“Real” has always been a luxury

Like many of you, I worry about AI taking jobs. I do. I don't have the kind of job that is AI proof, though I hope that people will continue to appreciate the human aspect of what I do. It's for humans, after all. I think the concern is quite warranted. I do think that we have to consider what technology does for us, though. There are things we just wouldn't be able to do without it. I believe we can hold both truths at once.

So here is the both/and in this situation. AI is doing something for my work that I have wanted for a long time and could never afford. It is making things accessible. When you run a small business on a small budget, imagery is a luxury good. I cannot hire the actors, the models, the photographers, the videographers, the whole production line that fills the materials and websites of companies with real money. That was never on the table for me. I've never had the luxury of seed money and taking out another loan. OMG.

For a while, stock photography was the great equalizer. It put images within reach. But it also meant hours of scrolling for a photo that worked well enough, subscriptions to three different sites, licensing terms I had to worry about. It provided access and was more affordable than hiring a production team, but it cost time.

Now I can describe what I am looking for, and I get it. Yes, it still costs money, but it is affordable. I do not have the budget to sit for an expensive shoot, pay the sitting fees, book the hair appointment, then pay for the photographer's time while they edit, and still walk away able to change only so much. With AI, I can take a photo on my own phone and get a clean retouch. When your budget is the size of mine, that is not a small thing. I know the objections. I have heard most of them, and a few of them I have argued with myself.

“It takes money away from artists.”

Maybe, except there was no money that I would have been able to give the artist. You cannot take a fee I was never going to pay. The shoot I am replacing with AI is not a shoot that was ever getting booked.

“But it isn't really you.”

Isn't it? Is a retouched photo really you? Is a filtered one? We have been smoothing, softening, and adjusting our images for years (every social platform basically leads with them), and somehow the world kept turning. We actually have some fun with the filters. They can be problematic sometimes. I'm not arguing against that. But, as an aside, my daughter and I had a ball the other night cracking up at our old Snapchat filter videos. I know that is completely different than talking about work (and whatever the hell we consider to be professional...whosever standards THOSE are).

“Is AI imagery an honest representation of your work and who you are?”

Fair question, and the one I sat with longest because I want people to know that I am sincere in what I deliver to my clients. But then the other day I was walking through IKEA and having fun looking at all the set ups. Every display is a staged room. Nobody actually lives in them. No one is out there accusing those little kitchens of lying. The tiny apartment isn't an imposter. The staging is not a deception at all! It is an invitation! This is what it could look like. This is what you can imagine getting if you shop here. This is the feeling you'll have. Good AI imagery can do that same honest work.

So, while many of you may disagree with me, I struggle to call the use of AI tools unethical. Tools are not ethical or unethical, uses are. Why would I do long calculations by hand when we have calculators in our pockets? If I am not a photographer, I don't need to work with medium format film. Is using my phone on portrait mode cheating?

If you are using AI to deceive people like inventing a client who never existed or claim a result you never got, that is a real problem, and it was a problem long before AI arrived. There are other environmental concerns, I understand. And I am sure there are fifty-'leven other reasons that someone would tell me I shouldn't use the tools. But we have also been taught to recycle only to learn that not all recycling works, we've been encouraged to donate to charity to find out that several pocket more than they give.

I am not trying to be cynical here. I am trying to be realistic. Like every single thing out there, there is the good, the bad, the ugly, AND the beautiful. It takes balance and when we can tap into our humanness and employ critical thinking and reasoning, I am pretty sure we can still be okay as humans.

Here is where it stops being about pictures, though.

The retouching we get nervous about in an image? A lot of us have been doing it to ourselves for years. We tweak, we code-switch, we cover, we shift, editing whatever might not be welcomed in a given room so that we fit the way that room expects us to fit, instead of the room making space for us. We have been running our own filters long before anybody trained a large language model to write for us or generate images.

It cuts both ways, this thing we keep calling authenticity. On one side, the shape-shifting is what gets us in the door. Some rooms are simply not accessible to us unless we adjust, and adjusting is the price of the ticket. On the other side, being able to walk in and show up exactly as you are, without the edits and the covering, is its own kind of luxury. Some people call it privilege. Either way, it is not something all of us can afford.

So when we talk about what counts as real, and who gets to be it, let's be honest about what we are actually mourning. Having everything custom and human made (the image, or the person) is a luxury. But don't kid yourself. It always was. AI didn’t invent the edited self. It just brought it to the forefront.

Real was always a luxury. AI just stopped pretending otherwise.