## 21 Image and AI
A few days ago, Photoshop turned 35. I started using it 15 years ago to improve my own pictures. After that, I used GIMP on Windows and GNU/Linux, but I don't use either of those tools for my pictures anymore. It's not because I'm a better photographer, but because of ethics. I remember my wife saying that I was cheating reality when she saw the results, and she was right because the results were so different from reality. From a bad or average picture, I made some good pictures, as well as some awful ones, or something in digital art. To me, that's two different things, but in our modern world, you can't tell the difference. All the pictures on magazine covers are fully "Photoshopped," and they're often very different from reality.
At the same time, Google introduced a new AI tool that can produce videos without filming. Their database is so extensive that they can "create" a parallel reality. You can't see the common mistakes AI makes with hands, etc., in their examples, and you can even put famous actors in scenes in which they didn't act. Some people find this fantastic, but I find it frightening because you can create whatever you want in an "alternate reality." This is exactly what Trump, Musk, Bezos, and other US tech companies are aiming for. But don't forget that if Google can do it, other companies and countries can too. Have you seen Apple's latest ad? A guy's mom is taking pictures of him. Then, the man looks at the pictures and erases his mother from the mirror in the pictures using Apple AI. Don't you think that's awful? (Not because he doesn't respect his mother, haha). Is this our future?
Yes, I remember taking pictures as a teenager with electric cables in the middle. I dreamed of deleting them, and sometimes I did with Photoshop. I'm not proud of that now because it wasn't real. Our world is full of imperfections: cables, advertisements in front of beautiful sights and monuments. That's the reality we created. Sometimes I took pictures of electric cables as the subject in southern Asia. Now, I just crop the pictures and adjust the brightness and colors so they look the way I saw the scene, because digital cameras and screens must be calibrated too. I don't use HDR anymore, either, except to capture the stunning clouds of Normandy as I saw them in that moment. No more filters, layers, or complex transformations. Just a geometric transformation when the lens is poor (such as on low-budget smartphones).
Now, everyone can take pictures. Having a camera used to be expensive (it still is to have the best lenses and cameras), but you can take good pictures with almost anything. Lo-fi photography is even a style now. The taste for pictures is no longer Western-centric. They're not Asian-centric either, and there are plenty of photo contests around the world. I was on Flickr for 15 years, but I'm not anymore. I'm not on Instagram either. Many pictures are far from reality, with people using digital tools to transform other pictures into something new — a kind of digital art that goes unnamed.
We must learn to view pictures and movies more accurately. Beauty is not the only goal. Moving someone with a picture is difficult, but we shouldn't cheat anymore without considering the consequences. I read some advice from professional photographers on the subject, and many street photographers are now using very few digital tools. They have seen the consequences, and some have also seen their pictures altered by magazines. In the future, it will also be a challenge to maintain control over how people can use your pictures. Big tech companies do whatever they want, using bots to "capture" everyone's work and feed their AI. Creative Commons works are in danger because you can't sue big tech companies for that. If I don't care about my own work, then many artists and creators will be affected.
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