The post everyone is going to hate. Including me. A.I. Yikes.

 

"Chip" is ready to discuss third quarter results!

Honesty is the best policy? Yep. Let's go with that. We all dislike being dislodged by technology. We worked hard to acquire and hone our skills so when new inventions come along with the (extreme) potential to disrupt our livelihoods the cortisol floods into our collective bloodstream and we start to grind our collective teeth. Usually. 

We are now, officially, into the age of ubiquitous artificial intelligence. It will be a significant disruptor. But I'll use it where I can to make my job better. Here's today's case in point. I call it, "the other side of the zoom call." 

I'm doing a classic "in the offices of..." photo shoot on Monday. I scouted the location about a week ago and today I'm doing basic pre-production. Deciding on which cameras and lenses to use. Putting together a light, agile and backpack-able collection of battery powered flashes. Shoving lightweight light stands in a carrying bag. But one thing came up in the original scouting and that was the question of how to handle the overall production of representing a "Zoom" call in photographs. Specifically, the person at the other end of the line.

We need to show one of the clients on a Zoom call. We need some shots that are "over the shoulder" and show a person on the screen of the client's computer. The person our client is ostensibly talking with.  We can't use other employees for various reasons. We certainly wouldn't ask our client's clients to let us use their actual images because the model release requirements might get sticky...and maybe some politics. So our choices were to hire models for what is basically a very small part of a project, buy stock photos, or come up with a different solution altogether. 

I dove into the beta of PhotoShop 25.10.0 to see what I might be able to conjure up with the "Generate Image" feature in the edit menu of that application. I opened a new file, clicked the generate image command, wrote in a short text description of the kind of image I wanted and pressed return. It took all of a minute to write the description and less than a minute to be presented with three A.I. generated variations based on it. All created by PhotoShop's image generator. No additional post processing required. None. 

I wrote four of five more descriptions and generated ten or fifteen other "candidates" to work with. At the end of the day I'll put all the selected images onto a thumb drive and take them along on the shoot. When we get to the point in the schedule when we need to set up and shoot the Zoom call content I'll load the Jpeg images onto one of the client's workstations and we'll shoot variations of the completely fake caller interfacing with our client. It's not video. Nothing needs to move. There is no action required on the fake model side. 

So, here's the problem. The images mostly look good. I give the collection a 90. I docked them ten percent because in some of the images that I'm not showing, in which I asked for hand gestures, the fingers and thumbs are a giveaway that something is not altogether right. I could have fixed the images, or described them in a different way and tried again. Or I could have uploaded some actual images as guides. Instead, since it's not a major part of the assignment, I assessed that we were close enough and I should stop working on them before creeping perfectionism sacrificed my entire afternoon. But any of these would work. Will work. And the investment for seven images shown here is zero in capital expenditures and about 30 minutes of writing and rumination. 

 None of this may scare you for various reasons. You might have your head so well stuck in the sand that you refuse to admit that everything is going to change in the world of imaging for money. You may be the eternal optimist who says something like, "This will make us all so much more creative because we'll have more time for the really creative stuff and we'll have to spend less time on dreck." Or, you could be a pragmatist and just assume that most human endeavors are subject to entropy and atrophy. That it's inevitable A.I. will take over the parts of photography that used to have the potential to create (modest) wealth. Much as stock photography quickly eroded the entry level photo job market in the 1990s and beyond. Same thing but on steroids.

The biggest reason for you not to worry is that you are not currently dependent on the business of photography for your income and never intend to put yourself in that precarious situation in the future.

The very idea that I could spend a half hour on this and turn out images that will certainly work well on a computer screen in a small part of an overall photograph is sobering. And the actual resulting composite has one targeted use: It will be an image on a website. Hardly the heavy lifting that would require more rigorous control and resolution. But a wonderful solution for a harried photographer and his clients.

You can refute all you want but I'm pretty certain this is happening right now in nearly every creative office in North America. Clients are being offered easier and easier solutions for every day imaging and, believe me, it's all camera neutral. No camera was directly used to make these images. You only have to have an image in mind and the ability to write a description in a small text box. A bonus is that if you don't like the first collection of images created by A.I. you can push a button and generate a different set almost immediately. Wonderful from the client side but you can see where this will take photographers; right? Ragnorak. The end of the world as we know it. 

But as usual, I'm happy to be along for the ride....

"Marjory" can't wait to bring you up to speed on the new regulations!

"Brian" is checking in to see how you are coming along on his project for global destabilization.

"Gloria" Zoomed in to tell you that your services will no longer be required. But in a nice way.

"Charlie" wanted to show you how well he can type now that he's had two additional typing fingers grafted onto his right hand.

count on it.