AI, my photos and a small request

From a studio session with Aditi … Chat GPT alteration using AI

I have a confession to make: I actually quite enjoy messing around with AI.

There, I've said it.

As a photographer, this probably requires me to hand back my membership card to the Serious Photography Society and spend the afternoon sitting quietly in the corner thinking about what I've done.

But honestly, some of the things AI can do with a photograph are enormous fun. Take one of my images, change the background, put the model somewhere completely ridiculous, add a wolf, set the whole thing on fire, transport her to another planet... I'm quite happy to play around and see what happens.

And sometimes the results are surprisingly good.

Sometimes they are also spectacularly stupid.

That's part of the fun.

What I don't particularly want, however, is for those AI-altered images to be presented publicly as my photography.

There's a fairly important distinction in my mind between a photograph I made and something interesting someone has subsequently created using one of my photographs as the starting point.

If a model takes one of my images and turns herself into an astronaut standing on Mars, I'm perfectly happy for her to do it. In fact, I'd much rather see people being creative with the images than treating every photograph as something that must remain permanently locked in its original form.

My only request is that I'm not tagged into the resulting image.

It's not because I'm offended by AI, or because I'm going to start standing outside people's computers waving a placard saying "REAL PHOTOGRAPHY ONLY!"

It's simply about attribution.

If an image is substantially altered by AI, particularly if the background, environment, clothing, lighting or other major elements have been generated or changed, I don't really regard the finished result as something I photographed.

I photographed the original.

Someone else has then taken it somewhere else.

That's completely fine.

And if you've been photographed by me and want to experiment with one of your images, please do. I'd actually be interested to see what you come up with. Just don't feel that you need to tag me into the finished AI creation.

I'd much rather people looked at it and thought, "That's an interesting thing that she did with Rob's photograph" than "Oh, Rob photographed this."

Because there's already enough confusion on the internet about what is real, what is edited, what is AI and who actually made what.

I don't particularly want to add to it.

So: play with the photographs, alter them, put them on the Moon, give yourself wings, surround yourself with wolves — whatever makes you happy.

Just leave my name out of the tag when you do.

I'll be over here doing the original photography and occasionally putting my own photographs into completely ridiculous AI situations anyway just for fun.