Lens Artists Photo Challenge #302 – Artificial Intelligence and Photography

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For this challenge JohnBo has asked us to “share your thoughts and images on a controversial subject – the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your photographs.”

My photo editing software doesn’t include AI so I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond to this challenge. I got the idea to try using the AI Assistant available in WordPress after reading Donna’s post at Wind Kisses.

All of the images in this post were created using the WordPress AI Assistant. The first images are based on special days in May – Henry’s birthday, Mother’s Day, a road trip to Virginia to celebrate our oldest Granddaughter’s high school graduation, and Memorial Day. I captioned each photo with the prompt I gave AI.

The header image was automatically created based on the content of this post.

Chocolate birthday cake
Mother’s Day Breakfast
High School Graduation blue gown gold tassel
Lighthouse with American Flag Memorial Day

I experimented with a lot of different prompts before finding images that I liked. I wouldn’t call them photographs. This egret image was the most realistic one.

Egret on dock over salt marsh

For several of the images I had to try several prompts before I got an image that worked. The following are two images that made me laugh out loud. The captions show the prompt I gave AI.

Beach with bottlenose dolphin
Atlantic ocean beach with dolphin

I am seeing AI images more and more as I browse the internet. My hope is that actual photographers will never be replaced by Artificial Intelligence and that anyone posting AI images will let their readers know how the image was created.

I had fun playing with AI but I think I’ll stick with my own photographs from now on.

Many thanks to our host Johnbo for his challenge Lens-Artists #302 – Artificial Intelligence and Photography

32 thoughts on “Lens Artists Photo Challenge #302 – Artificial Intelligence and Photography”

  2. What a great post! I loved the AI images. As I was reading your post and looking at the photos, I was thinking that AI was doing a good job with still life — until I got to the lighthouse. What was the second flag pole doing there? Anyway, I loved the egret photo. It could have fooled me if you hadn’t said it was AI generated. You wrapped up with funny photos of those dolphins. Poor AI!

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  6. This was wonderful Beth. It is fun for a time, but as we talked about, it isn’t photography. It is like a new toy at Christmas to play with. I laughed with you on the dolphin photos, such literal interpretations, but I do really like the others. Very nice!

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  7. LOL! The Bottlenose Dolphin at the beach was hilarious.

    A lot of people balked at the idea of Photoshop and developing our digital negatives/RAW files when digital cameras came on the scene. They screamed your photos are fake! I don’t hear too much of that anymore. Removing a spot of sensor dust. or a wire, or branch and filling that space with content from the image was early AI no?

    I’m okay with that type of photo manipulation and making composites from two or more images I made but, a wholly made up image from computer driven AI is not for me. I’ll keep making my own images, and be entertained and enjoy what others do with their AI created imagery. Like you I hope they disclose it when they publish it.

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  8. I’ve been quite impressed with the results of WordPress AI generator for images. That egret is an example of a photo that could fool all but an expert. The dolphin on the beach, not so much. >grin<

    Thanks for taking the time to comment on this week’s challenge.

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  10. Those dolphin pics are too funny and obviously AI. Many of the others you included are quite nice and could have fooled me. I totally agree, it was fun to play around with the WP AI feature, but I’ll stick to my own photographs.

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    1. Ingrid, there are some things that AI Assistant just doesn’t understand. Ever since I played with it I am noticing more and more images that are obviously created by AI. When we were watching TV last night there was a commercial that I could tell were all AI. Like it or not I guess it is here to stay.

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  11. LOL for the last two photos Beth – I had similar experiences with AI prompts to create my post this week. I loved your post and am pretty amazed that the WP app created such lovely scenes (altho I’d say they would easily be identified as AI-generated. I’m with you – fun to play with but I’ll stick to real photography and hope most others do too!

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    1. Tina, the AI assistant just didn’t seem to know where to put those dolphins! After working with the AI Assistant I am noticing more and more images that are obviously AI generated, even in TV commercials.

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  12. I am still giggling at the beach ones!
    I will want to play around with this one day. But like you have no desire to include them in any posts. Thanks for letting us know about it.

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    1. Nancy, I found playing with the AI Assistant to be a little addictive! I kept trying different prompts just to see what it would come up with! Some, like the egret, were pretty realistic but many were obviously fake. I found out it doesn’t know how to count!

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  14. Enjoyed reading how your challenge using AI Assistant worked out. The egret looks very realistic but I agree with you, your own photos are the best.

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