Ready or Not...

Most photographers, and I could probably generalize to 'creatives', are rightly skeptical about the long term unintended consequences of artificial intelligence. (I ain't gonna use caps.) Even if they use it everyday in the form of 'smart' masking and other tools in Photoshop and Lightroom. We have all been on our collective guards since the likes of Richard Prince appeared on the scene. That said, I have still experimented a little bit (in the privacy of my studio) with Dall-e and the neural filters in Photoshop.

This image was shot on black-and-white film and colorized with one click in Ps. Not yet perfect, but with rolls of medium format film approaching $20, getting pretty close. 

 

Fake Fake Fake... Or?

Indifferent to them, hate 'em, or love 'em, I think it is worth investigating images generated by artificial intelligence. If only to impress upon yourself how fast things are changing. Which seems to be pretty fast, honestly, and the pace certainly will only pick up from here. So, a month ago I added my name to the DALL-E waitlist, and recently was allowed to sign up for an account. The first experiment I tried was to generate some fake Malevich, see above. 

Later, I tried some fake Cezanne, specifying a particular color palette.

The four variations make a nice little quartet, don't you think?

One of the photographers whose work first resonated with me when I was young is Aaron Siskind. I've always appreciated his expressionist photographs of textures, patterns, and the like. Here is some fake Siskind for your consideration.

To my eyes, the AI does a better job of faking the art of the famous and prominent, which makes sense, of course, as there are more examples online. The good news is that those of us toiling away in relative obscurity might be safe for a little while longer!