This is possibly just a circular diatribe without direction, but I feel we can’t just sit back and not talk about AI – artificial intelligence. While I’ve always thought that the term AI is a bit of a misnomer, there’s no arguing that intelligent or not, it can create images from words. Has this changed photography forever? Here are a series of thoughts about where we are and what may or may not happen!
With a lot of paraphrasing, I used to suggest that the introduction of the internet was a major change in human history. I don’t expect there will be many readers who disagree. Before the internet, it was the printing press that changed the way ideas and information were distributed, breaking the closely held monopoly of the educated and opening up education and learning to the masses. We can argue that the internet was yet another major change. While the printing press was significantly better than chipping away with a chisel, there was a cost which the internet has effectively paid.
Travel anywhere in the world today and mobile phones give everyone access to anything they want to know. For photographers, the history is a little shorter, moving from glass plates to film to digital capture. Shorter maybe, but the ability to capture photographs today is ubiquitous. In fact, photography is now just another means of communication and storage, even though we can still enjoy the aesthetic side of photography as a hobby or a passion.
So, what will AI do to photography?
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