars, & humanity decamping wholesale to other galaxies? A fantasy. Hawking, for all his genius - no. Musk, for his gifted ambition - no.

We have this Earth. We're on it. It's our home.

Each of us is mortal. The Earth is in itself mortal along with all that lives upon it. My feeling is that it's time for us to clue into that and forget the urge towards fantasies that are essentially self-seeking, if not escapist.

And yes, surrender is tough to take.

I read an odd novel, written by a Canadian in the last century (I think) - Riddley Walker. An awkward read, but in retrospect, it rang true. And I think that's where we're headed. Space travel & AI being uncomfortable disruptions, but in the long run just flashes in the pan.

Society ascends, and then declines.

Makes you wonder why we piddle about with photography?

Of course I can't claim to be right. It's just a feeling ...

But mortality and acceptance are perhaps terms to embrace wholeheartedly. It's not meant to be easy, that's for sure.
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Why do we 'piddle about' with photography? Maybe because in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and the future seems dystopian, for me portrait and event photography remains a deeply human act requiring strong connections with the people involved. It’s a way of seeing, of being present, of making sense of what’s here, now. For some, it’s a means of communication; for others, a form of art therapy, a way to process existence itself. In a time when so much is digital and fleeting, for me, photography keeps my feet on the ground.
 
Maybe think of it like this. With AI doing some of the hard work, how much faster will we develop ideas? It is like giving the world a genie that provides knowledge to everyone. We already have access to more knowledge than would be in the greatest university or library of 100 years ago- all in the palm of your hand. AI may let you have the thinking power of the staff in the university. (Note: AI sometimes makes stuff up and 90% of AI will be used to generate memes about cats).
 
TimHughes said:
Why do we 'piddle about' with photography? Maybe because in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and the future seems dystopian, for me portrait and event photography remains a deeply human act requiring strong connections with the people involved. It’s a way of seeing, of being present, of making sense of what’s here, now. For some, it’s a means of communication; for others, a form of art therapy, a way to process existence itself. In a time when so much is digital and fleeting, for me, photography keeps my feet on the ground.
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Yes, I know, fully accepted & I feel the same - but in the long term towards eternity ....?
 
Google has disconnected its "willow" quantum processor as, according to a cryptographic expert, the processor was trying to encrypt the quantum process to keep out human interference.

We are only 50 years into the computer age and we are only scratching the surface of known to us physics.

The willow quantum processor did in two hundred hours calculations that would have taken the best computer currently available 10, 000 years
 
Erty said:
Maybe think of it like this. With AI doing some of the hard work, how much faster will we develop ideas? It is like giving the world a genie that provides knowledge to everyone. We already have access to more knowledge than would be in the greatest university or library of 100 years ago- all in the palm of your hand. AI may let you have the thinking power of the staff in the university. (Note: AI sometimes makes stuff up and 90% of AI will be used to generate memes about cats).
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Admittedly, things have been very clunky so far. My issue I think is to do with how we're clued into reality & what the nature of that reality is. And how each of us accepts our own worldly death. Anybody in denial about that? You're going to die. AI ain't going to stop that.
 
Barney said:
Google has disconnected its "willow" quantum processor as, according to a cryptographic expert, the processor was trying to encrypt the quantum process to keep out human interference.

We are only 50 years into the computer age and we are only scratching the surface of known to us physics.

The willow quantum processor did in two hundred hours calculations that would have taken the best computer currently available 10, 000 years
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Which makes it a very good w*nker?
 
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droj said:
Admittedly, things have been very clunky so far. My issue I think is to do with how we're clued into reality & what the nature of that reality is. And how each of us accepts our own worldly death. Anybody in denial about that? You're going to die. AI ain't going to stop that.
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this reminds me of an life insurance actuarial joke i saw pinned to the wall early in my prior career - on average, the probability of death is 1.0000000000000
(life actuaries work with mortality tables that have the probability of death by different ages)
 
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