Is AI the new camera?

[@john-e3v8v]

"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life" - Henri Cartier-Bresson AI is the new camera. hahaha. Artificial intelligence with no eye and no heart. It's not my new camera! My new camera is the Pentax KF that you recommended and I love it!! Thanks Luigi! “It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. - The Tin Woodsman, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz pgs 72-73.” ― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

[@LuigiBarbano]

Thank you, I'm really glad you are enjoying the KF. Yes our ability to align head and heart is the strongest human skill. Sadly right now too many people consider this ability a weakness and they see AI as a god... there is even a religion based on AI, I hope is just an ironic website, but I found one trying to base a religion on AI as god. The positive side of all this is that I see many people turning around and starting to put back in charge humanity.

[@MET87]

Totally agree in the analysis! But i have to say something. Photography will always remain photography. There's nothing stopping you to be a photographer and only use a camera. Even go for analog photography and use only film and develop images on paper. But also, images are not necessarily photographs. You can create a image in many ways. Painting, drawing, software (like photoshop), 3D rendering and many other ways including AI. I agree completely with the nature of reality and that we are loosing our soul. But in the end is a choice. Photography will continue to exist. Photography is just one of many ways to create images. You know there is such a thing called Science-Fiction? And imagination? You know that people have been imagining things since for ever, right? Most people don't actually like reality and this is why they use this power to create a fake reality. Here's what i think is the issue. People are just spending their life looking at a screen. That's all. Nobody looks at reality anymore, because they are hypnotized by a screen.

[@LuigiBarbano]

I agree. The problem is that they pretend the fake reality is real and AI created images are photography. Reality exist and not dealing with it can only create big problems. I think this is the time to fight for reality before it's too late...

[@ryszardtarnowski8213]

I've just realized, how lucky I am, being just a hobbyist 😉 However, I fully support your point of view what _the reality_ should be for us (in general and as photographers). Thanks a lot for sharing that video 💯

[@LuigiBarbano]

Thank you! Yes, being an hobbyist has a lot of advantages... but sure you'll have to deal with similar problems in your main line of work. At the end we are all in the same boat and lately it looks like the Titanic ;)

[@GeorgeLee-c8t]

Not for me. I see nothing wrong with using my own intelligence and it’s a choice you can make

[@LuigiBarbano]

Amen. Sadly too many people, included Adobe, are pushing a different narrative...

[@rafaeldiazsanchez]

@@LuigiBarbano Ansel Adams said "you don't take a photograph, you make it". AI is then an off-limits tool for the "maker of images"?. Not a good idea. Right now people are creating images with Cinema4D, Maya... and polishing them with AI. The realism in many cases is total. Computers are also right now creating garbage in industrial quantities but none of it is a threat to any photographer; maybe to the money or attention available for a "commercial photographer" like you (you say so in your intro video) but that has nothing to do with art. Introducing yourself as "commercial" but speaking in this video as "writer of light" undermines your arguments and may make people think that you use art only as a tool to defend your personal position (and yes, everything is fake in social media, go to the Prado, Louvre... and tell me how much realism paid by the kings and the rich you can see there). Interesting anyway listening to Luddites of art like you, history won't be lenient.

[@LuigiBarbano]

@@rafaeldiazsanchez Thanks for your input. You can create images with what you want, but if it's not "written with light" is not a photograph. Adams created images with a photo sensitive material not with a brush or a computer. The problem is not creating art with AI or any other tool, it's calling it photography and attach to it all the attributes of photography, mainly the idea we have that photography portrays a reality. You can create something realistic with many tools, but it's still not reality. Having a background in commercial photography, yes that is my main job, makes me even more understand the essential difference between a real photograph and something that is just realistic. Do you remember the movie "Falling down"? The famous scene in the McDonald where Michael Douglas complain about the difference between a real hamburger and the one in the picture? Commercial photography is one of the most essential genre where you need ethic and one where ethic was absent for too long. You can create the perfect picture of an hamburger but you did not created the perfect hamburger. The result is frustration and upset customers. But the point is another: we are not talking about a simple tool, we are talking about substituting the human mind with an artificial one. I'm very sorry for you if you think an AI can be better than a human brain, it's very sad and you are underestimating humans a lot. Also is not a matter of Luddism and being against progress, it's just a matter to call the things with its names, starting from the fact that expert systems, as much expert they can be, are not intelligence. You mentioned museums and art... if you think something as the David, or the Sistine Chapel could had been created by a machine without a soul, I'm sorry for you.

[@rafaeldiazsanchez]

@@LuigiBarbano The Greeks didn't invent photography but no problem in any case if you want to stick to your write-with-light definition, I also like it. Photography as a conveyor of reality is only a room in the huge building of the creation of images "with AI or any other tool" (your words). Press photography is rightly admired by every person with more than two neurons and it doesn't need us to defend it, but people working with 3D or AI may legitimate ask why the accessories and equipment needed by photgraphers like you end up in a Photography, with capital letters, and the constant tweaking of lights in a 3D environment (which offer many more possibilities than the real world tools and a flexibility unmatched by them) end up in just an image. Ansel Adams said "think of [the camera] not as an inflexible and automatic robot, but as a flexible instrument...An electronic and optical miracle creates nothing on its own !" and this works for everybody interested in images, no matter what tool they use. Nobody differentiates between writers who use a computer and writers who use the hand and a pen, even if the final result may slightly vary because of the utensils (and it happens), but it seems that you do so if light, not ink, is used to write. Finallly, I never said that " AI can be better than a human brain" or that the Sixtine Chapel could have been created by a machine. I only can can defend, support, rectify... what I say, not what other people want me to say. In any case, I don't like to predict the future, let's see first what happens and if there is a change I may revisit that idea but, right now, AI is just a tool that, if it is properly used, can make our brains and our eyes better. That's all (and yes, experts systems are not human intelligence but there is nothing wrong in adding the term artificial to the word intelligence, so that it is clear for everybody what we are talking about. Some fools ignore the adjective anyway, you are not talking here with one of them)

[@LuigiBarbano]

​@@rafaeldiazsanchez You made the perfect example. I makes no difference if a writer uses a pen, a typewriter or a word processor. It makes a difference if the novel is generated by his mind or by a machine collecting all the books in the world and making a collage based on the programmer ideas. Writers are doing it now hiring ghostwriters and pretending the book was written by themselves. I don't think it's right and I do not esteem much who use this method. My problem with AI is not the use as a tool but it's the fact that is pushed as Intelligence. We have some crazy morons pretending to control the world (they remind me of the bad guy in James Bond movies, planning the control of the world while caressing the cat) who are telling absurdity like using AI instead of elections to decide who will rule the world. Pretending AI generated images is photography is just a step toward that direction. Photography had always been considered as something portraying a reality, distorted as much as you want but still with a base of reality. Photography can be used as a proof in a trial to demonstrate a person was on the crime scene etc. This is the kind of power people give to photography. If we cannot differentiate anymore photography from a fantasy created world we either destroy an intrinsic value of photography or we easily manipulate the people. At the end my problem is with the definition, with the words we use to describe it. As I say in the video, I have no problem to see a fake photograph win a prize in an art category, I have problems seeing it winning in a photographic category. A picture os a cityscape with a fake Milky Way in the sky can be a nice art piece to hang on a wall, but if it's used to promote tourism to the city is simply a fraud. We have new tools and we have to define how we name the tools and how we name the results. This said I find very stupid for a company to advertise to quit to use and pay what is their base clients... but we live in a strange world where reality is not considered anymore and probably had been years since Adobe had photographers as a main source of income. Yes, Greek didn't invent photography, they limited themselves to use very well the pinholes to transform rooms in cameras obscura... but we used the ancient Greek words to define photography and we did it because is essential to use the proper words to define the reality. If we start to use the famous New-Language of Orwellian memories, we destroy any means of rationality. The story of the Babel Tower described perfectly what happens when we pretend to be gods and start to fake reality starting to describe it with improper terms. At the end, you can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding it. With AI the goal is to avoid reality and this is a very dangerous attitude. Sadly is a common attitude right now because we are controlled by people hating life and themselves. To wait and see what happens is not always the right thing to do, usually is better to define some limits and a direction. To give a can of gas and matches to a kid and wait to see what will happen is not a good idea. We are doing the same thing now not just with AI but with a lot of other things.