There’s been a huge amount of talk about AI imagery and how it will impact the photography industry.
And yes there is a place for AI and yes it can be a really important tool in our photographic tool box. However it is only as good as the brief that you put in. Exactly the same as the brief you receive as a photographer.
All of my clients know that we work hard behind the scenes before we even get to photo shoot day. Creating concept boards, schedules, even suggestions for outfits. And this all comes down to what we learn and the questions we ask of the client brief.
So with this in mind I thought I would give ChatGPT a brief and see what it did. It was time for a little bit of fun with AI imagery…
I’d seen several of my friends load up their version of these images onto social media and reached out to one of them to ask her how she’d done this.
The rules were simple… the more detail you put in, the better it gets. So I went for it!
I quite liked this one (above) however I wanted a more ‘Barbie’ look and feel to the image. And so I had to be really specific with this information.
The result? Well this was a good one (below) and it certainly appeased any vanity I had! However I’m not blonde any more and much as I love pink, I don’t wear sunglasses that pink!
So I tweaked the instructions I had put into ChatGPT and this creation was born…
Fabulous but I have blue eyes not brown, and my hair not that long. I also at that point decided that I wanted two of our dogs in the frame as well.
So once more I tweaked the instructions and this was the final creation…
Perfect! Now to actually look like that in real life!
A few days later I stumbled across an article on the BBC News website. Beautifully written by Technology Reporters Liv McMahon & Imran Rahman-Jones it explored a different perspective on this internet trend.
You can read the full article here.
Whilst this is all a huge amount of fun there is a huge environmental impact. Yes you did read that right!
It took a good five attempts for me to get this where I wanted it to be (ish). And for each attempt there was some data server working away, using energy, and generating heat just to create something fun yet ridiculously trivial.
Those servers and the energy they use should be working towards something far more worthy.
That was a big wake up call.
So yes go ahead and have some fun with AI all the while remembering the environmental impact. Perhaps you can do something to offset this. Walk instead of taking the car for a short journey. Or something that works with your own lifestyle.
I for one will certainly be taking a moment and thinking long and hard before I dive into AI image generation again. The value has to outweigh the environmental consequences.