AI DEFINITELY ISN’T PHOTOGRAPHY!
And it probably isn’t Art!




  It has been too long since my last blog post, but I feel this may be the most important blog post I’ll make in a decade. I have been waiting a few years before writing about my observations and opinions. I have been reading, watching, and evaluating a lot of news and developments in AI Image Generation before I decided to express myself here.

  Before I get started, I want to be clear that I am talking about AI image generation “machines” here and not the use of AI in photo-editing software. I’m not discussing the use of AI in spot removal, sky replacement, masking, upscaling, etc.. I am discussing AI image generation using software/websites such as Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly, or Flux. I will use the term “machine” here to sometimes refer to AI image generators, but “software”, “code”, “program” could also be inserted as appropriate terms.

  I have been a photographer for a little over a dozen years and I have loved, nearly, every day of those years. I have seen many changes in tech, gear, and software as well as changes in art shows and in the art market in general. I am concerned about the impact of AI on a few different fields of photography, like stock photography, portrait photography, and product photography. Most corporates and potential clients now believe these ‘machines’ can do a good enough job to pass for an actual photograph that they don’t need to pay for a pro photographer, not to mention a real model.    



  AI generators are complex plagiarism machines! All AI generators (that I know of) use databases and the ‘web’ that contain millions of copyright images. This is copyright infringement, since the images are used without the creator’s consent. Their work is feeding AI systems, but the artist receives no financial compensation or recognition of authorship.  There are many ongoing lawsuits against Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp that are trying to seek compensation and resolve this huge problem.

  These are important, real, issues with AI machines. The larger issue, I feel, is that AI is NOT photography and it probably isn’t art. Photography requires two elements, one technical and one conceptual.

The first element is light.

The word “photography” literally means “drawing with light”. The word was supposedly first coined by the British scientist Sir John Herschel in 1839 from the Greek words phos, (genitive: phōtós) meaning “light”, and graphê meaning “drawing or writing”. The technology which led to the invention of photography essentially combines two distinct sciences: optics – the convergence of light rays to form an image inside a camera – and chemistry, to enable that image to be captured and recorded permanently onto a photosensitive (light-sensitive) surface.

Photographers become intrinsically and beautifully sensitive to light. We are constantly stalking, hunting, and learning light. Humans in general respond emotionally and intuitively to light, often without realizing it. We know ‘The Golden Hour” and “The Blue Hour” without realizing we do. It is the major way humans interpret the world; by capturing light with our eyes, if you will.

We say “I see” when we mean “I understand” because what we see is how we interpret the world.

Think about it: for over 150 years, photographers have been chasing light, finding ingenious ways to hold onto its fleeting moments. From early toxic plates to silver film and now digital sensors, the technology has constantly evolved. Nevertheless, the fundamental truth of photography persists: it's always been about seizing real-world light and making it permanent.

The second element is more conceptual.

The Times quotes curator John Szarkowski, who calls photography “the act of pointing.”

When I create a photograph I always ask myself “what are you trying to say here”

Photography involves more than just mastering the technicalities of light capture. It requires a photographer to actively engage with the world, identify a compelling subject amidst countless possibilities, and make a decisive choice to isolate and emphasize it. The artistic core of photography resides in this act of selection – what the photographer chooses to extract and magnify, the specific element they wish to highlight. This "act of pointing" is the crucial step that transforms a photograph from a simple depiction into a vehicle for the photographer's unique interpretation of reality.

AI Images Aren’t Photographs

AI-generated images fail to meet the essential criteria of photography on two critical fronts. First and foremost, they are not born of light. Instead of capturing photons from the real world, they rely on simulated light, a product of complex algorithms within a computer system. Moreover, the control over this artificial light is often limited for the user, with platforms like DALL-E and Midjourney autonomously deciding the lighting conditions based on the generated subject matter. This detachment from physical light fundamentally distinguishes them from true photographs.

  People are asking lines of code to create “flowers during a rain shower” when it has never seen a flower nor felt a rain shower.  These machines have never seen a sunset, never been to a birthday party, never seen an old Country Church at Sunrise (if I may). You get my point. Machines have no soul and they cannot create photographs.

  Some people have argued, erroneously, that AI image generating machines are merely the new “form of a paintbrush or Photoshop” and to that I say poppycock! That is a false analogy.

    A painter can hold a paintbrush and can feel it move, it becomes an extension of her hand, her heart, her soul. What she has seen, interpreted, and felt is transformed into a physical object through the act and art of painting. Likewise, a photographer is physically there in the moment to capture the light, to record the light photons into a digital form. Later he will import these photons into the software of his choosing and create a photograph. That is where the art begins, I feel. There is the connection between the photographer, his camera, his software, and his physical print that is never lost. A photograph is real, a painting is real. An AI image is not “real”.

I have a t-shirt that says “I am a photographer; I don’t take pictures. I create photographs”. I don’t wear it often as it can be interpreted as being a little conceited, but that doesn’t diminish its truth.

AI images probably aren’t art.

  I say “probably” because I am not an expert on art, I am an expert on photography. I am probably a novice when it comes to understanding art beyond photography. I have read a lot on this subject from dozens of people more educated in art, and the majority seem to believe that AI generated images are NOT art. I am choosing to wait and ‘see’ a little bit longer before I make my decision on this aspect.

I found this article extremely simple and yet comprehensive. It said, in part:

“In Japan there’s a museum that collects rocks that happen to look like faces. Big rocks, small rocks, all rocks. Two holes and a line are generally enough for humans to perceive a face, and the rocks squint and smile and frown and frame their faces for all occasions to the humorous oooos and ahhhhs of visitors.

But, of course, the rocks are not smiling. There are no faces in rocks—the scientific term for this is pareidolia. No matter how face-like a rock looks, it’s an illusion. No one carved the face, no one cogitated over the face, no one intended a face. It just sort of happened that way. The key difference being that a sculptor is conscious, but when it is instead the wind or rain or the deep fermentation of geological processes acting as sculptor, these things are not conscious. Lacking consciousness, they lack intentionality, and therefore their products lack meaning.

The running joke in the rock-art museum is that everyone, from the visitors to the staff, knows the faces are unintentional—it would be a category error to think that these rocks are part of an art museum in the way that, say, the exhibits at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo are part of an art museum”.



“AI-generated artwork is the same as a gallery of rock faces. It is pareidolia, an illusion of art, and if culture falls for that illusion we will lose something irreplaceable. We will lose art as an act of communication, and with it, the special place of consciousness in the production of the beautiful”. 1
 

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1: https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art