Week 8

In Week 8, the prompt of the week was ‘Photography and AI: is it writing with light vs lighting with words?’. This topic fascinates me because I truly do believe AI is the future. I find it interesting universities, workplaces and schools are trying to shut down AI usage rather than using it to improve work and use it to their advantage. After reading ‘How AI Imagery is Shaking Photojournalism’ I now know how controversial it is in the photography landscape as well. “In a conversation with Michael Christopher Brown, he explained that it was created with the “intention to explore, analyse and discuss what AI may enable for reportage illustration and to surface public conversation and questioning around what work of this nature may mean for image-based storytellers who care about reality and truth.”” (Terranova, 2023). I think the main point of creating photojournalism with AI, was to not only portray the photographs and the story, but to see how the public eye reacts with the introduction of AI into the art world. The reading discusses how a lot of reactions were a disappointment and how the photographer ‘didn’t really do anything’. Despite years of research and work on the project and working with AI, the images are ‘inauthentic’ because they are not real. I’d be interested to hear what people would think of the project had he not disclosed the images were rendered by AI. The ABC’s discussion on whether AI has a place in photography also really interested me. Photography is an ever-changing and developing art form, and I think it will be very interesting to see where AI can take this.

REFERENCES

Amber Terranova, ‘How AI Imagery is Shaking Photojournalism Links to an external site.‘, Blind [online magazine], 26 April 2023.

ABC News, ‘Boris Eldagsen turned down a prize for his AI-generated image, and started a whole new conversation about art Links to an external site., 15 May 2023.