How much AI is ok?

At the risk of sounding like an ancient fossil, when I started photography, 35mm film was the medium. Auto Focus wasn’t a thing. Digital manipulation, wasn’t that what dodgy accountants did? Computers, the internet, yet to be invented. Creative control was entirely mine. If it was terrible, it was all me. If it were incredible, again, all me. I had to own it. The best lessons. I consider myself fortunate.

Now, AI plays a big role. I use it consciously and subconsciously. And I’m ok with that. But what do I mean by consciously and subconsciously? Well, when I decide to remove a small background distraction in post production, AI is doing all the calculations. It’s my conscious decision to pull that particular trigger. By contrast, when my camera’s AF (auto focus) is tracking a subject and predicting where it will go next, that’s entirely subconscious for me. I’m now free to concentrate on composition, depth of field and exposure etc. I consciously choose AF rather than MF. After that, it’s all happening beneath my thought process’.

I’m very aware of the AI creep into the creative space. It’s inevitable. I am happy to delegate the leg work of subject tracking and focusing but I retain creative control of the major elements. I’ll never hand off the creative decision making to a computer. This is also true, as you can probably tell, with my writing. In fact, even more so than my photography. I very much hope it’s evident.

In short, I like the assistance AI provides but I’m careful what percentage I hand off. I want to retain what is human. What is me. Mistakes and all. I truly believe this is where the value will be in a future where less and less is human generated.