With the autumn commercial releases of generative AI Software Sora 2 and Veo 3.1, artificially constructed images and videos have, for the first time, become indistinguishable from the traditional photograph. Furthermore, their commercial availability has resulted in them densely populating the sea of images we observe daily. In this flood of generated images, we must consider AI’s effects. By making us hyper aware of the idea of the image as constructed rather than photographically ‘recorded’ AI imagery seems untrustworthy, and therefore threatening.
However, I would like to pose not a conclusive, but a possibly optimistic outlook on this new situation. By flooding our media intake with untrustworthy images, AI has exposed our long-held, yet misplaced, faith in photographic images as vessels of truth and neutrality.
From 1820s Heliography to contemporary digital photos, photography has grown to dominate popular media in the West for almost two centuries. As it grew in popularity, the idea Roland Barthes famously titled the “myth” of photography began to arise. The myth described suggests that photography is neutral and passive, and merely a reception of light. The reality is the necessary human composition of the image undermines any possibility for a truly neutral photograph. Why take the photo? Why this subject matter? What from one’s vision did they include? What did they leave out? The answers to these questions of composition will always lead back to the creator’s own beliefs, and therefore the photo always mirrors its creator.
From the political to the personal, even when the lens seems to ‘passively’ receive an image, the photographer still creates it. Therefore, if the hyperrealism of AI images makes us doubt every image we see, this illusion, whether indirectly or not, has been undermined.
The fear that any image could be AI, in a positivist outlook, destabilises the power of the image. People often assume believable doctoring of images is a contemporary ability. However, photographic elements such as retouching, overpainting, and literally cutting and pasting have been editorially available since the 1840s. Therefore, our newfound doubt in the photographic image, should have always been present. It took AI to drag us to the ultimate epitome of photographic construction to make us realise that deliberate construction has been there all along, deceiving and steering us into thinking in certain ways. AI hasn’t destroyed the promise of photography, it has only revealed that all photographs are a construction.
It must be said that this outlook only encompassed a single aspect of the recent developments of AI, but it stands hopeful amidst a pool of doubt. As photography becomes untrusted, we will enter a liminal stage of anxiety about what sources we turn to for evidence. Maybe we must take a more multi-media approach to documentation and evidence as the ‘sturdy’ image no longer withstands. Beyond this, as we grow to distrust the camera, emotive responses to photography will hastily disappear. Images will feel hollow as the ‘myth’ of photography let us believe the wonders frozen in the image were authentic not generated. Therefore, this one shred of hope I offer is an important one. AI may have changed visual culture into a sea of doubtable images, but this allows us to look, finally, with open eyes
“Photography and The Law” by Byflickr is licensed under CC BY 2.0.