More on FAQ #330

330. How will AIFI affect photography?

  • A. For the public . . .

    . . . AIFI will permanently shatter any illusions left over from the 20th century that “You can judge the trustworthiness of a photograph just by looking at it.”

    This realization is two or three decades overdue. For years the best advice for “How not to get fooled by altered photographs” has been “Always be very skeptical, no matter how convincing a photograph may look.”

    Encouraging widespread skepticism is not problematic now that TTG makes it easy to label photographs that are not doctored.

  • B. For non-TTG-suited photos . . .

    . . . AIFI can be a very useful tool.

    That’s because for most categories of non-TTG-suited photographs, it is easier — and far less limiting — to make both small and large fixes and additions to the photograph using AIFI rather than limiting oneself to camera-based options...

    . . . and once viewers know the images are not TTG-qualified, they are unlikely to care which tools were used to make those images.

    AIFI effectively brings a nuclear weapon into what previously hadn’t been much more than a pillow fight over how much non-TTG photographs should be “enhanced” after they are recorded.

    For many photographers who aren’t concerned with TTG, AIFI will eventually offer unlimited creative possibilities.

  • C. But for TTG photos . . .

    — that is, photographs that depict only “what the camera lens saw at the moment the picture was taken”—

    — AIFI won't really change anything.

    That’s because using AI to make changes that disqualify a photo from TTG is no different from using any older and more conventional methods of making disqualifying changes (see FAQ #120).

    However . . .

    . . . there will be at least one interesting indirect effect of AIFI on TTG photos:

    It will become ever more difficult to impress viewers with TTG photos once creators of non-TTG images can make full use of AIFI and are no longer constrained to photography-based tools—

    — but that same difficulty also will increase the value of TTG photos (see {brief 11} ).

    See also FAQ #418.