AI'm not convinced. Yet.

Am I alone in ticking the ‘exclude Generative AI’ box when searching for stock photography?

Generative AI insisted itself into the creative toolkit a while ago and for some it’s playing an important and increasingly larger role in the world of visual communication. I use it for early stage, indicative creative visuals here and there, and I’m beginning to rely on Photoshop’s highly useful built-in functionalities, mainly for quick retouches and only as a starting point for anything that needs to be highly polished for final output (especially print) – that’s because the generated area isn’t quite perfect; the natural noise from a photograph isn’t replicated properly, the isolate subject function isn’t very accurate. It’s certainly good enough for on-screen use, and in most cases, viewers won’t notice a subtle difference in background noise.

I’m sure it will continue to advance and improve, Generative AI already has tons of uses (like thumbnails for blogs when time is tight), but from what I’ve seen, the results stand out as fake, they all have the same unreal feel about them and lack artistic flair. For a while I kept seeing an artificial picture of an old lady with alien-like wrinkly fingers advertising something-or-other, I couldn’t scroll past it quickly enough. It was devoid of any human quality, there was no life in the picture. In contrast, I’m loving the increasing use of real people in advertising. Campaigns and content that celebrate our differences and feature disabilities or conditions not traditionally embraced on TV. You know, real people with skin that hasn’t been output by a median blur inspired render engine. I’m inspired by reality because it communicates genuinely and honestly. To that end, I’m happy to have old school Photoshop knowledge, the retouching skills to accentuate what’s already present in a photo, to know how to draw a Bezier curved clipping path or use channels for isolating subjects, and to cover up any texture glitches (purely in the interests of quality rather than fakery). If the next generation of creatives rely solely on AI, these and other far more impressive skills might be lost, and at the expense of realness, creative flair and quality.

I guess when audiences can’t recognise the difference between a photograph and generative AI, it won’t matter. If you can’t tell the difference between synthesised strings and a recorded quartet of musical virtuosos, is it acceptable for humanity to forget how to play the cello? AI has heralded another transitional time in our history, it’s important we recognise which skills should be passed on and which are OK to be forgotten.

I find it interesting that the word artificial describes something that’s made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, yet also means conceptually contrived or false, behaviourally insincere.

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