Recently, I presented at an Atlanta area camera club. I was shocked to learn that the members were banned from using artificial intelligence (AI) in the club’s photo competitions.
The club’s rationale
During my presentation, I talked about the generative AI tools in Photoshop because I use them. I love Guided Upright to straighten vertical lines on buildings. Sometimes, the tool leaves transparent areas that need to be filled in. I happily use Generative Fill to fix the problem.
The club says that Generative Fill uses pixels from Adobe’s servers to patch the areas. The truth is that Generative Fill looks at the surrounding pixels in the photo, uses them as a reference and creates the fill-in pixels from that. It does not pull other photographers’ pixels into my photograph.
Purity
After the meeting ended, a couple of the members asked about my use of Adobe AI tools. I explained that those tools are ethically trained using Adobe Stock. Adobe compensates photographers whose images are used to train their AI model, Firefly.
They countered by suggesting that AI was not “real” photography — that only images that are made with the camera are photographs.
Oh, please…
These members are old enough to have taken photos with film. “Is burning and dodging in the darkroom acceptable?” I asked. “Sure,” they said.
“How about using the Develop module in Lightroom? Is that okay?” Their answer was “of course.”
“So the masking tools in Lightroom are good to use?” I asked. “Yes,” they responded.
I said, “The masking tools are AI-powered.” “Yes, but,” they replied, “AI masking does not replace pixels with new ones.”
“So replacing pixels is not allowed,” I said. “That’s right,” they said.
I asked them, “What about cloning or using the Spot Healing brush?” “Those are just fine to use,” they said.
“Spot Healing uses content-aware, which is an AI tool,” I replied. “That’s different,” was their answer.
Reality check
“Okay,” I said. “Let me ask this question, ‘As AI advances, will any of this matter in five years?’” “Probably not,” they said, shrugging.
Here’s my take. Artificial Intelligence driven tools in photography are not going away. They will evolve. Their results will become more realistic. We creators will use them because they make us more efficient.
This is how human work has progressed. Cotten gins replaced hand-cleaned cotton. Steam power replaced horsepower. Calculators replaced adding machines.
I really don’t believe many objected to digital computers replacing punched card sorters. I do remember this same argument happening in the early 1990s about using Photoshop. Thirty-four years on, Photoshop is an accepted tool in photography and graphic design.
Now that Photoshop has AI tools, does that mean it has to go the vetting of acceptability all over again? And what about the club members who are denied the use of the tools in the meantime?
Early adopter
I was an early Photoshop user and have been shooting commercial photographs digitally since the late 1990s. I’m super happy that I started as soon as I did. Now, I have decades of experience in my digital craft and passion for photography.
The club members who may not use Adobe AI tools are being kept from learning new tools. In my thinking there is no way this is good or right.
My suggestion to the members of the discussion was to add an AI category to the existing B&W and color categories.
Progress will progress no matter what.