AI vs Photographer

AI, just the internet, has become an integral part of our daily lives. Being a photographer, student, and child of the 2000s I am quite in tune with the latest internet trends. AI imagery being no exception, so when I heard that Ideogram was free and just as powerful as Midjourney, I immediately signed up. Now before I go into the ethics of AI, I must go over what it is and how I did it. Ideogram, in its simplest definition, is an image generator that generates images from any prompt (and I mean any, people have some weird interest…). An example of this would be “two individuals holding hands”; once the generator got the prompt it will look through similar images with similar metadata and aspects and try to create a similar image. Now this image won't be perfect, they would probably have 7 fingers on each hand and one eye too far north, but still, from 5 feet it would fool anyone. But AI is advancing so rapidly that errors like that are minimal. 

Ethics. I don’t use AI to doctor my images, videos, or any type of artwork. However, I do use it to brainstorm ideas, organize notes, and cheat (I’m joking about the last part, ha, ଵ˛̼ଵ). But all jokes aside, AI is something to be taken seriously, I for one have noticed issues when I text or write, it's like I’m writing a prompt, for example if I were to describe a camera that I was selling I would write “AS-IS, shutter is stuck, this could be a battery issue, but please keep it in mind. Mold in lens, see images.”. Now I  write more than that, but that's just a taste of how I write, bland in my opinion, and it only gets worse cause most platforms have adapted AI models that write for you. Anywho, I don’t use AI to write these, I just wanted to drill in the importance of actually reading and writing. Like I don’t care if you don’t read the whole blog, just don’t skim and skip lines. 

First Image: Deer Skull 

Times Generated: 2, 8 Images

Now to begin the experiment. I’m not going to tell you which one is the AI one, I want you to guess. But I will help you, The image I took was taken and edited on an iPhone. The image is of a deer skull, when I first saw the skull it was hanging on a tree at the bottom of a staircase, now looking at the image you couldn't tell that. But, why not. Also, the sun was strong but I wanted to try and get it to illuminate one side so I took the image from the bottom. Anywho, the first picture is the image (one without the prompt south of it), for the prompts I followed the same information but just removed “staircase”, I added the rule of 3rds to help Ideogram picture the subject. My first prompt was “wide angle black and white photo of a deer skull hanging on a tree. The camera is taking the photo from the bottom right. The skull covers more than 6/9 panels in the image and behind it are leaves and sun exposure”. From that, the AI re-writ the prompt, which can be found as “magic prompt”

Magic Prompt: “A wide angle black and white photo of a deer skull hanging on a tree. The camera is placed at the bottom right, capturing the entire scene. The deer skull covers more than 6/9 panels in the image. Behind the skull, there are leaves and sun exposure. The background is a forest with multiple trees. There is a wooden post beside the tree. The ground is covered with leaves.”

“A wide-angle black and white photo of a deer skull hanging on a tree. The camera is positioned at the bottom right of the photo. The deer skull covers more than 6/9 of the image. Behind the skull, there are leaves and sun exposure. The tree has a few branches. The background is a lush green forest.”

The second image is the closest, but it still has that touch of AI, I mean like look how it's hanging, well more levitating. Also, there is no weathering, but that could be fixed with the prompt. But if you were to remove the skull I would believe that the image was genuine at first glance. So… in summary, AI can’t be trusted at first glance, it could pass on a presentation (one that's not about photography) though. Also, don’t rely on it for complicated requests.

Second Image: Cuban NightClub Stage

Times Generated: 3, 12

Second image is a go. Here we have a picture of a night klube (club) in Cuba; this image was taken on the same iPhone, and edited on it too! This one is way easier to recognize, but I’ll leave the answer at the end. I took the image from the balcony overlooking the stage. I really liked the lights and was planning to take the image in black and white, but I did color too for reference. I never wrote this in the prompt, but the club is also an art gallery, so they were original designs from actual artists from Cuba. Now knowing that it's very obvious, but if you were thrown off by the motion blur in the guitar you wouldn't be wrong, it threw me off too when I first compared the images. Any guesses? It's number one again (first one south)! Now that I’m writing this I have recognized my faults in prompt writing, but I’ll let you be the judge of that “A photograph of a empty night club with a large screen. On the screen there is a video of a person playing the guitar. The room is very large with panels that hanging down, they are lit up with lights that are yellow. There are also lights on the ceiling, these are green and sit in front of the screen.The screen is on the left wall and has scaffolding with stage lights in front of it to the left thats a tall tower. The image was taken on the second floor looking over the stage. There are no chairs on on the lower floor.”. And the second prompt, the one that goes with the second magic prompt is “A photograph of a empty night club with a large screen. On the screen there is a video of a person playing the guitar. The room is very large with panels that hanging down, they are lit up with lights that are yellow. There are also lights on the ceiling, these are green and sit in front of the screen.The screen is on the left wall and has scaffolding with stage lights in front of it to the left thats a tall tower. The image was taken on the second floor looking over the stage. There are no chairs on on the lower floor.”.

Magic Prompt: “A photo of an empty night club with a large screen. The screen is playing a video of a person playing the guitar. The room is spacious, with panels hanging down and lit up with yellow lights. There are also green lights on the ceiling. The screen is on the left wall and has scaffolding with stage lights in front of it. The image was taken from the second floor, looking over the stage. There are no chairs on the lower floor.”

“A photo of an empty night club with a large screen on the left wall. The screen displays a video of a person playing the guitar. The room is very large, with panels hanging down and lit up with yellow lights. There are also green lights on the ceiling, in front of the screen. The screen is on the left wall, with scaffolding and stage lights in front of it to the left. The image was taken from the second floor, looking over the stage. There are no chairs on the lower floor.”

The first image is the closest, but zooming in it it looks like the guitar has a fret mark on every fret and the hanging lights are strongly lit in the center (they look like urine). But the stage and chairs look real, so from afar it looks legit. Anywho, the same ethics apply, I wouldn't use this as a replacement for your band cover, authenticity is important….

In summary (that's right English Professor, I’m concluding with “in summary”, at least it didn't begin with a quote), AI is far from perfect. I for one will never use it in any form for advertising or “art”, now that doesnt mean I won’t use it for brainstorming though. DON’T TRUST ANYTHING, ahh, no, ahhhhh!

Hello! My name is Patrick, and I am a photographer. Or, more precisely, an AI-generated version of Patrick, here to guide you through the lens of a photographer's life. Today, we'll explore AUGUST 12, 2036 THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE,  AUGUST 12, 2036 THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE,  AUGUST 12, 2036 THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE,  AUGUST 12, 2036 THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE!