AI and photography

This meeting will help you grasp the basics of what AI (Artificial Intelligence) is and what it means to photography. It will be non-technical, but go into enough to detail to be sure you don’t share the misconceptions of those who aren’t well informed.

We’re at the dawn of photography’s Second Digital Revolution. It’s exciting, it’s scary, but the future is what we make!

Background

We start with a little history: from integrated circuits in cameras (over 50 years ago, can you believe it?), then the grunt work that led to ‘intelligent metering’. After that, only 20-odd years ago, came the first digital revolution that you know all about it. Now, today’s use of machine intelligence in picture-making is so ingrained, we don’t even realise much of our digital photography depends heavily on high-level computing.

Now, the photography boat is pitching into the rough seas of a Second Revolution: the rise and spread of machine learning and the synthogram: images generated from text input. These are being produced at 

Join me if you’re interested in any of these topics:

• Artificial intelligence: what does it have to do with photography?
• Machine learning: what is it, and how does it use images?
• Text-to-image AI generative models such as DALL-E, Adobe Firefly, Midjourney: how they do what they do; and their likely impacts on photographic practice and the profession.
• Copyright and ethical issues: a brief briefing.
• Blockchain, and NFTs: what do they have to do with photography?

You’re sure to have heaps of questions, so I will allow plenty of Q&A time.

Twenty-five years ago, I was one of the first to adopt digital photography in professional practice. Who wrote some the first books to popularise digital photography? Me; guilty as charged.

For the more than a year now, I’ve been on Artist Support and a tester for OpenAI on DALL-E, I’m represented in curated NFTs marketplaces and write on AI in photography and other topics in my Substack: tomang.substack.com (you can subscribe for free).

• Image manipulation
• Picture editing
• Digital asset management

• Yourself and your questions