In an earlier post I went on a partial rant about how I dislike two perceptions on Digital Photography, the first being the "High End" photography snob (which is nothing new- this has been around since the dawn of Photography) and the Smartphone push which is something new within the last decade.
Before I get too far into this, let me make one thing perfectly clear: The following rant is of my own personal Opinions and observations. A mantra as it were. It doesn't mean that my mantra is 100 percent correct nor does it mean that someone who disagrees with this is wrong either.
I know the world is changing, and I know that Smartphone photography is only going to grow and never go away. So this post maybe like yelling into a category five hurricane for it to go away, but I feel its worth getting my thoughts out on something I as an individual am powerless to fight or change.
More and more people will continue to use their phones to capture every moment of their lives in photos. But the question is, when will we pass that threshold of when the photo you take on your smartphone is no longer actually a photo but a procedurally generated AI image that the computing power of the phone and internet has created to please you?
I've been wracking my brain of why I dislike the whole "You don't need a camera if you have a Smartphone" or "My phone can take BETTER photos then a Dedicated Camera!" philosophy. I've done some reflection on why this makes me feel backed into a corner as it were and a just Relic from another time.
I also did some reflecting on an extremely hot topic in the Traditional Art community and that is AI Art. I have several friends who are Artists and I also have ties to other communities that are very centric around Traditional Art and all of them seem to be united against a common enemy like Starfleet was united against The Borg: AI Art.
After this reflection I saw a lot of parallels to AI Art vs the Traditional Art community and what Smartphones have and are continuing to "evolve" digital photography into even if they are two distinct (yet related) issues.
On that note, I have also observed how the overly defensive position of Artists vs AI art is but most Photographers will either be totally neutral about Smartphone Photography or will fully embrace it. And I ask myself why is that?
Both Smartphone Photography and AI Art share one thing in common: they are the "Easy" button for getting an image of what you want both in the real world and in one of fantasy.
In fact the line between AI Art and Smartphone photography is getting more blurred all the time as there are instances of major smartphone manufacturer's using AI to replace aspects of a photo to make the image far better then the small, limited sensor the smartphone camera could possibly take; most notably the Samsung Moon replacement AI debacle. (Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moon-photos-ai-galaxy-s21-s23-ultra).
In the Dystopian future we are heading towards AI is poised to replace News reporters, commercial truck drivers, taxi and bus drivers, airline pilots as well as making both art and photography "obsolete".
The Art community has taken a strong "line in the sand" take on AI art, yet the photography community, as a whole (with certain standouts like myself) is more then willing to embrace or ignore the issue at hand, with Smartphones being the entry into the AI Photography driven future.
It won't be long before phone sensors are used only as a frame of reference for an AI to search for a "better" version of the image and either fully replace from someone else's photo (Yuck) or generate it based on the frame reference the small limited sensor gave it.
Digital zoom will no longer be crispy as the phone's AI will simply replace and regenerate its own image in the place of what the sensor actually took; and most people will be none the wiser or even care. As mentioned in the link article above, it's already starting to happen.
So maybe this is one of the core reasons I am so against to using smartphones for photography. I admit, I do use editing tools on my images after the fact to make changes and enhance said image to make it more accurate or pleasing to what my eye sees.
But in this case I am still making all of these changes manually and not replacing my own work with something "better" that someone else took of the same subject, nor am I telling the computer to automatically create a photo for me based on a "lesser" reference shot that I took.
Another aspect of AI art and AI Photography or video is "Deep Fakes". And that is generating or impersonating the likeness of a person through a procedurally generated image or "video" to make it appear as if it was a real photo or video with that person involved. Like digital AI Art this technology is learning, adapting and getting better with every new deep fake generated.
With Smartphone photography the AI of the phone is doing all of these edits for you, which is a big part of the reason I suppose I have been suspicious or wary of the technology from the start. You press a button and the phone's "camera app" makes all the edits automagically for you to guess what might enhance the image to what would please a human eye.
Often it guesses right and makes images that draw people to better smartphones so they can get the better AI enhanced image and so the phone can give them that better output they can share instantly online.
Sometimes however a Smartphone's "AI Editing" or automagic edit features can fail spectacularly. Like the "bokeh blur" adding hard cookie cutter style outlines around the subject or blurring out part of the main subject such as a second person or part of a face.
Same thing can happen with automagic HDR filters where stacked images can make a "crayon" look to a photo or with photo merged ultra-wide angle shots which can duplicate wheels in a car in motion, limbs on an animal or even duplicate or remove eyes on a human face.
Early AI art suffered from a lot of these same "tells" with AI processors that had difficulty with human anatomy and would draw disfigured people with seven fingers and knees that went backwards. The other tell from early AI art was its inability to generate Text in a comprehensive language meaning any signs generated from AI would often look like they were from a Cantina in Star Wars with random letters and non-letter symbols meshed together to form text.
However, more advanced AI Art, Deep Fakes and AI processing in smartphones is making a lot of these tells become less noticeable or go away entirely. We are on the precipice of being able to request a digitally rendered photo that is just "as good" or "better" to the average person then an authentic photo or piece of artwork drawn or taken with a camera.
The line between what is real and what is fake is beginning to become very much a thinner and blurrier line as we advance into this dystopian nightmare of a future.
Technological Dystopias are fueled by the majority of a population being content in believing what they are told by an AI, and this is the future we are headed towards with Artwork, Video and yes Photography. So to me, resisting this Dystopia reality is important even if the majority of the population will embrace it.
So to wrap this up, maybe a lot of my hostility towards considering "smartphones" as "valid" cameras stems from a lot of the same reasons Artists are becoming hostile to AI Art.
I don't expect people to understand, maybe I am just this crazy Elder Millennial who is not hip to just pressing an "Easy Button" and letting an AI decide what I want. Perhaps this is what it all boils down to in the end.
How content are digital photographers, as a whole to be replaced by an AI and used only as someone who "captures a reference shot" that the AI then replaces with something better? Because that I feel is the Future we are headed towards...
And in my observations all of this started with the Smartphone.
No comments:
Post a Comment