My Response to the NYT article asking if Photography is Dead. No, it is Photography. AI is Not Photography.

I have a bit to say on this "important" article.

Ai violinists defy reality. Is this the coolest shit you ever seen, man?

A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?

NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 26, 2023

Alright, I am going to respond to this article point by point.

I am not going to discuss the absolutely boring and totally uninteresting rendering they used for the lede. Meh. It is ubiquitous and valueless.

The piece is getting a lot of discussion online, and far too much handrwringing and “toldja-sos”.

First: It’s the New York Times, They make money by selling advertisements that are then presented in a newspaper that is sold. For profit. They need eyeballs, and controversy gathers eyeballs.

And I learned a long time ago that the NYT is not nearly as “reliable” as the NYT sycophants like to proclaim it to be.

Enough of that, if you like the NYT, fine. I don’t.

That’s also fine.

Right?

So from the top:

“John Szarkowski, the legendary former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, once described photography as “the act of pointing.” And for the nearly 200 years since its inception, photography has consisted of capturing a visual perspective from the physical world using light — first with light-sensitive plates, then film, then digital sensors.”

Yes. “… capturing a visual perspective from the physical world…”

Question one: In what way does AI image generation remotely resemble that model?

“With advent of A.I. image generators, however, this definition feels obsolete.” - sic

Why?

We currently have millions of practitioners of the art of photography. Why is it so damn important to change the entire meaning of the word, the work, and the artists who do that work?

I dismiss your decision to dismiss photography from what it was created to do and what it does. This is simply a language change, and the reasons for that change are weak and ill-supported. Just because you want to change it doesn’t mean you get to.

“These images are available for purchase from major stock photography agencies alongside traditional photos.”

So what?

I can go to Walmart and buy a set of cookware; does that make Walmart a chef?

“All of which has reignited a two-century-old debate: What exactly qualifies as a photograph?”

Bullcrap. That was answered a long time ago. Nobody of any note is arguing it now. We call this sort of crap a red herring. I would expect more from the NYT.

(I don’t really, just felt right to say that.)

“This is not a matter of etymological nitpicking. Calling A.I. images “photographs” — a practice I encounter often — can add to a sense of disorientation in what already feels like a profoundly disorienting moment.”

No, etymology is really important. Names are vitally important. IDENTITIES ARE SACROSANCT. What we call things is absolutely important as those names and designations provide context.

Do you even read the NYT, bro?

“No wonder some observers are asking: How can we believe anything we see?”

I know the feeling. I wonder how I can believe anything I read.

“But for all the negative potential, I can also see a possibility that these developments will start a conversation about — and foster an educated skepticism of — all visual media and the relationship of these images, however they are made, to so-called truth.”

“Start a conversation…”?

And yes, I do indeed hope they foster some skepticism about the relationship of what we see to the truth, but there is a lot more truth in a photograph - even a digitally manipulated one with compositing and myriad adjustments - than there is in an algorithm-created data scheme.

“So when I hear some people calling the arrival of A.I. an extinction-level event for photography, I often think of the French painter Paul Delaroche who, legend has it, declared painting “dead” after seeing a daguerreotype, one of the first photographic inventions.”

Agreed. I remember when the NYT declared the internet to be a fad. So yeah, I get it.

What follows is a discussion between a bunch of AI “artists” extolling how innovative and ultra-cool this all is, and if you question it, you are an alarmist (Jacobs).

______

The need to hijack the term “Photography”, is what is worrying.

It is of little interest to me if someone makes images on film, tin, digital sensors, or prompting it in with words and a giant database to, err, help them along.

But one of those is not like the others.

AI is far closer to the way a painter makes something appear on a canvas or screen than how a photographer does it.

• A painter or illustrator ‘thinks’ of an image and then creates it. (AI?)

• They do not need the real world to make their art. Not at all. (AI?)

• They can create fantastical images and creatures that astound us but have never been real in any sense. (AI?)

Photography requires the real world. (Before you jump in with the tiny few exceptions, I will give you that some experimental photography was done in a darkroom, but you will be hard-pressed to not introduce the physical world into it.)

And even a photographic composite artist using a library of images to create similar fantastical creatures is still using an image of the real world. (And yes, some blend, but they note it as a blend, and not one or the other.)

Photography usually involves a very controlled approach to time. From shutter speed to time-controlled, long-exposure images, the concept of time is inherent in the process.

A photographer, even a digital photographer, usually overcomes a learning curve. AI has absolutely no learning curve.

A photographer discards bad images, ones that do not fit his/her vision, or don’t convey what they want them to do.

AI delivers every image as is. The prompter can re-prompt, but cannot control where this new prompt goes other than to reference a previous prompt.

When the machine itself says, “Hey, hold on, I think I can do it better,” we will see true AI art.

We call this the “I don’t know what good art is, but I will know it when I see it” school of art. The very same practitioners of this AI version scoffed at and excoriated the practitioners of the “keep on doing it until I like it”, artists as classless morons.

Why not a new term for this new imaging process?

Why the rush to destroy a craft that has had decades of growth to maturity?

Is it because the end result LOOKS like a photograph?

A turd floating in a swimming pool LOOKS like a Baby Ruth. I can assure you they are not the same thing at all.

I already know I will not win this debate, the language fascists have had decades of preparation in how we change the language right in front of people’s eyes. It will take decades of reform to bring back true meanings, but I won’t be hear to see that.

If it happens at all.

Orwell never wrote a sequel, sooo….

Lastly, the idea that AI art will carry any value is simply wrong. Nothing that is achieved easily, simply, or ubiquitously has any value. Nothing.

I am not worried about AI usurping photography because it is nothing like photography in any way.

And I am going to get rich turning AI stuff into NFTs, so I hope the Lamborghini folks have a good inventory for when I go shopping.

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EDIT:
Wesley Verhoeve sent me a link to an excellent comment on the NYT post. Check it out here.