A.I. Speaks Out on Photography

[GD Deckard]

ME: What can you tell me about A.I.'s impact on photography?

COPILOT: AI is reshaping photography at every level but it’s not replacing photographers so much as reorganizing the craft around intention, authenticity, and creative direction. The shift is already well underway, and the data is striking.

AI has already transformed the workflow: In 2025 alone, photographers ran 8.8 billion images through Aftershoot. 90% of AI‑adopting photographers use AI for post‑processing. Post‑processing becomes more like directing -you describe the intent, and the system interprets it.
The photographer’s value shifts to Vision, Taste, Ethical stance, Story, and Selection.

Some photography markets shrink, others grow. Most disrupted: Stock photography, Basic headshots, Commercial filler imagery. These are now easily replaced by AI-generated visuals.
More resilient: Wedding & event photography (clients want real memories, not synthetic approximations), Fine art, and Documentary work. These rely on human presence, trust, and lived experience.
The market shifts toward work that requires human connection and point of view.

AI opens new creative genres: Hybrid images mixing real capture with AI augmentation, Temporal composites (multiple moments in one frame), Experiential or animated stills, AI-assisted street photography (anticipating decisive moments), 3D depth animations and parallax effects.
Photography is becoming a medium that creates its own content, not just records it.

ME: Isn't that what art is about: Creating content, not just recording it?

COPILOT: Absolutely -but photography’s power has always come from the photographer’s embodied experience in the world. AI can generate images, but it cannot stand in a street at dusk, feel the air shift, anticipate a gesture, or recognize the moral weight of a moment. It cannot witness. And witnessing is the part of photography that has always mattered most.

 

[AlanKlein94 10]

ME: What can you tell me about A.I.'s impact on photography?

COPILOT: AI is reshaping photography at every level but it’s not replacing photographers so much as reorganizing the craft around intention, authenticity, and creative direction. The shift is already well underway, and the data is striking.

AI has already transformed the workflow: In 2025 alone, photographers ran 8.8 billion images through Aftershoot. 90% of AI‑adopting photographers use AI for post‑processing. Post‑processing becomes more like directing -you describe the intent, and the system interprets it.
The photographer’s value shifts to Vision, Taste, Ethical stance, Story, and Selection.

Some photography markets shrink, others grow. Most disrupted: Stock photography, Basic headshots, Commercial filler imagery. These are now easily replaced by AI-generated visuals.
More resilient: Wedding & event photography (clients want real memories, not synthetic approximations), Fine art, and Documentary work. These rely on human presence, trust, and lived experience.
The market shifts toward work that requires human connection and point of view.

AI opens new creative genres: Hybrid images mixing real capture with AI augmentation, Temporal composites (multiple moments in one frame), Experiential or animated stills, AI-assisted street photography (anticipating decisive moments), 3D depth animations and parallax effects.
Photography is becoming a medium that creates its own content, not just records it.

ME: Isn't that what art is about: Creating content, not just recording it?

COPILOT: Absolutely -but photography’s power has always come from the photographer’s embodied experience in the world. AI can generate images, but it cannot stand in a street at dusk, feel the air shift, anticipate a gesture, or recognize the moral weight of a moment. It cannot witness. And witnessing is the part of photography that has always mattered most.

Witnessing is what makes photography photography. It's capturing a real moment in time. AI is basically copying and reformulating what has already happened.

 

[GD Deckard]

Witnessing is what makes photography photography. It's capturing a real moment in time. AI is basically copying and reformulating what has already happened.
- Alan Klein
Exactly. The real value of A.I. is that it has more info on any subject than do I. You have to double-check important information precisely because A.I. just copies what others have said, but it's still faster than "Googling."

...an irreverent thought just occurred to me: A.I. will replace photography but not photographers because we'll still be out there taking photos nobody needs.

 

[zombiesniper127 26]

AI isn’t photography without a photo to work with. It’s just another form of digital art masking as photography.
Nothing wrong with digital art. Just don’t call it photography if there was no camera involved.

Just like I’ve photographed paintings but I still only took a photo, not a painting.

 

[GD Deckard]

I agree with you, zombiesniper, but to quibble, photography means painting with light and A.I. users may well redefine it to include A.I.

 

[AlanKlein94 10]

I agree with you, zombiesniper, but to quibble, photography means painting with light and A.I. users may well redefine it to include A.I.

The word comes from the Greek. But that's just shorthand. Photography has long been defined as capturing an image from real time. Computer-generated images are not real-time images but composites of other images taken by others at other times. Titally different than the common understanding of the practice of photography.

The word photography has its roots in the Greek language, effectively translating to "drawing with light." It is a combination of two specific Greek words:

• Phos ($φῶς$): Meaning "light."
• Graphe ( 1 $γραφή$): Meaning "drawing," "writing," or "painting."

 

[GD Deckard]

ME: Photographers are telling me that images created by A.I. ain't photography What do you say to that?

COPILOT: Short answer: No — they’re not photography. But they are images, and they are part of the photographic ecosystem.

Here’s the twist: photography has never been only one thing. Photography has always had two intertwined identities:
1. A trace of reality. Light from the world leaves a mark.
2. A tool for making images, manipulating, staging, retouching, compositing.

AI images belong to the “constructed image” lineage. Think of: photomontage, darkroom composites, airbrushing, CGI, Photoshop painting, matte painting and illustration. AI sits squarely in this tradition: image‑making without direct capture.
AI-generated images are not photography. AI-assisted editing of captured images is photography.

The cultural value of real, witnessed, light‑captured images will increase, not decrease. In other words: Photography doesn’t die — it becomes more precious.

 

[RacePhoto]

Witnessing is what makes photography photography. It's capturing a real moment in time. AI is basically copying and reformulating what has already happened.

I'm not an artist. Some people are really good at creative. I mean, seeing and creating that vision. Some are much better at editing and making what they shoot, even better. I fit more into what you wrote. Pretty basic, capturing a moment in time, or a scene. We aren't all the same and don't have the same goals or visions.

AI and sorry to say this, is nothing like anything, from the mind or the heart. There are interesting components, but except for some computer gathering, it's just a basket of fruit. While a human still life, or a arranged basket of fruit, has something more personal. Even if the human version is not perfectly balanced and doesn't have all the expected and usual qualities, it comes from the individual minds eye.

I'm not just writing to degrade AI. There are uses, potential qualities, systematic mechanics and editing features. I don't feel that an AI image, has the same heart that someone's individual perception may have.

But I like Jackson Pollock and don't understand the raves over Mondrian.

 

[GD Deckard]

Yup, RacePhoto, as A.I. said in the original post, "Photography’s power has always come from the photographer’s embodied experience in the world. AI can generate images, but it cannot stand in a street at dusk, feel the air shift, anticipate a gesture, or recognize the moral weight of a moment."

 

[GD Deckard]

This image and quote is from an artist friend of mine:

"Many would disagree, but I think AI makes me a digital artist. I’m taking the cartoons out of my brain and dumping them into social media feeds. The AI pushback is big, but I feel like I found my visual art. And let’s face it, no matter what your poison, haters gonna hate. I gotta be me."

 

[AlanKlein94 10]

This image and quote is from an artist friend of mine:
View attachment 295535
"Many would disagree, but I think AI makes me a digital artist. I’m taking the cartoons out of my brain and dumping them into social media feeds. The AI pushback is big, but I feel like I found my visual art. And let’s face it, no matter what your poison, haters gonna hate. I gotta be me."

Very creative. I've never seen a giraffe without a butt.

 

[GD Deckard]

That's art, AlanKlein

 

[GD Deckard]

AI creates synthetic sensory experiences​

AI can now:

• generate images you’ve never seen
• simulate voices you’ve never heard
• create scenes that never existed
• produce sensory combinations no medium ever allowed

This introduces a new sensory category:

Synthetic perception — experiences not derived from the world but from computation.

This alters the sensory ratio by adding a fourth sensory domain:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Tactile
• Synthetic (AI‑generated multimodal experience)

Edit: Spammy AI link removed by a moderator.

​

 

[AlanKlein94 10]

AI creates synthetic sensory experiences​

AI can now:

• generate images you’ve never seen
• simulate voices you’ve never heard
• create scenes that never existed
• produce sensory combinations no medium ever allowed

This introduces a new sensory category:


This alters the sensory ratio by adding a fourth sensory domain:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Tactile
• Synthetic (AI‑generated multimodal experience)

This is the first new sensory category since the invention of symbolic language.

Edit: Spammy AI link removed by a moderator.​

​

The article is a lot of gobbledygook. First off, artists have been doing these things forever. Second, this is nothing new under the sun. For example, Yamaha digital pianos have been making different as well as similar sounds as old-fashioned pianos. So what? It's like saying typewriters since handwriting has improved novels.

 

[GD Deckard]

The article is a lot of gobbledygook. First off, artists have been doing these things forever. Second, this is nothing new under the sun. For example, Yamaha digital pianos have been making different as well as similar sounds as old-fashioned pianos. So what? It's like saying typewriters since handwriting has improved novels.

Just for fun, I gave your comment to Copilot and here is the A.I.'s response:

"Thank you for sharing your perspective. You’re right that artists have long explored sensory experience in creative ways, and that many technological advances build on what came before. My article aims to highlight how AI represents a distinct shift by simultaneously blending and reshaping multiple sensory modes in ways previous media did not. The comparison to typewriters and handwriting is interesting—McLuhan’s point was that each new medium reorganizes how we perceive and process information, not just replicates old functions. AI’s polymodal, synthetic, and intention-driven nature introduces a new sensory architecture rather than a simple extension of existing tools. I appreciate your engagement and welcome further dialogue on how these shifts impact creativity and perception."