The work of the devil

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AI - it's the rage or the scourge, depending on which side of the fence you sit. For photographers, it’s a dilemma. Use it or don’t use it – that is the question. Photographic clubs and related organisations, sticklers for rules at the best of times, oppose the use of AI – threatening consequences more dire than death for anyone who dares use it.

Imagine the neanderthal, standing in his cave and dipping a finger into a pot of crushed minerals, dirt, charcoal, animal fat and spit and then tracing an outline on the rock face. Art in its purest, most primitive form.

Then, along comes a young pre-gen-X radical who ties a bunch of woolly mammoth hairs to a stick and calls it a paint brush. He dips this into the pot and is able to cover vast areas of the rock face with a single stroke. What’s more, he doesn’t even have to wash his hands before dinner.

‘Sacrilege, desecration of the rock face,’ wail the purists. ‘The work of the devil. A violation of all that’s pure and sacred in the world of art.’

I remember when digital cameras first appeared. There were those who insisted its results were nowhere near what a film camera could produce. And today, almost all of us use Photoshop or similar software in preparing images for printing or display. And Photoshop, et al, use AI in ways that most of us do not even begin to understand.

So, where does one draw the line? There are all sorts of potential suggestions being put out by the photographic fraternity – from just ignore it to don’t touch it. The latter option is nonsense because Photoshop does it for you without telling you. Instagram has a great approach. You indicate in the heading if AI is used in an image.

Personally, I don’t use AI other than when seamlessly incorporated into a Photoshop function. But every now and then, I like to play with it. As is evident in the photograph above. It was taken the day Sherryl and I got married. I asked ChatGPT to modify the people in the picture so they appeared like actors from the movie Avatar.

Actually, I quite like the result.