With artificial intelligence-powered “photos” winning contests and fake pictures attracting thousands of fans, we are well past the point where we should be worried. We should be downright horrified.
Even though artificial intelligence-powered (AI) image generation only went mainstream less than a year ago, it has ravaged the photography industry to the point that it is now actively undermining it.
Two incidents happened one after the other have increased the concern. First, an AI image fooled the judges and won a photography contest. Second, a popular Instagram account posting stunning “portraits” was exposed by, you guessed it, AI.
While the AI artists behind the photo contest quickly confessed to their thievery and returned the prize money, the man behind the AI Instagram account allowed his followers to believe he was a legitimately amazing photographer – for four months.
It begs the question what else is going on. what else is cheating there petapixel And don’t know about the rest of the industry?
Despite regularly seeing AI images, it’s not always easy to choose what’s real and what’s synthetic.
For example, Jose Avery, the man behind the Instagram account that posts the AI images, says that it takes an “enormous amount of effort” to make an AI image look like a real photo. I have full faith in him. It’s not just getting your text prompts in midjourney, an incredible amount of editing work needs to go into the images to make them look like real photos. This requires skill and experience.
But again, this is completely missing the point.
very real
Avery was actively deceiving the actual photographers, leading them to believe that their work was much better. Making the audience believe that they had real encounters with these fake spirits. It gets at the root of portrait photography and what makes it so powerful – a human connection.
We spoke with Gareth Jenkins, a real portrait photographer who admired Avery’s profile. He told me the account fraud left him “saddened.”
Photographers Admire Avery’s Work
“Portrait for me is such a personal experience between me and my sitter. That can never be replaced by AI – where’s the joy, the magic moment where you hope to capture that special essence?
If AI images and human-made photos become indistinguishable from each other, where does this really leave the industry? How can anyone believe that what is the work of a hardworking photographer and what a conflict has arisen with a series of computer programs?
This has the potential to undermine the photo industry at large. Don’t forget, this is still a very new technology and people are just catching on. Once people realized that photos could be faked like this, how would the general public view photography? Can they become cynical?
All this, lest we remind you, from technology that was built on the backs of millions of photographers who were not compensated at all for doing their job in machine-learning neural networks.
Here petapixelWe will continue to scour the airwaves for deceit and lies and sound the alarm when we see these disturbing practices.
what hope
We’ve all been wailing doom and gloom at this point because so far we believe that the only photography industry that will really feel the pinch of AI-generated images is the stock photo segment. But looking at those portraits makes me think there are more at risk, including photography competitions.
There is still going to be room for photographers though, so there is some hope. For example, you are not going to trust an AI to show you what is happening in the war in Ukraine. You can’t just hire AI to take your wedding photos. Newspapers and publications with newspapers aren’t going to run them — at least, they shouldn’t.
We’re certainly more concerned about AI images than we were six months ago, but there are plenty of reasons to feel okay about photography, at least for now. Still, we may be sleeping with one eye open.
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Image Credits: of course, jose avery
