For those of you who know me, you already know my deep concerns about AI and how it is affecting our world. Not only are corporations using it to ruthlessly cut their workforce to replace it with something that could barely be recognized as a reasonable replacement, but it is absolutely devastating to our environment to be running these servers nonstop and fighting to increase capacity when we should be doing the exact opposite.
And this isn't even digging into the effects it has been having on the art world and how it is eroding our trust in reality itself.
This isn't to say there aren't valuable uses for this resource - while LLMs certainly aren't the answer, the compute power could lead to important scientific discoveries. And then there are the "utility" tools, such as using AI to clean up the signal noise of a photo you have taken or upscaling the resolution when necessary, and these do not require that you sign over your content rights as an artist to a corporation or that you even need to send it to a server - I've switched to using Photomator since I have an M1 Mac and they do all of the processing privately on-device using much, much less power and resources. Most importantly, I only do it when it's warranted, usually when I'm photographing a dark situation as my camera is older and does tend to get noisy at higher ISO levels or when I'd like to crop more than I usually would.
But aside from these useful utilities, everything you are seeing was created in-camera; I do not use tools that remove objects or people from the frame, nor do I add anything that was not there in the scene. I believe to do so is tantamount to a lie, at least by my personal standards. I know there are many arguments about this, but this is just simply where I stand and I do not intend to budge.
To me, photography is about so much more than capturing a scene and trying to make it "perfect." Photography for me, as an art form, is about capturing life as it is - it doesn't need embellishment to be beautiful. I don't much care for the philosophizing around "what is a photo," I'll leave that for the art critics.
I also do not use AI in my writing - I'm still working on developing my "voice" as a writer, but as someone with an English degree and wants to communicate who I am as best I can, utilizing AI to try and "boost" my work somehow with a bunch of vocabulary I wouldn't use or trying to boost SEO scores just isn't how I want to work. It is not how I want to connect with people like you - it is, again, not honest.
I understand the appeal - I really do. For those who feel like they aren't great at writing and would like some assistance, or those who are having trouble getting seen amongst the wave of generative AI and feel like there is no hope for progress without utilizing it; I understand the desire.
But if nothing else, please consider the environmental toll that this is having on our planet and what it means to be human in the digital age. Take some free courses (of which there are plenty for photography, art, and writing). Taking the fast lane will never help you actually improve in any of these areas, all while draining lakes and burning our planet to satiate the hallucinations of the ultra-wealthy who need you to use it in order to justify their bad bet.