This morning I fell down a LinkedIn rabbit hole after a photographer shared an AI-generated seasonal candy-cane portrait of himself.. basically this one, but with his head.. and gave it short shrift.
The comments in the thread were entertaining. Craft. Authenticity. Data centres. Water usage. The usual lines being quickly drawn.
And yet… it made me smile, so I asked ChatGPT to stick my head on it.. and now can’t stop looking at this image.
No professional photographer could have created it for me.
Not because they aren’t talented.. but because I’d never have asked. Never justified it. Never even imagined it. And No, nor would I ever pay for it.
That doesn’t make it better than photography.
It makes it different.
Sometimes new tools don’t replace old crafts.
Maybe they just create space for things that would never have existed.
But when it matters, I turn to professional photographers. This isn’t that. It’s something else.
Andrew Greenhalgh 