Thoughts on AI and Photography in response to last night’s @ctforum :
The nature of photography is one of preserving fragments of reality and that is something Artificial Intelligence has neither the motivation nor the sentience to accomplish. Photographs are artifacts of precise record, and are captured at the free will and whim of people. One might say these images are shavings of truth and for all that AI is (or may become) it is not an inspired soul which considers and chooses the moments to chisel into eternity. AI generated art assembles visual content from a dataset, and thus never truly deals in the immediate unfolding of reality and the documenting of the pulsing, breathing, interactive nature of life. By definition, it cannot. Whatever conflict exists between the visual arts and the social values of profit and expediency, is not new. The struggle between unmitigated consumerism and our autonomy is carried into this new frontier. New players. Same game. And it is incumbent upon the creators to surge against addictive technology clutching at our very agency. So, let us put our minds to the deep work of imagining and create something beautiful from that deep ocean of conscience, virtue, and wonder that we call humanity.