AI "Photography"

[ChrisFL]

AI seems to be the lastest buzzword in the tech space. A lot of companies use that term loosely in an attempt to drive up their stock price. Every article I read describes AI as something different. As it relates to photos, long before AI was the hot buzzword, there were lots of software packages where you could modify your photos ('photoshop' was a common term even when using some other software). Lighten/darken backgrounds, remove unwanted items from the background, etc. I don't consider that AI, but more along the lines of digital enhancements.

Most of the supposed AI images I have seen online look fake/artificial and clearly don't look the real thing. I think you can tell when something is fake without a lot of effort. What difference does it make if you choose to modify images of your dog for personal use? If you print it and put it in a frame to display, does it really matter how it was produced or whether or not someone else considers it 'photography'?

Agreed for the most part. There's filters that have been around for ages that people could modify on their own with the difference being that the filter itself didn't try to "guess" what your preferred look is. Recent instagram (or whatever platform) filters where it actually takes your likeness and changes it are the first consumer uses of "A.I." assisted images.

Yes, the problem is that A.I. is going to be as much of a blanket term as "web connected" was back in the 90's/2000's.

I think it's very important to distinguish between A.I. generated images (often misinterpreted as photos nowadays) and A.I. assisted modifications to images.

In other words, there's several platforms that you can just type in a short or long list of words and generate a nearly photo-real image, and those are (scarily) becoming more believable all the time. I still use Facebook from time to time and there's often some random A.I. generated thing on there like a bed that's shaped like a cat and dozens of comments like "Where can I buy?" even though it's obvious to me who's seen a lot of A.I. generated images that they're entirely fake.

Here's an example of me playing around several months ago with Midjourney AI. I just typed in something like "family with a 3D printer". If you're not aware, the images often will get things like fingers wrong, but that's also changing with newer updates.

There are a TON of issues with this kind of thing. I played around with it because it was mind-blowing and just new and novel, but really changed how I feel about it now (very lengthy thoughts)

 

[jimmymc]

It's a photo in the sense that a heavily photoshopped image is also a photo. People do use editing software to manually merge multiple photos, and AI is doing something similar.

 

[mikehn]

I wont name anyone but I could swear some of the posters on the dis are AI generated

 

[Karin1984]

It is not photography, but it is creating. We just haven't invented a good word for this kind of creating.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the early days of photography there were discussions whether or not a picture taken by a camera was the same as a picture made by a painter.