AI and photography - the photographer’s view point in 2026
No I don’t hate AI because it’s coming for my job - but I am worried
It feels like everyone is talking about AI right now. Whether they are advising you to make use of the wide variety of tools now available for your business or personal life, or they are warning against the dangers of AI taking over the world, everyone has an opinion.
Obviously as one of the people who's art will allegedly be replace by robots, I also have an opinion - so here it is.
The cost of AI is more than just a few jobs - Quick Summary - 2 minute read
1) AI costs the environment by using up scarce power and water resources.
2) AI costs people their ability to think by outsourcing problem solving skills.
3) The savings for businesses using generative AI are short term at best. It will cost you big when the AI tools you relied on are gone or become too expensive to use.
4) Generative AI is built on the theft of creative work by tech oligarchs who get away with it because governments are too chicken to stop them.
5) AI can do great things for the world, generating yourself in doll form is not one of them! Let’s save this costly resource for what matters.
AI Comes at a Cost - ask yourself if it’s worth it - 10 Minute Read
1) Environmental Costs
The environmental cost of our current obsession could be a disaster and we could feel it fairly soon. The computers at the centre of the AI infrastructure are using vast amounts of water and power (see MIT News article here for more detail) at a time when we should all be trying to reduce our consumption to safeguard our future on this planet. So is the fun of generating that AI image of yourself as a Simpsons character worth the future water shortages?
2) Intellectual Costs
Studies are beginning to show that just like any skill which we stop using, our critical thinking and problem solving skills are atrophying because people are outsourcing their thinking to AI (see this BBC article for more). There’s a risk that in the future we will have regressed to the point where we cannot survive without AI - and given point 1 above, where when the water and fuel runs out AI will cease to be available (except possibly for the uber-rich) this feels like a bad idea to me! The capacity for deep thought, wrangling complex problems and coming up with creative solutions and ideas is at the heart of what makes us human - if we lose that I fear we lost!
3) Short term business savings with long term business costs
Yes, using Generative AI to write the copy for your website, create images for your social media or generate you a marketing plan will save you some money this year because you’re not paying highly trained professionals to do that for you. However, this may be a case of ‘jam today’. There are two main problems I can see here. Firstly - every business, including your competitors is using the same tools and they are therefore getting the same or very similar copy, images and marketing plans and when everyone is the same, nobody wins. Customers no longer choose who to buy from based on connection because all the options look and sound the same and are using the same offers and tactics to sell their products. So choice is based on what comes up first and/or what is cheapest - which benefits nobody.
Secondly “if humans stop creating original content, where does AI get its training data? It's like building a factory that runs on trees, then cutting down every forest until there's nothing left to burn” (credit to Hazeb Abbas for this brilliant quote - see their blog here for details.) So if all the writers, artists, photographers, marketers, journalists and other creatives stop creating new things because they cannot make a living doing it then AI will be forecd to start canibalising its own creations - so all the mistakes, all the slop - breeds more and more of the same and ultimately worse output (see Northwestern article here for more on this problem). So AI becomes less and less useful, less trustworthy, less novel and now when you realise you need a human creative, they are thin on the ground and therefore much more expensive to hire.
Add to that the fact that AI is not profitable (See The AI Industry Is Still Light-Years From Making a Profit) and while there is a ton of investment happening, returns are scant (don’t get me started on whether this will be a stock-market disaster caused by over-hyping AI) this will likely mean that AI tools (particularly free ones) are likely to disappear or get really expensive in the near future.
So you lost money because you couldn’t stand out to your customers, and now you face a bigger cost to fix it, and the tools you got so used to are now really expensive (or gone!) - was the saving from worth it?
4) Generative AI is based on stolen work
Finally, generative AI is based on stealing the work of creatives - this is unethical and illegal in the UK under copyright law. Despite the law being really clear on this, it has already happened (the AI models have scraped all this work from the internet without anyone’s consent) and the big AI companies are not being challenged or held accountable for this huge scale theft. Yes that annoys me as a creative whose work is likely being chewed up and churned out by AI without me having received a credit let alone a payment - but what truly saddens me is the idea that the big tech oligarchs are allowed to get away with it because governments are too chicken to challenge them. Nobody wants to upset these billionaires for fear of …. well I’m not sure what. Loss of income from AI? (see my earlier point about the fact there is no income yet!)
And if the theft of creative works doesn’t bother you, think about how your data has been taken and used by these models? Did you succumb to the craze of ‘dollifying’ yourself? You fed it a photo right? And you gave it a bunch of other information about yourself and your life - that data is now in the model and can be used for whatever purpose people put it to. Every conversation you have with ChatGPT becomes part of it and that info is available to every other user including businesses looking to sell to you and those wanting to monetise your personal information - but hey being a doll was great for the gram!
5) So I hate AI right?
Not exactly - in my other life I’m a data expert and Machine Learning (AI is just Machine Learning with a better PR team) has been around for analysing big data for years and it’s pretty much vital since human beings can never hope to process these massive datasets with the same speed and accuracy as a computer can. AI analysis can help detect cancer and find new drugs (see Nature), predict the occurrence and impact of natural disasters (see Time) and will deliver many more truly valuable human goods. Just like any resource, this is what we should prioritise AI for. Since the cost is high, we should focus on how AI can benefit the planet and the most people for good in ways that are not possible or practical without it. And I’m afraid that AI’ ing your product onto a variety of bland backgrounds or AI’ing yourself into the Scream movie poster really doesn’t make the cut in terms of human impact.
Think about how Helium is vital for MRI scanners; it’s a scarce and finite resource right? So maybe think twice about wasting it on making your voice squeaky. Same deal - think twice about wasting AI, oh and maybe consider how it’s rotting your brain as well!