You know very well that not every scenario can have a perfect shot, kids, animals, plants, events, these can be planned but are challenging scenarios to get that perfect shot without having to edit a single thing.
Kids - they rarely stay in one place
Animals - they hunt for food specially the wild ones
Plants - windy or rainy weather
Events - social gathering or newsworthy photos
And that is one of the reasons that I love film; it makes the notion of perfection - 'the perfect shot' - a lot harder to achieve, for it insists that the photographer actually think before pressing the shutter (precisely because film limits the number of shots you can actually take).
The nightmare of a world where photography is composed of perfectly curated shots, the notion where, what my eye falls upon is a curated visual lie, fills me with utter horror. I don't want perfection - I want an image to be an authentic expression of the eye of the person who created it.
Anyway, excellent thread, and a fascinating and thought-provoking discussion, and thank you,
@mollyc for starting it, and
@Clix Pix, for having suggested it.
Obviously, as with digital photography, (a format I have yet to graduate to - I still use film), AI will transform (transform utterly) how we see, shoot, (if we even shoot, or simply appropriate as needed), process, and present an image.
I am an historian by background, a training that has given me a respect for facts, sources, and what is (rather, what was), and also a tendency to look to a longer perspective; now, I have no quarrel with fiction or fantasy, but they do not purport to represent reality.
Thus, part of this unfolding discussion and debate of whether AI has a role in photography (alas, I think that this debate may already have been lost) and where we, in this forum seek to draw the line as to its use in image creation - a very necessary and timely discussion and debate - concerns whether it is deemed acceptable (in a world where tweaking images is already possible with digital photography), and to what extent - which is where I think that the real debate will (or is) taking place - it should be used when creating images.
In an earlier life, for a year, I worked with the parliamentary debates office as an editor; one of the things that was interesting about that was how the edited (and published) debates did not always reflect exactly what had taken place, what had been said, (sometimes, atrocious grammar was tidied up, as, if one actually had transcribed exactly what had been said, the contribution would have been completely incomprehensible, closer attention was paid to what the front bench - especially the government - may have said than was paid to the utterances of an anonymous backbencher, and - depending on context - errors may occasionally have been corrected prior to publication) and, internally, much discussion (and debate) occurred about how best to render what had been said into a published form, a form that rendered accurately what had been said in a manner that was comprehensible to a reader. I found it fascinating, and - as an historian - at times, a little troubling.
However, while the forum has already made its stance quite clear on AI generated posts (posts should be written by the person themselves in their own words), in the photography section, it makes sense to discuss the use of AI generally, and, more specifically, whether - or, to what extent - it should be allowed when participating in the many threads (weekly contests, POTD, and others), which is what this very welcome thread is doing.
Personally, I have no wish to live in a world where the visual fraud of AI generated images smothers any expression of creativity, and extinguishes authenticity of expression, and the need for the photographer's subjective eye.
My own personal preference would be for no AI whatsoever, - at least, in these fora - although I accept that this is, perhaps, excessively optimistic.
