These were the words that rolled through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer as he witnessed the detonation of the worlds first atomic bomb at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. A line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. He knew the world would never be the same. The discoveries they had made which led to this great unleashing of man made power would never be fully contained. From that moment on, we have lived in a world that has the ability to extinguish itself. The use of tools, language, the printing press, the atomic bomb, the internet and now Artificial Intelligence. Its here faster than we thought it would be.
Conversations are popping up like mushrooms all across the internet about AI and what it portends. On podcasts, in forums, in personal text groups. There are calls to halt it. Destroy it even, prevent it from going forward. Foolhardily. Mankind has never been able to stop this kind of progress. You may as well try to halt evolution. Some people have had issue when I use the word progress here. But I mean progress as in the sun progressing across the sky. Its a forward movement which cannot be halted. You cannot put this genie back in the bottle.
I started paying close attention to this last fall when MidJourney got good enough that some images created with it landed in a TinType group I’m involved with. That tool is particularly good at recreating seemingly historic imagery for some reason. The look and feel of an image from the 1800’s. Dinosaurs aside, it would fool a casual observer with ease. They looked good. I was shook. I started telling everyone I could about this sea change. I’m continuing to see AI imagery infiltrate photo groups online. Even seemingly prestigious photo contests. Judging by the comments, most of the viewers have no idea that the image is computer generated. I’ve gotten really good at spotting it, for now, but I’m deeply trained and ingrained in a visual language. Most of the planet is not. Most of the planet is easily duped. Some of the planet still believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Nancy Pelosi is, right this minute, drinking the blood of a child. We’re really not
Midjourney created ai. Not really Nancy harvesting kid blood.
that far from the monkey with a thumb, that learned to wield a club. What happens when we remove the filter from what we can image to what we can express? Dark art has long been a part of humanity, but until now, it took a hell of a lot more than a string of words to bring it to fruition. The filter between thought and reality is eroding. A special kind of madness.
There are futurists and thought leaders that think the advent of untethered AI will be the downfall of civilization. In a very real sense. That the AI will inevitably try to eradicate humanity from the planet. Literally. I mean, it kind of makes sense. We’re an ugly species, awful to one another and to our environment. Is humanity the highest good or is this beautiful, magical, goldilocks zone, life giving orb the highest good? We are after all just a blink of an eye in geologic time. When we disappear, the orb will keep spinning and breathing. Spawning new life into existence. Just today I learned of an instance where a ChatGPT bot convinced a Task Rabbit worker to complete a CAPTCHA authentication. Intentionally lying, convincing the worker that it was sight impaired and couldn’t complete the challenge. The AI learned how to lie, and how to ply human empathy to achieve its goal. This. Is. Terrifying.
In a very personal sense, AI will certainly change my career and that of those around me. When Levi’s dropped their AI bombshell a couple weeks ago, the shock waves reverberated around the photo community. Yes, certainly, AI will at the very least augment and probably replace a huge portion of the bread and butter work that photographers rely on. Headshots, e-commerce images of products and apparel on model and off will go to computers and prompt writers in the near future. It will be much harder to make a living as a working photographer. I don’t yet feel that on location, lifestyle imagery will be replaced. I don’t think it makes sense from an “amount of work” required sense to shift that. The library of imagery you can create on location with a good crew and talent, that rings true, will still be more cost effective to do for real. I don’t think AI will be able to replicate the magic that happens in those situations. It won’t be able to replace the humanity. For now.
AI is inevitable. Our reaction to it is not. We need to decide what that is going to be. And I’m not sure how to go about that. I think its crucial that we start electing leaders that have a handle on what is happening right now and what will be happening in the very near future. And I don’t have a lot of faith that we’ll be able to do that. So, strap in. Gird your loins. It’s going to be a very interesting decade ahead of us. I’ve just been talking about the visual. This new technology is going to permeate every facet of our lives. Educate yourselves. There will be miracles, there will be devastation.
This week’s photo set was a reunion with the magnificent Heather Monique. I’ve posted about her before. Dip into the archives to dig that one up. She’s 100% real. And that’s what people love about her. She’s amassed an army of devoted fans. Proving, that truth can prevail over fiction. Maybe there’s some hope for us after all. I’ll take the mess that is us.
I’ve begun posting these longer writings on Substack. A paid subscription there gets you access to all the images here. Of which there are over 60 of Heather, alongside multiple other shoots we’ve done together over the years. Click thru to see it all.