Will AI be the death of stock photography?

Did mass produced goods like furniture displace handcrafted artisan goods? No. It just seems like you will just eventually need to up your game a little to stay in it.
 
A friend sent me a link to this video. Scary to think how much AI photo production has come along and will likely develop further in the future.

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=704brywiyfw&feature=youtu.be
Hasn't stock photography pretty well died already ?

Isn't this just another one of those disruptions to the status quo.

Photography hasn't killed painting

Animation (cartoons) haven't killed the movie industry

Smartphones haven't killed the camera industry

From my reading, there is still a market for high quality stock photography, just much smaller than it used to be, and I suspect there will always be some sort of market for "real" photography as I don't think you can fully replace the input into a photograph that is only possible if you experience the actual event being photographed.

It's just another creative picture making tool we should be aware of.
 
Clearly images produced in this way will not meet the requirements of photographic competitions. I have already been concerned that the Topaz AI modules I use are giving me an edge.

No it will not kill off all other forms of photography and will find a place in the publishing industry.

Dave
 
Did mass produced goods like furniture displace handcrafted artisan goods? No.

In its heyday, between in the late 19th century and early 20th, there were about 30,000 people employed in furniture making in London, mostly in small workshops around Shoreditch, extending into Hoxton and Bethnal Green (where my mother is from as it happens).

Shoreditch serviced mass markets in London, the UK and across the globe, and while elements of mechanisation were introduced, the businesses remained essentially artisanal, centred around craft-based skills, with supply chains reaching deep into the local community via home outworking. Scale of production was achieved less by Taylorism and more by subcontracting to a multiplication of small, new businesses.

The East End furniture trade began to falter in the face of new factory-based mass production of furniture between the wars in outer London (and, notably, High Wycombe). Shoreditch entered a period of steep decline after WWII as factory production from brands such as G Plan and Parker Knoll ballooned. It was all but eliminated by the 1980s, and now we have Ikea.

So sure, there's still a market for craft-made furniture at the top of the market, but it's a shadow of what it was. Those tens of thousands of skilled jobs are long gone.

English Heritage have a nice potted history of the East End furniture trade and the buildings that it used here

 
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