We seem to be living in a world of fakes. Everything you know is wrong.
Fake advertising, fake news, fake photographs, fake reality, fake fake fake.
Looking through my junk email folders, each day I receive about 200 fake emails trying to convince me that some fake person is going to do something wonderful for me (and my business.) I visit photography websites and much of what I see are stories about fake photographers and fake cameras and how AI (artificial intelligence) is a game changer and may be the demise of the photographer.
Today’s image is a fake. Using a basic internet based AI image generator, I typed in “Two moose playing scrabble by a mountain lake” and the AI engine generated this image. I didn’t create it. I asked an AI tool to create it. I can’t copyright it, and I’m glad. Only a human can copyright their creations. This image was created by a computer at my request.
There’s a story making the rounds about a graphic artist who generated fake images using AI and had the copyrights to those images stripped by the US Copyright Office. Here’s the story on Peta Pixel.
Another story about an Instagram photographer earning thousands of followers with his fake portraits is making the rounds too.
Notice the fake copyright. You can’t legally claim copyright on a AI generated image, but you can certainly claim it’s a photo you made, even if the subject doesn’t exist. Even if it’s a lie.
AI certainly seems to be getting a lot of attention in the photography press, but lets face it, fake photography isn’t photography. Fake subjects aren’t real subjects. And it’s for those reasons, I don’t worry about AI destroying photography. I think it’s a fad that will lose appeal in the mainstream and be relegated to those who prefer to operate in the world of fake persona, fake reality, fake existence, and fake imagery. If the purpose of creating a fake image is deceit, it crosses an ethical line in my mind. None of it interests me. I live and work in the real world and that’s where my images come from.
Which brings us to another topic. Photo Illustration.
Photo Illustration is basically combining different images to make a composite image that looks like a real image.
Webopedia defines a photo illustration as : “A type of computer art that begins with a digitized photograph. Using special image enhancement software, the artist can then apply a variety of special effects to transform the photo into a work of art.”
Photo Illustration has been around since photography was invented. The basic concept has been around and generally agreed upon by the art world for ages.
AI generated images aren’t photo illustration in my opinion. But one may have trouble differentiating between the two, particularly if real photography is combined with artificially created imagery, to create something that looks like real art or something meaningful. The legal world hasn’t caught up with the Artificial Intelligence paradigm yet, not completely. I think us photographers are in for a bumpy ride but I’m confident some type of legal clarity will manifest itself as we move into the future.
As a military veteran, I keep coming back to the concept of Stolen valor.
Wikipedia defines stolen valor as: “an American term for the behavior of military impostors: individuals who lie about their military service.”
Lots of people brag about their military service and exploits, when in fact they never served in the military and never experienced what they claim to have done in the military. It’s deceit, used primarily to convince you of their authenticity. There’s no readily available method to confirm their claims, and thus it is highly unlikely they will be caught in their lie, unless someone digs in to it and discovers the deceit.
Pretentiousness to the extreme. Claiming to appear or sound more important than they really are. Pretentiousness runs rampant in the world of photography too. I can’t count the number of “photographers” I’ve run into who act as though they have achieved acclaim and notoriety well beyond anything they’ve actually done. Marketing? Bullshit?
Bullshit me thinks.
As for me. I’m a photographer and the photographs I make will never be generated by a computer. I may make photo illustrations though. I’ve done them in the past for clients. For example, I once made photos of the leadership team of a major corporation and combined and edited them to look like they were all sitting on a armored vehicle. It was for their own internal use, to promote their corporate goals and identity to their own employees and potential customers. I did the work, but it was a composite image using different photographic elements. No computer made it up, it was done by me, a real person using real photographs with my own editing skills. I don’t have a problem with composites being used as photo illustration. There was no intent to deceive. I just want to make photographs and art from my photographs.
In reality, I’m nobody special. I’m just an old man living what is left of my life in pursuit of something I find enjoyable. I claim no privileged existence or status, other than calling myself a photographer.
My only recommendation is “Don’t be gullible.”