Generative landscape art – a (horror) vision of the future of photography?

[buildbot]

My answer to this has and will be that I only photograph for myself. I

A statement I strongly agree with and follow myself.

Plus, no generative AI yet has the look of a 100MP Achromatic file. The level of detail is totally lost on Instagram so most can't compare! Maybe it will, someday. As long as we do photography for ourselves and those who appreciate it, that does not matter.

Making money (with photography) of course, who knows where AI leads.

 

[hcubell]

Marc Koegel, the P1 ambassador shooting an IQ4, has 27k followers and shoots since 2004 ...

Marc Koegel (@marc_koegel) • Instagram profile

29K Followers, 876 Following, 650 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Marc Koegel (@marc_koegel)

www.instagram.com

His stuff is great, but looks outright boring compared to this generative guy. But does this "unrealness" matter to the broader world? Would you hang something generative like that in your room? I am leaning towards why not ...

Sure, Mr. Koegel's work may look boring compared to the the guy doing the AI work, in the same way that the work of the great painters looks boring compared to Thomas Kinkade's work. Just like Bruce Percy's photographs may look boring to some compared to AI generated photographic images of Icelandic waterfalls. If one prefers Thomas Kinkade to Edward Hopper, what can I say other than that taste in artwork runs the gamut?
Speaking of Bruce Percy, who runs tours into the interior of Iceland far from the locations frequented by most workshops there, Bruce has a few very interesting entries in his Blog commenting on the use of the AI program Midjourney to mimic Bruce's work. https://brucepercy.co.uk/blog/2022/8/3/artificial-intelligence?rq=artificial

 

[MGrayson]

Semi-related. In Iain M. Banks' "Look to Windward", a great composer asks a vastly more intelligent machine if it could compose a work that the composer himself would be proud to have written. The machine responds. "Yes, but what would be the point?"

 

[rdeloe]

Sure, Mr. Koegel's work may look boring compared to the the guy doing the AI work, in the same way that the work of the great painters looks boring compared to Thomas Kinkade's work. Just like Bruce Percy's photographs may look boring to some compared to AI generated photographic images of Icelandic waterfalls. If one prefers Thomas Kinkade to Edward Hopper, what can I say other than that taste in artwork runs the gamut?
Speaking of Bruce Percy, who runs tours into the interior of Iceland far from the locations frequented by most workshops there, Bruce has a few very interesting entries in his Blog commenting on the use of the AI program Midjourney to mimic Bruce's work. https://brucepercy.co.uk/blog/2022/8/3/artificial-intelligence?rq=artificial

I enjoyed Bruce's post. I didn't enjoy seeing how easy it is already to mimic the work of a specific person.

The rapid onset of generative AI is astonishing and terrifying. In my day job, I have had to make design changes to courses I teach to account for things that generative AI tools can do today that they couldn't do a year ago. Every year, it will be something new that we couldn't imagine the year before.

Here's one example: our entire structure for dealing with academic misconduct in universities has been overwhelmed by ChatGTP. Plagiarism has become undetectable. It's still possible to spot text (sometimes) that is generated entirely by ChatGTP; the give-away is often that it includes pure nonsense. What is impossible to detect is the cases where students paste someone else's text into ChatGPT and instruct the software to rewrite or paraphrase the original. The tools we use to detect plagiarism, which worked well a couple years ago, are utterly defeated using that technique.

For photographers, we are only seeing the most basic implications of generative AI so far. There's so much more to come, almost all of which I put in the "not good for photography" category. It's easy to sound like an old time film photographer moaning up digital, but that's not where my thinking is on this. Generative AI is the end of photography.

 

[darr]

I would bet AI will encourage a resurgence in shooting film and showcasing the negative alongside the artwork in the future.
Buy film cameras while you can.

A lot of the AI-generated imagery I've seen tends to have a fantastical quality, resembling a touch of Disney magic added to it.
I am sure there is a place for it, and I am certain original imagery created by humans will have its place, too.

Today, I focus on personal work, which continues to bring me joy.
I owe much of my life to photography, which will not change anytime soon.

 

[Godfrey]

AI is not photography. It is digital image creation, more akin to a digital painting.

I am utterly uninterested in digital painting because it can never have the most important element of a photograph: a photograph always captures a moment of light in Time. No 'generative art' can ever do that.

Photography is not just about an image. Photography is always connected to an instant of real time and the play of light at that moment. If this aspect of photography is irrelevant to you, why bother with photography?

G

 

[Godfrey]

Semi-related. In Iain M. Banks' "Look to Windward", a great composer asks a vastly more intelligent machine if it could compose a work that the composer himself would be proud to have written. The machine responds. "Yes, but what would be the point?"

Ah ha! Another Iain M Banks reader! Love his books..

G

 

[rdeloe]

Photography is not just about an image. Photography is always connected to an instant of real time and the play of light at that moment. If this aspect of photography is irrelevant to you, why bother with photography?

Yes, and I'd take it a step farther. I enjoy glancing at the photographs that come from people attaching cameras to their dogs and triggering the shutter when the dog gets excited. It's cute and fun, and at least there's an animal's agency in the process. But these are not photographs I care about. I care even less about photographs made by sending a robot with a camera out. Yes, it's still a photograph by your definition: "a photograph always captures a moment of light in Time". It can be a chuckle to see random images pulled from Google Street View of people doing strange things, but it's no more than a chuckle because there's no human agency.

For me, if you remove the human agency, it's either a brief chuckle about what the dog saw, or it's nothing at all. This is why generative AI imagery is so uninteresting to me. I think art is humans communicating with other humans. I'm not interested in the communications of generative AI tools.

Some will argue that a human instructed the AI with cues, so it's still a human communicating, just via that tool. I don't buy that. I've seen "paintings" by dogs who hold paintbrushes in their mouths. Generative AI involves a human artist in the same way that someone teaching the dog to hold a paintbrush in its mouth, dip it in paint, and smear the paint on a canvas involves a human artist. In both cases, the human intervention is trivial.

 

[tcdeveau]

It’s here whether we like it or not. I imagine it will take off for awhile and then ppl will grow tired of it, kinda like the awful HDR stuff that was going on when HDR became a thing.

Honestly I don’t care though. It sounds conceited but I stopped caring what others were doing with photography a long time ago once I figured out what I like and enjoy photographing. I photograph for myself to put stuff on my walls, I don’t even really care about sharing on social media anymore.

That feeling of “I had a vision, I created this, I’m proud of what I created” I get when looking at something on my wall AI will likely never replace for me. Same with capturing emotion in a photograph - those memories of being there when you hit the shutter button and the feelings at the time that can be invoked by looking at a print. Was looking through some M10M photos yesterday of the last time my wife breast fed - the emotions those photos bring to me will never be invoked by AI.

To each their own though, and if people enjoy using AI to create images, go for it and have fun.

 

[olafphoto]

Quite the opposite! The genuine, fine art photography will be valued even more. Once the novelty of AI dies down people will be longing for real photographs. I am not even mentioning high-end, photo collectors. They will value master printers like Christopher Burkett or Michael Kenna even more. I do agree that the lower-end of the market will be hit hard - probably commercial photography (AI generating product images). Having said that, this is all a guessing game.

P.S. This thread will be moved to a different section dealing with image-processing or new techniques.

 

[4x5Australian]

Here is a timely piece today by Mike Johnston, writing in The Online Photographer (TOP):

The Online Photographer: AI Imaging is a Pox, a Fraud and a Thief (typepad.com)

Rod

 

[Wall-H]

I’m new member and way unexperienced to talk where such experience photographers weighing their opinions but this is purely my take.

1. There was company called Pixar and they came up with concept of getting voice to things that don’t have voice. Who knows whether those things talked to them or some humans speculated for themselves? how do you know is million dollar question. I was not in the room.
They first gave voice to toys
Then to bugs, then to cars,
Then to robots, monsters and dinasours and so on.
Then to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_films

1. Before happy potter books last installment was released, there were tone of fake takes releases on internet, it was so bad and some of them gave such a real take that one wondered whether that was real till actual last version came out by J.K. Rowling. Once that came out, there was no doubt left.
2. One kid just loved photography. He did not understand, film or digital, small format, large format, whether people liked or disliked the pictures. whether influencers started good trend or bad trend. Whether Chanel or Dior started going for video or slowly reduced B&W. All this noise, this trends, the debate about future did not matter. what mattered was memories that were locked in frame because kid had camera in hand or memories that were provoked or the passed by great pictures. How that kid loved toy story or cars or bugs life or fining Nemo did not change, when he heard about corporate take. He still loves and searches for Good literature.
3. Film was, film is and film will remain, Same with B&W.

Our predecessors went through, these debates like Color vs B&W, Film vs Digital. Our turn to go through AI vs us.
Number of kids and forums on they will find each other will change but they will find each other a they will enjoy sharing work and great things they see.
Art will find way to lock beautiful moment and connect those moments and mediums with each other.

PS: This is all Gary Kasparov’s fault. He is professor slug horn who gave key crucial information to those who were not worthy (Again my take).
Rather than spending energy on complaining how 4 people helped Deep Blue to win against him. If he would’ve focused on beating that deep blue, we all would’ve been debating about something else.

 

[cunim]

As a hobbyist, I am not pessimistic. AI is just a tool like agriculture (more persons/acre) or the internet (more dross/person). Hobby/arty photography is an art form (though not when I do it) and art forms are free of the efficiency requirement that AI serves. After all, there are still classical guitars after the moog or the stratocaster, photographs (even film) have survived the transition to motion digital, and there are still painters out there. Low volume, high quality, and personally rewarding activities are minimally affected by technology upheavals. Commercial production, in contrast, must adapt to the new technology. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but change is hard.

Painting is a good analogy. Cheap portraiture used to be a profession, but no one does it any more. Portraiture was overtaken by photography and became something else. In most cases the photos are still cheap portraiture, but they use an entirely different skill set. The work flow is much quicker and easier. Similarly, AI will pose a challenge to commercial catalogue work, run 'n gun weddings, cliche landscapes, and other high volume items. Anything that needs to be done quickly, is rule based, and uses cash as a definition of success will require content creators to adapt (use AI) or die. The good news is that the new AI/photography would generate cash for the skilled practitioner who does adapt. Commercial photographers are not doomed to starve, just to change. I think they are very aware of that.

In contrast, the sort of hobby photography that many of us do has no need for AI because it doesn't need to be efficient and profitable. We could describe its purpose (and that of art in general) in terms of evolutionary biology but that would probably offend many of us. Instead, let's just say that some humans use artistic activities to discriminate themselves from the herd, just as others use wealth for the same purpose. Artistic success is not defined by income, but by personal commitment (I will do this), feelings of accomplishment (I am good at doing this), and public acclaim (OMG, you sure are good at doing this). That is how art rewards creators, and that is why it will continue to motivate some photographers - however inefficient it is. In rare cases it can also make money, but that's not why we do it. Therefore, hobbyists and artists are pretty safe from AI - if they want to be.

Because it serves a basic human need, art will find a way. In fact, it will subvert AI to create a genre of AI artists. Their product will be new material, not a different type of photography, but it will occupy some of the same market niches. Therefore, for the commercial pros things are a bit dire because AI can provide alternative work flows. It will be harder to put your kids through college by producing photos but, not to worry. AI will provide new tools that pro shooters can learn and profit from.

 

[Shashin]

With computational photography, the boundary between real and imaginary becomes more blurred. This is an interesting article on the type of processing cell phone cameras do and when it breaks reality. Companies are not describing how the technology is working and so this bending of reality is happening without us knowing:

'One in a Million' iPhone Photo Shows Three Versions of the Same Woman

"I had a full panic attack in the street."

petapixel.com

This distortion of reality is concerning. We have always had this--airbrushing is not a new term from the digital age. When manipulation becomes the norm, then how do we find a common frame to relate to the world?

 

[jotloob]

AI does not affect me in the iamge world , as I am an amateur photographer , and I take images and work on them just for my own fun .
So why should I use AI for my images just to cheat myself ? ? ?

But I am very much afraid of AI , not only in the image world , but how it will influence our entire lives .
Nothing , but nothing must be true any more . All around us can be a fake and that will drive us mad . Sorry , I can't see anything positive in AI .

This image , created with generative AI from ADOBE FIREFLY shall remember us to see , that no matter how high your IQ is , we are all affected .

 

[SeanThekayaker]

Semi-related. In Iain M. Banks' "Look to Windward", a great composer asks a vastly more intelligent machine if it could compose a work that the composer himself would be proud to have written. The machine responds. "Yes, but what would be the point?"

That is probably my favourite book of his. In nearly all of his books humans have benevolent AI to look out for them. One hopes that the budding AIs of Silicon Valley will also become that way.

But we are beginning to face a rapidly changing world where technology increasingly infiltrates and influences our lives at an ever faster pace.

If one looks at manufactured goods, there is a lot of cheap mass market stuff. But we also value and prize hand-made goods too. Another analogy could be the small farmers’ markets with organically grown food and heirloom varieties of veggies vs. the big grocery chains.

Perhaps reverting to large sensor and/or more artistic photography is one way to cope, for now, given how ubiquitous smartphones and social media are.

There will always be a niche for human-made art or cultural products. I think that some buyers will come to appreciate human-made photographs with the stories of how they were created to accompany them. In other words, interacting with real humans “in real life” as the gamers say. But there will probably fewer human photographers making a living from such work because maybe many people in a society that has growing income inequality will only be able to afford the mass market stuff. I go to art exhibitions several times a year. Given the computing power (and the examples shown by others), it will surely be possible for an AI to be given commands to reproduce or generate something similar to this or that painter. That may be fine for students living on a budget. But people who appreciate fine art and have the money may prefer to buy human-made art.

 

[SeanThekayaker]

Ah ha! Another Iain M Banks reader! Love his books..

G

Me too! They are a good read but also make me reflect on society today and how we could make it better

 

[SeanThekayaker]

I enjoyed Bruce's post. I didn't enjoy seeing how easy it is already to mimic the work of a specific person.

The rapid onset of generative AI is astonishing and terrifying. In my day job, I have had to make design changes to courses I teach to account for things that generative AI tools can do today that they couldn't do a year ago. Every year, it will be something new that we couldn't imagine the year before.

Here's one example: our entire structure for dealing with academic misconduct in universities has been overwhelmed by generative AI. Plagiarism has become undetectable. It's still possible to spot text (sometimes) that is generated entirely by ChatGTP; the give-away is often that it includes pure nonsense. What is impossible to detect is the cases where students paste someone else's text into ChatGPT and instruct the software to rewrite or paraphrase the original. The tools we use to detect plagiarism, which worked well a couple years ago, are utterly defeated using that technique.

For photographers, we are only seeing the most basic implications of generative AI so far. There's so much more to come, almost all of which I put in the "not good for photography" category. It's easy to sound like an old time film photographer moaning up digital, but that's not where my thinking is on this. Generative AI is the end of photography.

I’m about to embark on digital MF photography for fun after years of 35 mm, first in film and then digital. I used smartphones for the past five years but there are limits and I’m bored with them as I’m not really in control of the final product. One can be a good composer but so much more of the art of photography is computational with a smartphone. I am also doing a graduate degree in the natural sciences part time. The growth of chatGTP and similar technologies has caused consternation in my university. But our tutors and lecturers have adapted. The exam questions have become harder and the course work more challenging, judging from looking at previous exams and assignments. Yet, I still enjoy doing my schoolwork. The university quietly announced that many students got penalized last year for plagiarism (it seemed to be at an all time high). I wonder how much of that generative AI and other technologies were implicated in? At any rate I don’t see the point in using such technologies because then I would not have learnt anything. I have been able to apply what I am learning in my courses in my work, which is exciting for me. What’s more, my colleagues and friends like to hear about such applications. Unfortunately not everyone sees it that way. In my classes, so far, it seems obvious who the really engaged students are, judging from the types of questions. I think that only about 10% of the students in each class are like that.

To get back to photography and art, I recently discovered medium format magazine. I enjoy the stories and interviews. I was really moved by the story of the photographer who grappled with a terminal cancer diagnosis; how it affected his overall mood and outlook on life and with choice of cameras and lenses. He managed to survive thanks to a stem cell transplant (in effect these give people a brand new immune system). Or a photo essay by a person who got people to pose underwater to highlight global warming and the work and conversation involved in doing that project with ordinary people from a small island who were the “actors”. There are countless other examples. My school term just ended so I’m only now getting through back isdues of the magazine.

My point is that perhaps more of us will have to become more artistic, thoughtful and creative, otherwise we won’t stand out even in Instagram or other platforms. It is not easy; frankly sometimes I find the work shown and discussed in MF magazine to be daunting. But then if it was easy it would not be worth doing. I enjoy reading about and seeing the work of other photographers.

Yes, the roboticization of work and society may come at a terrible cost and not just for photography. But let us not become paralyzed with fear and dread. Instead, I say let us go out and capture the world on pixels or film. Let us struggle to create art for ourselves and each other, our friends and family, and clients too. Never give up. “We will not be assimilated”

 

[rdeloe]

I read a comment about generative AI for text recently that made me chuckle. "Why should I bother reading something that nobody could be bothered to write?"

What's the photographic equivalent of that sentiment? "Why should I bother looking at a photograph of nothing that nobody made?"

 

[SeanThekayaker]

I read a comment about generative AI for text recently that made me chuckle. "Why should I bother reading something that nobody could be bothered to write?"

What's the photographic equivalent of that sentiment? "Why should I bother looking at a photograph of nothing that nobody made?"

That’s amusing but you also have an important point.