WHILE the past couple of annual news reviews have focused on the state of the camera market, the hot topic among the photographic community this year has been AI. While AI innovations in software are hardly new – Skylum, for example, has been using it to simplify image-editing tasks for some time – the pace of change seemed to quicken this May when Adobe, the elephant in any room, added ‘Generative Fill’ to a beta version of Photoshop.
Put simply, this enables users to add or remove elements in a photograph – placing a cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky, for example – by typing in simple text prompts via the movable Generative Fill bar. An appropriate AI-generated image is then created, matching the perspective, lighting and style of your base image (and thanks to layers, the whole process is ‘non destructive’ to the original).
This certainly isn’t the first time Adobe has integrated AI into its products – Photoshop Camera appeared in 2021 and the company’s Sensei technology is well established in its apps – but the ease with which Generative Fill radically changes an image has triggered a lot of anxiety about the technology’s impact on photography as we understand it. We’re now seeing similar tools come on the market, but Generative Fill’s integration with the widely used Photoshop means an image ‘enhanced’ by AI can be fine-tuned to an impressive degree – raising lots of questions about what is a ‘real’ photograph and what isn’t.
Some are sanguine about the spread of AI, claiming images taken by a skilled photographer will always be in demand, but others fear for the future. ‘One of the reasons I’ve given up product photography is that companies can now easily generate images themselves using AI,’ observed one pro, Ne
