SBweekly E61 - Too much for AI?

Too much for Ai?
Host: Stephan Bollinger

 A little while ago, while roaming the streets of Shenzhen, I made what sounded like a rather depressing prediction. AI is coming for a lot of photography jobs, and frankly, we can’t stop it. For many areas of commercial photography, the horse has already bolted, packed its suitcase and booked a window seat. Not clear enough? For many product photographers, online shop snappers and lower ranked fashion brand content creators, the train has left the station on the back of a ship that has sailed.

Surely there must still be places where the machines throw in the towel?

So I opened the vault and dug out five dance composites, starting reasonably easy, then up’d the complexity dial a little. Naturally, I invited AI to join the party, just to see at what point it would quietly shut down its own servers.

If all you need is a quick mask, a decent selection or a helping hand with some of the repetitive work, AI is useful. No doubt.

When it comes to actual compositing work, however, the game is over. We’re not talking about cute babies on fluffy blankets floating across over saturated rainbows, but real world group composites of dancers twisted around each other, in front and behind, with depth, expression and enough fine detail to keep Photoshop awake at night. Add super high print resolutions where every tiny mistake becomes painfully obvious, and AI simply waves the white flag. Well, it doesn’t, actually. It keeps generating things, just nothing that would hold up to scrutiny on this level. So…

Human 1. AI 0.

It’s not even a fair comparison. At least… not yet.