AI’s impact on commercial photography is immense. It presents a new frontier in how we capture, manipulate and display imagery. While some make dire predictions about the implications of AI (among the biggest concerns, a recent study illustrates that 71% of Americans fear AI-generated content could manipulate elections) and others speculate on the unlimited upside ahead, we are still at the beginning and where we end up will likely fall somewhere in the middle.
The explosion of tablets, mobile phones, televisions, smart watches, cars, VR and other electronics means that predicting the context in which commercial content is viewed is effectively impossible. For images and videos, this presents a major problem because they require optimization specific to the context to display quickly and with high quality – both of which are key metrics for engagement and conversion.
Delivering the optimal version of an image or video has a dramatic impact on how fast a website or application loads and therefore how users perceive the brand. Similarly, it provides powerful asset manipulation capabilities without the need to pre-render or create multiple versions of an asset.
AI has been instrumental in changing the way companies manage images. Now, companies can achieve the highest performance for customers by compressing and optimizing images effectively. Intelligent, automated compression helps squeeze out every unnecessary byte from visuals, while providing the control for high quality at small sizes. But, as with all technological transformations, the full implications of AI are still being understood.
The Good About AI-Supported Photography
AI offers significant benefits for a marketer’s workflow, allowing more time and opportunity to pursue the creative purpose, while eliminating time consuming tasks. A few examples include:
Background replacement – With AI, users can transform the scenery in seconds. Now, users can effortlessly swap backgrounds to suit any context or theme. Background Replacement delivers realistic scene transformations to make sure the images always resonate with the user.
Background Removal – With AI, customers can cut down hours spent on this repetitive task to a matter of seconds. Background removal allows you to highlight the prominent feature of your images with precision and at scale.
Image Upscaling – Breathe new life into outdated imagery and enhance user-generated content using AI to intelligently upscale images up to 4x without losing quality.
Simplify Asset Management – Reduce manual tagging and alt text efforts with intelligently generated tags and metadata to make all your content readily searchable, improve accessibility, and enhance SEO.
Generative Fill – Now customers can push the boundaries of creativity by turning imagination into reality. Extend, fill, and recreate images with generative fill, designed for seamless integration into design and marketing processes.
The Downsides to AI-Supported Photography
The ethical implications surrounding AI and the imagery it can generate will require discussion, consideration, and action by a wide range of stakeholders and organizations. As evidenced by discourse from communities to government bodies, there is much to consider, and the impacts are already being felt. A few examples of possible downsides, include:
- “Deep fakes” and artificially generated “news” photography threaten our common sense of what is “real” and are already being used to manipulate populations worldwide.
- Photographers and other types of content creators can lose creative control or have their work replicated by AI models that emulate them and blur the distinction about what is an original work or who holds ownership.
- Output can become quite homogenous and is rarely something new. With increased usage, the imagery we encounter will become very “samey” and indistinct.
- AI systems require large infrastructure and computational power to function and consume large amounts of power.
What’s Next for AI-Assisted Image Workflows?
The AI hype is slowing down somewhat. Many still don’t really understand the capabilities and many of the tools don’t really do what they claim. We will see recalibration and focus on real, understandable utility for customers and users across the industry (this is good news).
We will see increasing capabilities across all aspects of the workflow process. Cameras may anticipate state changes that reduce the need for post editing and improved capabilities of existing capture, editing and processing capabilities, and more inclusion in consumer applications.
I also expect to see improvements and adoption of tools focused on the middle of the workflow, particularly the management of catalogs of imagery, for both individuals and organizations.
Finally, we will also see a continued focus on how best to regulate the usage of AI generated images, whether that be by law or voluntary adoption of new standards and best practices.
Artists have always adapted and leveraged new tools and technologies to create new forms of self-expression. Photography itself struggled with the transition from film to digital capture not that long ago. We will see a lot of discussion about what is “real” or “authentic” which will apply to the factuality of artifacts, the process by which they are created, and how audiences respond to them. At the end of the day, for photographers AI is and will continue to be a tool, and it is humans who will define what the soul of the medium is.
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