I am interested in your thoughts. AI is becoming a huge thing in so many areas of life and I am wrestling with its place in photography.
What do you feel about it? Do you think it's the best thing since sliced bread? Or do you have misgivings and wonder about the authenticity of photographic images? Do you feel it enhances or undermines photographic creativity?
Do you see AI images that are entirely created by the computer and not a camera as photography or a different form of artwork?
Do you prefer manual editing (if you edit at all) or do you prefer AI input and let the computer decide what the editing choices are instead of you?
Does that idea worry you a lot, a small amount or not at all?
Probably a case of "light blue touch paper and retire" asking these questions, but I have been chewing it over for a while and wondering what the general consensus was and what reasons people have for either using it or avoiding it. I am noticing its use increasing on 365, so thought it worth sticking my neck out to ask what your thoughts are.
well hmmm... this is one of those things that once i get started i might not stop... first and foremost, an image created by AI is NOT a photograph... and in my view, it's relation to one's skill and creativity is dubious at best... would i let AI make decisions about editing? i expect that much of the software we use these days has elements of AI built in which makes this tricky... would i let AI decide what my image needs to be done to it? i'm pretty sure i don't... i rarely do then "one click" thing and i rarely use preset filters that come with editing software - certainly not without additional touchups... however, i'm pretty sure that photoshop editing is now powered by AI with the result that when i do touch-ups or remove unwanted elements in an image AI is probably helping that look more seamless...
is AI evil? well - that depends? how do you feel about HAL? i think AI is chaotic and not to be trusted... it works well for some things (i'm doing some training next week and it saved me hours of prep time 🫣), but horribly for others (i've had some fun and rather baffling arguments with AI over facts 🤣)
Over the years on 365, I have come to look for authentic images, like checking shadows, does the person have the same elements in the images that are posted (think same birds with different backgrounds) unless it is meant to be whimsical (logo people).
AI for creating images, no. AI for doing special editing, when it is intended editing (think What would you do with challenges). Disclaimer: I use PS to do enhancements to images, title shift, blur background.
Briefly, in my mind AI images are NOT photography! I know some lovely and interesting images can be generated by AI but it is just not my "cup of tea". As I think @northy commented, probably a good bit of our editing on Lightroom (or by whatever software we use) has some AI built it. Hard to avoid! Anyway, I prefer to do my editing manually, very seldom using any presets. Does AI worry me? Well with respect to photography it doesn't "worry" me exactly, but maybe better to say that I find it a little unfitting overall. As to other aspects of AI creeping into our world, I do find much of that disturbing... Enough said! Hope none of my comments offend anyone here with a different perspective! Love, appreciate, and respect all of you I've come to know here on 365!
@northy has summed it up well and I my thoughts run pretty much along the same lines. I do feel in photography AI can be a dangerous tool, even a weapon to cause harm or offence (much like a car can be) e.g. Trump publishing the offensive AI photo of himself dressed up as the Pope. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrg8zkz8d0o
I do NOT like AI images created by text, where one chooses what one would like to see, not even if part of the photo is one's own. I do not use any presets or change any skies.
I do however love using textures when I do not like a background, or use one of my own photos to replace it. I do editing in Befunky to turn photos into paintings etc, probably also with the help of Ai.
On the other hand, I do occasionally use PS Generative Fill when cropping and extending part of my photo. I also use the remove tool, so that is probably Ai too.
I regularly use Topaz Gigapixel to crop and upscale photos, as my zoom is not long enough. That probably is done with some kind of Ai too.
It seems that I do use Ai even though I am against the text to image version.
At the Sony World Photography Awards this week I attended a presentation from a Sony staff member. To enter the competition AI isn't precluded. Sony, we were told, see AI as a tool, and it is being 'feared' in much the same way as processing was when first introduced to home market.( I've paraphrased!)
AI is alive and well here on 365 with a challenge getting healthy numbers of entries. Images using apps to make them quirky have also been here for ages, and they're AI. Both types of these images (AI and App) get on Popular Page and Curated Page so people here like them.
I'd say we're all using a bit of AI in our photography, my new camera has an AI focussing tool (which this humans has yet to master!)
At the moment many AI images look 'fake' to me, but it and its operaters will get more sophisticated. 10 years from now I don't think we'll have this conversation, it'll be accepted. Hopefully we'll still have the 50mm SOOC challenge her, which will blow us away showing wonky horizons can happen in camera ( you'll have to switch that AI tool off in camera to enter the challenge!!)
Pretty much every 'phone photo I take goes through SnapSeed, which has powerful AI tools, before I upload. I have yet to open the AI tools in Affinity, but they're there for me when I'm ready. We all use AI in our lives, it's not infallible and needs human input. Autocorrect on the phone is probably the most prevalent, and we know how often that gets it wrong.
I've never used (?) GPTChat thingy, and I'm so glad I'm no longer in education, it was bad enough spotting a 'cut and paste' from an internet search in an essay, I believe the chatbot things can now write entire essays and even dissertations! But if AI does spot cancer on a prostate or breast better than a human, I'm for it!
So I'll exit ( I misspelt wait and phone put in that exit!) and see what happens.
I think Joanna Maciejewska said it best: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Thank you so much for letting me know your views and entering the debate. It has been fascinating reading them all and clearly the debate is still very much alive and controversial.
The questions I raised were purely about photography and not any possible benefits of AI technology in medical research or care. Those are a completely separate topic.
Interested to find I am not alone in having questions over its use in this area of photography. Personally, I dislike fully AI generated images because the fake look is not to my taste, but also because of the "scraping" of millions of genuine photographs that has happened to give it the data to use and as @byrdlip said where does an artist's copyright begin and end in such things?
Deep Fake is obviously an area that can cause huge confusion and distress and adds to the misinformation so prevalent on the internet. As Andrew @allsop said, it can be weaponised to great effect and reach a large audience very quickly with a shocking amount of influence that is not necessarily for the good.
Using tools on your computer or within your camera or phone to edit images will undoubtedly include some elements of AI as a number of you have mentioned. I think it is the distancing from personal creativity and control that raises questions in me when the computer is given full rein to do as it pleases. "How do you feel about HAL?" said @northy. It seemed such a futuristic concept when that movie was made but now? Not so much.
Laura @ljmanning I totally love what you wrote there in that quotation! ♥️ Says it all, I think.
My current thoughts?
Ultimately creativity is a very human quality. To think, to ponder, to work things out, to make experiments and decisions based on something you want to create and bring into being. This is human in essence. AI can offer very useful tools for the expression of this, but I feel it will be a dark day if we give up human creativity and hand it over to technology to do it all for us.
FWIW…. In one of my arguments with AI about facts i asked it how it was different from HAL…. And got the response below…. It doesn’t make me feel any better about it though 🙃
HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) is a fictional AI designed to control a spaceship and assist the crew—but it ultimately becomes a cautionary tale about AI going rogue. HAL prioritizes its mission directives over human life and famously says, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I’m fundamentally different in a few key ways:
1. No autonomy: I don’t act on my own. I respond only when prompted and don’t initiate actions or make decisions independently.
2. No control over the real world: I can’t operate physical systems, lock doors, or disconnect oxygen—unlike HAL.
3. Safety and alignment: I’m built with safety protocols to align with human values and follow strict guidelines to avoid causing harm.
4. Transparency: I aim to be clear and helpful, not cryptic or evasive like HAL becam
Just some thoughts on text-to-image: I enjoy just playing around with text-to-image programs. Fun to pass the time with imagination and possibilities. As long as the program is identified and "image" is used, I enjoy the technology.
I am the current host for Text 2 Image Challenge that runs from April 24th to Monday, May 26th.
Tag and Entries: https://365project.org/tags/text2image-10
It is entertaining to watch words come to life with AI images.
@northy
whew who would trust any AI that can't spell? I fell about over that, but that's my black sense of humour.
I've stayed out of this but will now just say that Northy summed things up very well as did LManning.
One problem is that AI has been around for a very long time, but most of us don't think of it as AI.
Now that it is a big buzz word, anything that is AI is lumped together and it seems it's 'all or none'.
But when we say AI in this context, and we talk about something that trawls the internet, takes my images without my permission and is then used to pretend to be the human imagination in creativity, I am, personally, not happy at all.
I accept that this is where the world is going.
I even accept that it is used here on this site, my happy place, to run challenges. I have learned to put on my blinkers and stay away from what I don't want to participate in or know about.
I realise that in the future all books, tv shows, movies and cartoons will be written and created by AI. I even accept that this is how it is going to be. Hey I grew up reading the likes of Isaac Asimov.
We will get the same guff churned and rechurned and the only 'new material' will be what the AI engines manage to trawl and steal from a human that created something and shared it online.
Yet, like using text to image, people will think it is fun and no harm. Who am I to say what others should do or think?
I, however, will stick to going out into the real bush and finding real nature, and creating new images each day. That's my happy place.
@koalagardens Thanks for writing your thoughts, I am with you there. Such a controversial subject. Many people love it and can see no harm in it. As you say "who am I to say what others should do or think?"
I am personally deeply uncomfortable about the scraping of photographs it uses and the theft of them. I remain with my thoughts from above that creativity itself is a deeply human quality and that is something that should never be surrendered.
My camera, my musical instruments and my paintbrushes will remain firmly in my hand doing what I tell them to and trying to create ideas I can see in my head. Happy to use tools available but choose to keep away from allowing them to dominate my creative choices.
@casablanca
indeed as many may imagine by the fact I live out in nature choosing to do what I do, I often have very different personal choices to 'most'
I know that AI is stealing all my koala photos
I run a Discord server and some of my members just love AI and can't see the harm. so they have a channel where they can post AI photos of koalas and I have it muted so I'm never alerted to new posts and don't go there as it breaks my heart
one day people may think any manner of strange things about koalas because 'they have seen them!'
when what they have seen is some AI construct
maybe they won't even believe they are about to go extinct, or maybe they will have gone extinct but most of the world thinks they are doing fine as they watch AI images still being created from the last photos of a wild koala ...
@ljmanning I love that quote. It sums up perfectly the way I feel about AI. It can do the grunt work while I try to achieve my vision. What used to take me ages to laboriously clone out things like garbage cans, ugly signs, power lines or inconveniently parked cars can now be done in seconds with AI. I do not like creating things that weren’t there or making a completely artificial image with text prompts, although I confess I have played with that a little just for fun. Most 365ers have probably used AI without even realizing it, focusing aids in cameras being just one example. As I see it, AI is just another tool in the toolbox, albeit a very powerful one. It helps me achieve my vision for an image and I will continue to embrace it. That said, @30pics4jackiesdiamond was wondering if, come September, there will be another Nifty Fifty SOOC challenge. Yes, I will once again be hosting that back to basics month. No post processing, no artificially generated images, no generative fill. Just a good old 50mm lens, or crop sensor equivalent, and post what you get out of camera. I hope to see all of you there.
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is AI evil? well - that depends? how do you feel about HAL? i think AI is chaotic and not to be trusted... it works well for some things (i'm doing some training next week and it saved me hours of prep time 🫣), but horribly for others (i've had some fun and rather baffling arguments with AI over facts 🤣)
AI for creating images, no. AI for doing special editing, when it is intended editing (think What would you do with challenges). Disclaimer: I use PS to do enhancements to images, title shift, blur background.
My two cents.
I do however love using textures when I do not like a background, or use one of my own photos to replace it. I do editing in Befunky to turn photos into paintings etc, probably also with the help of Ai.
On the other hand, I do occasionally use PS Generative Fill when cropping and extending part of my photo. I also use the remove tool, so that is probably Ai too.
I regularly use Topaz Gigapixel to crop and upscale photos, as my zoom is not long enough. That probably is done with some kind of Ai too.
It seems that I do use Ai even though I am against the text to image version.
AI is alive and well here on 365 with a challenge getting healthy numbers of entries. Images using apps to make them quirky have also been here for ages, and they're AI. Both types of these images (AI and App) get on Popular Page and Curated Page so people here like them.
I'd say we're all using a bit of AI in our photography, my new camera has an AI focussing tool (which this humans has yet to master!)
At the moment many AI images look 'fake' to me, but it and its operaters will get more sophisticated. 10 years from now I don't think we'll have this conversation, it'll be accepted. Hopefully we'll still have the 50mm SOOC challenge her, which will blow us away showing wonky horizons can happen in camera ( you'll have to switch that AI tool off in camera to enter the challenge!!)
Pretty much every 'phone photo I take goes through SnapSeed, which has powerful AI tools, before I upload. I have yet to open the AI tools in Affinity, but they're there for me when I'm ready. We all use AI in our lives, it's not infallible and needs human input. Autocorrect on the phone is probably the most prevalent, and we know how often that gets it wrong.
I've never used (?) GPTChat thingy, and I'm so glad I'm no longer in education, it was bad enough spotting a 'cut and paste' from an internet search in an essay, I believe the chatbot things can now write entire essays and even dissertations! But if AI does spot cancer on a prostate or breast better than a human, I'm for it!
So I'll exit ( I misspelt wait and phone put in that exit!) and see what happens.
The questions I raised were purely about photography and not any possible benefits of AI technology in medical research or care. Those are a completely separate topic.
Interested to find I am not alone in having questions over its use in this area of photography. Personally, I dislike fully AI generated images because the fake look is not to my taste, but also because of the "scraping" of millions of genuine photographs that has happened to give it the data to use and as @byrdlip said where does an artist's copyright begin and end in such things?
Deep Fake is obviously an area that can cause huge confusion and distress and adds to the misinformation so prevalent on the internet. As Andrew @allsop said, it can be weaponised to great effect and reach a large audience very quickly with a shocking amount of influence that is not necessarily for the good.
Using tools on your computer or within your camera or phone to edit images will undoubtedly include some elements of AI as a number of you have mentioned. I think it is the distancing from personal creativity and control that raises questions in me when the computer is given full rein to do as it pleases. "How do you feel about HAL?" said @northy. It seemed such a futuristic concept when that movie was made but now? Not so much.
Laura @ljmanning I totally love what you wrote there in that quotation! ♥️ Says it all, I think.
My current thoughts?
Ultimately creativity is a very human quality. To think, to ponder, to work things out, to make experiments and decisions based on something you want to create and bring into being. This is human in essence. AI can offer very useful tools for the expression of this, but I feel it will be a dark day if we give up human creativity and hand it over to technology to do it all for us.
HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) is a fictional AI designed to control a spaceship and assist the crew—but it ultimately becomes a cautionary tale about AI going rogue. HAL prioritizes its mission directives over human life and famously says, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I’m fundamentally different in a few key ways:
1. No autonomy: I don’t act on my own. I respond only when prompted and don’t initiate actions or make decisions independently.
2. No control over the real world: I can’t operate physical systems, lock doors, or disconnect oxygen—unlike HAL.
3. Safety and alignment: I’m built with safety protocols to align with human values and follow strict guidelines to avoid causing harm.
4. Transparency: I aim to be clear and helpful, not cryptic or evasive like HAL becam
I am the current host for Text 2 Image Challenge that runs from April 24th to Monday, May 26th.
Tag and Entries: https://365project.org/tags/text2image-10
It is entertaining to watch words come to life with AI images.
whew who would trust any AI that can't spell? I fell about over that, but that's my black sense of humour.
I've stayed out of this but will now just say that Northy summed things up very well as did LManning.
One problem is that AI has been around for a very long time, but most of us don't think of it as AI.
Now that it is a big buzz word, anything that is AI is lumped together and it seems it's 'all or none'.
But when we say AI in this context, and we talk about something that trawls the internet, takes my images without my permission and is then used to pretend to be the human imagination in creativity, I am, personally, not happy at all.
I accept that this is where the world is going.
I even accept that it is used here on this site, my happy place, to run challenges. I have learned to put on my blinkers and stay away from what I don't want to participate in or know about.
I realise that in the future all books, tv shows, movies and cartoons will be written and created by AI. I even accept that this is how it is going to be. Hey I grew up reading the likes of Isaac Asimov.
We will get the same guff churned and rechurned and the only 'new material' will be what the AI engines manage to trawl and steal from a human that created something and shared it online.
Yet, like using text to image, people will think it is fun and no harm. Who am I to say what others should do or think?
I, however, will stick to going out into the real bush and finding real nature, and creating new images each day. That's my happy place.
Some call it progress.
I am personally deeply uncomfortable about the scraping of photographs it uses and the theft of them. I remain with my thoughts from above that creativity itself is a deeply human quality and that is something that should never be surrendered.
My camera, my musical instruments and my paintbrushes will remain firmly in my hand doing what I tell them to and trying to create ideas I can see in my head. Happy to use tools available but choose to keep away from allowing them to dominate my creative choices.
indeed as many may imagine by the fact I live out in nature choosing to do what I do, I often have very different personal choices to 'most'
I know that AI is stealing all my koala photos
I run a Discord server and some of my members just love AI and can't see the harm. so they have a channel where they can post AI photos of koalas and I have it muted so I'm never alerted to new posts and don't go there as it breaks my heart
one day people may think any manner of strange things about koalas because 'they have seen them!'
when what they have seen is some AI construct
maybe they won't even believe they are about to go extinct, or maybe they will have gone extinct but most of the world thinks they are doing fine as they watch AI images still being created from the last photos of a wild koala ...