The other day, while scrolling through the spiritual vacuum that is Instagram, I paused on a Creative Review story about Archie, a talent agency with a shiny new roster of artists working exclusively with AI. As a freelance photographer, I was naturally intrigued. The pull quotes spoke to changes in photography and, crucially, to the fact that AI is not self-governing; artists are using it to bring their visions to life.
In the comments section, a fellow photographer exclaimed, “So dull,” while another raised the issue of plagiarism. A host of other folk bemoaned Creative Review for platforming such – to paraphrase – creatively bankrupt slop. Some even went so far as to state that they were “unfollowing”. I, for one, felt frustrated, and not for the first time. So, here is my attempt to explain why these comments fucked me off.
The problem with calling it “dull”
Firstly, have we learnt absolutely nothing from burying our heads in the sand? Know your enemy and all that (if we even want to think of AI in this way). We live in an age where nuance is increasingly kicked to the curb. Are you on this side or that? (You can’t say that.) He said what?? Ewww, that’s what you think??? So embarrassing. This inability to work through things, to think critically in ways that can’t be put in captions on TikTok, is not only rotting our brains but it’salso polarising our society. And this is what’s happening with AI.
To address those would-be unfollowers – why? Some of them suggested that a magazine which champions creatives should not concern itself with AI-generated work. But why not? Creative Review has been reporting on the creative industry for 45 years. For them to ignore AI would be the equivalent of when Mufasa banned Simba from going to that shadowy bit of the Pride Lands. To cover the whole industry – but not that bit, because it’s contentious – would be like refusing to cover illustration once it moved from the page to computers, which I’m sure annoyed purists. In short, it would make a mockery of their journalistic integrity.
I should probably say at this point that I am not a “fan” of AI. I think it’s steering us towards laziness and the homogenisation of culture. For me, though, my main reason to swerve it is its environmental impact. An MIT article from last year states, ‘By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia)’. And if that stat alone doesn’t stop you from asking AI to write an email for you, then we’re all doomed. There’s a lot to be said about AI and the environment, but this isn’t the place to say it.
But to discount it entirely, or to describe it simply as “dull”, seems willfully ignorant. What good does it do to tar all AI with the same brush? For some, it has become the ultimate digital foe, a malignant tumour growing in the heart of the creative industries. But I’m sure that – unless you’re an exclusively analogue artist – a great number of us have already benefited from AI (I’m looking at you, content-aware fill – in my opinion, a largely useful tool). Photographers and designers, how many times have you hit backspace to let content-aware do its magic, only to laugh at the results? Realising, slightly irked, that we professionals are better off using our expertise and going the long way round.
Plagiarism isn’t new (and neither are grey areas)
What about the issue of plagiarism? I’m not denying there is a problem with AI absorbing artists’ work to generate new work. But this problem predates AI.
In fashion, in order to make a “new” garment, you have to make seven changes to an existing design. So someone at a high-street retailer can pick apart a piece of haute couture, change the buttons, the taping, the colour, a couple of darts, the length and width of a lapel, and boom – new blazer. We do the same in photography. How many times on a commercial job have you been sent a moodboard for a shoot that contains maybe two images from your own book, alongside 10 by other photographers? Then, when you arrive on set, an art director points to one of the images that isn’t yours and says, “This is what we’re looking to create today”. And so you recreate an existing image. Sure, the model and the clothes are different, but the pose and the mood are the same.
As demand for content continues to grow, art directors and agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver greater volumes of work than ever before. So it’s not laziness that is driving the need for quick decision making – it’s professional survival. I hear stories like this all the time, such as an excellent food photographer friend not being booked for a job (which they were more than capable of executing) because they didn’t have a picture of a sandwich in the book they presented, and the client was a sandwich brand.
As a photographer, I’m used to living in grey areas. From the way we’re spoken to at the commissioning stages (“we’ve decided to go in another direction” rather than “we’ve booked someone else”), to deciphering what clients mean on set (“make it look more expensive, more premium” without saying precisely what looks cheap), to the classic follow-up email “it’s great!” followed by endless waiting and wondering whether the client will ever book you. The introduction of AI has been no different. The trees whisper the rumour that AI is after our jobs, that our days are numbered, but no one’s actually told us that. And no one’s told us that because it’s nonsense. I do not doubt that some product photographers may be replaced or that some photographers will lose campaigns to AI. Maybe work will be thinner on the ground, and budgets will get smaller. But these are the inconvenient truths that we signed up for when deciding to work as artists, for ourselves.
Authenticity, retouching and the uncanny valley
An equally grey area is the constant questioning of authenticity; people bemoaning the fact that they can’t tell what’s real and what’s AI now. My favourite question regarding this is, when was the last time you saw a shaved armpit in a professional campaign shoot that actually looked like your own armpit instead of Barbie’s? Maybe this point is hackneyed and overdone, but as a woman with body dysmorphia ageing in this society, I can tell you it’s a total headfuck. A while ago, I noticed that a friend of mine with similar mental ailments as me followed a photographer who uses extreme retouching on their subjects’ faces. Their sitters are almost exclusively women, some of whom are body positivity activists, which is how my friend found their account. I gently asked my friend one day, ‘Do you realise these faces are all heavily Photoshopped?’, to which she replied, ‘Oh, I just thought they could do their makeup much better than me.’ It got me thinking, how many other women can’t spot retouching, and were being made to feel even more shit about themselves as a result?
Retouching, airbrushing, surgery, tweakments and digital filters are rife in society, so why do we feel entitled to know what’s “real” in terms of imaging? Or, maybe it’s because the illusions are now making men feel stupid as they fail to discern what’s real and what’s not, as opposed to the illusions being used to just make women feel more and more ashamed. Perhaps it’s simply because – finally – we can now ask what work has been done without being rude. (If you’re reading this thinking it’s a bit rich of me to conflate AI with retouching or surgery, I’d offer that these methods, which have become more and more accessible and accepted, have helped to plunge us into the uncanny valley we find ourselves in.)
The most powerful response is being more human
Another way to look at it is, if AI can’t make anything that hasn’t been made before, you are always one step ahead as an artist. You can go out and make something that’s never been seen before. Scary? You bet. The current estimated global population is over 8 billion. If you can’t find someone to collaborate with, then it’s time to get out of the game. The thing about AI is that it’s still following trends, and trends are constantly being set or rejected.
Plus, isn’t it true that chasing trends is the quickest way to become irrelevant? If you stay in your lane, you may experience fallow periods, but your work will almost always come back around and be stronger for having a clear vision. Why do you think we’re seeing more photographers working with film? And more magazines commissioning it? Why do you think people are starting to make zines again? Because what AI can’t be – even with a lot of human help – is material, tangible, visceral. It doesn’t smell like the basement photo lab you’ve been going to for the last 13 years, or feel warm like sheets of paper fresh out of a copier. You can’t write on it in pencil or circle it with a china marker. You can’t rearrange the hair of an AI sitter, or find out you have the same birthday. None of this is to say that you have to shoot film or make a magazine, but rather to acknowledge that we are working in a new world.
One of the images that sticks in my mind from the Creative Review story is a petrol station shrouded in a greenish, hazy mist with a huge lucky cat sitting on the roof. It’s a cool image. It feels like Gregory Crewdson, Maria Lax and Tim Walker put their heads together and came up with it. My first thought was, see that’s what AI is good for. And yet, it also put me in mind of these three great creatives, which suggests it could be created IRL. If your first thought is a curmudgeonly grumble, “no one would give me the budget for that”, then this image is not yours to make. I’d have to ask him, but I doubt Tim Walker is worrying deeply about budgets. “But he’s Tim Walker,” I hear you cry, and other such excuses.
While I like to trash-talk Instagram because of the impact it has on my mental health, it would be reductive to deny that we have at our fingertips greater access to the world, especially as creatives, than we’ve ever had. If you so wanted to, you could probably find a rookie set designer or prop builder to collaborate with to make a huge papier-mache lucky cat, then find an independent petrol station (I can think of at least three, but you could always use Google Earth) who might agree to let you put said cat on their roof. What I’m driving at is this: if you want to create any kind of image, you can. In camera, digitally, a blend of the two, you can do that. You can also rip off AI artists’ ideas.
And if you’re scared of AI and what it’s doing, remember it’s being done by someone – the machines haven’t taken over (yet). Someone you could go for coffee with in the real world. Someone you could have hard conversations with. Another option: get AI curious. See what it can do. Maybe you’ll enjoy it. Maybe you won’t. Or, you’ll realise – much like the content-aware fill tool – that the software needs help to look good, that you can use your Adobe Suite skills to get in there and polish what’s been presented. I tried a prompt with Adobe Firefly the other day, and (no shade, Adobe) it sucked. Or remind yourself why you love creating physical, real-world art. Why not try writing something to accompany an image you’ve taken? Make a collage. Go to the cinema and make notes on which frames inspired you. Flip through a magazine and get inspired to try a new lighting setup. If January isn’t the time to play around, then I’m not sure when it is (answer: August).
And yeah, yeah, maybe this is all sounding too dreamy, too romantic… but the dreaming and the romance is where the magic lives. I’m writing this at home with a cold in January after perhaps the worst financial year I’ve had since I made photography my full-time career, but I’m not sitting around bitterly criticising those who are using AI to make work. They’re not stealing my job. I’m still trying to figure out what my work looks like now, and how to make it work in this new world.
What I’m realising is that the more human I am, and the more human my work feels, the more I love it. But this also means experimenting, playing, upskilling, and being curious. Maybe even starting to think of myself as an artist, which has always scared me a little.
