Will AI Ruin Photography?

All over FaceBook photography sites photographers’ hands are being wrung red and doom is predicted as artificial intelligence (AI) starts learning photography.

So what do you think? Are you with doomsayers that artificial photography will ruin photography as we know it?

Why even in my photography club (Oakville Camera Club) artificial intelligence is being used by a few members to produce really interesting pieces of art.

But is it photography?

I am not going to answer this question as what I think doesn’t matter so much as what you think.

So let’s think about this together.

It’s entirely likely that graphic artists are going to use (and are using) AI when it comes to a lot of commercial work. While we’re still getting images with people with deformed hands and feet as AI doesn’t quite get everything right, in skilled hands AI can render some amazing images.

But let’s be clear. Are you shooting amazing images? Or are you shooting images of the places and people you love?

AI won’t do this. Yes you can use AI if you so desire to work on making your images different (and maybe better but that’s to be seen). But nothing is going to replace the basic snapshot of you and your friends enjoying your lives in the places you love.

And why is that? Because at least for the foreseeable future AI is not going to have the capacity to love or the capacity to love special places and this is what photography is really all about.